I have been digging through my family genealogy for years, and lately everything started coming together at once. I got public records, emails, treaties, family research, and documents that helped me trace my line back to the Sehoy dynasty and the Red Stick side of the Creek Nation. Then I learned that one of my distant relatives, Marilyn Curry, had already fought in court to lay out this lineage, and parts of that file were redacted. That hit me hard, because when your family history has already been buried under generations of reclassification, every blacked-out page feels like one more door slammed shut.

This is bigger than me and my own family tree. So many Black and Indigenous families have been told to trust paperwork that never told the full truth about who we were. When records are hidden, mislabeled, or stripped of context, it becomes easier for the government to erase Native identity on paper while families carry the truth in memory, oral history, and surviving documents. We cannot keep acting like redaction and bureaucratic silence are neutral when they affect real people's ability to understand their ancestry.

I am calling on the federal agencies that hold these records to release unredacted historical genealogy files related to Muscogee, Creek, and Red Stick family lineages wherever the law allows, and to create a clear process for descendants seeking access to records about their own families. If records must remain partially closed, descendants deserve written explanations and a fair review process, not silence and confusion. Families should not have to pay, dig, and fight through layers of secrecy just to see the truth about their own bloodlines.

If you believe our histories should not be erased by paperwork, please sign this petition. Sign if you believe descendants deserve access to the records that shape our identity. Sign if you believe it is time to stop hiding the truth and start opening these archives.