Group to deliver Columbus mayor-elect’s letter in visit to Muscogee (Creek) Nation
A group of Chattahoochee Valley residents is traveling to Oklahoma this week to learn more about the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and deliver a letter to the Native American tribe’s leaders from Columbus Mayor-Elect Isaiah Hugley that pledges to build on the city’s’ efforts to forge a stronger relationship between the two communities.
Paul Pierce, the trip’s organizer and retired Springer Opera House producing artistic director, told the Ledger-Enquirer he was given the letter Monday and with it permission to share the contents with the Ledger-Enquirer. Addressed to David Hill, principal chief of the Muscogee Nation, it says:
“Greetings and Congratulations on the 50th Anniversary of the Muscogee Nation Festival. I regret that I cannot accompany our delegation to this important event, but I look forward to meeting you and other tribal leaders in Okmulgee at the first possible opportunity. I have followed our community’s efforts to build closer ties with Muscogee Nation in recent years, and I pledge to build on that work with intentional and meaningful action. Our city played a role in a painful chapter of Muscogee history. I am aware that we have work to do in writing new chapters that speak of the respect and love we have for the original citizens of these lands. Please count on me to be a friend and partner-in-progress. I will do whatever I can to forge new bonds and to explore cultural, economic, and educational opportunities in the coming years. As mayor, I will make it clear to all that the Muscogee people will never be merely visitors in our city. This is your home — and I pray that you regard it so.”
Pierce wrote in an email to the L-E, “This could not be a better expression of our aspirations for building meaningful and enduring ties between Muscogee County and the Muscogee Nation and I am grateful to Mayor-Elect Hugley for providing it.”
Pierce said he will read and deliver the letter during a meeting Thursday morning with tribal leaders.
The Muscogee Nation has sent two delegations to Columbus. The first was before “The Mvskoke Project” opened in April 2025 at the Springer Opera House. The second was in September when they took a hard-hat tour in Columbus City Hall of the office the city is providing the Muscogee Nation when they are in Columbus for business.
“I felt very strongly that it’s time that Columbus returned the gesture and that we send a local delegation to the Muscogee Nation,” Pierce told the Ledger-Enquirer. “The more we learn about each other in our shared history, the more opportunity we will have to develop something meaningful and enduring that will benefit both communities.”
Both visits came after the Columbus Council passed a resolution in February 2025 acknowledging the city’s land originally belonged to the Muscogee people.
The seven-member group, a mix of leaders in the arts and area historians, are attending the 50th anniversary of the Muscogee Nation Festival. in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Group members are:
- Daniel Bellware, a historian, author, lecturer and researcher
- Joe McClure, a singer/songwriter and trustee of the McClure Family Foundation
- Georgia and Mac Moye, historians and longtime protectors of the Singer-Moye Mounds
- Paul Pierce, trip organizer, retired from the Springer Opera House
- Zoe Helke-Pierce, liaison, Columbus Cultural Alliance,
- Jonathan Frederick Walz, director of curatorial affairs and curator of American art, Columbus Museum.
Walz said he hopes to learn a lot, strengthen the relationship between the Columbus Museum and the Muscogee Nation, talk about future collaborations and adhere to changes in federal law.
“The Biden administration in 2024 made the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act(NAGPRA) more stringent,” Walz told the Ledger-Enquirer, “and so we as a museum have now very clear guidelines and specific things that we are required to do.”
Walz said he has collaborated with Andrea Hanley, vice chairwoman of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Board of Directors, which specializes in contemporary Native American fine art and public programming, to broaden the museum’s American art collection by adding more Native American artists, specifically contemporary Muscogee (Creek) artists.
The museum has added work by George Alexander, known as Ofuskie, and Daniel McCoy. Walz said McCoy spent two weeks in Columbus researching imagery for a mural the museum hoped to commission McCoy to paint for its 2024 reopening.
“There were some preliminary drawings that he started to get together,” Walz said, “and then the renovation and reopening took over everything, and that kind of got put on the back burner, but it is something some of us staff would still like to see, whether it’s on site here or somewhere in town.”
That experience was the beginning of much more.
As McCoy was preparing to leave Columbus, Walz said, they had a “heart-to-heart” conversation. McCoy told him something completely unexpected.
“He was like, ‘You know, I see this as the beginning of a conversation, and what I want to do . . . is be this kind of bridge between you and young Muscogee (Creek) artists who are coming up and that I can facilitate this relationship and make sure that it keeps moving forward,’” Walz said.
McClure, a Harris County resident, is a singer-songwriter who travels around the country. He told the Ledger-Enquirer seeing "The Mvskoke Project” fueled his interest in learning more about the Muscogee people and joining the trip.
“It seemed honest about where these people came from and what they had been through,” he said. “I’m sure we’ve all been through different things, but, you know, I doubt any of us have ever been forced out of our houses and to move somewhere else.”
In an email to the Ledger-Enquirer, Pierce said Columbus has much unfinished business with the Muscogee Nation, and this trip to the Muscogee reservation is a great first step.
“I believe that it is essential that we move beyond the mere symbolic and take genuine, concrete actions to welcome the voices, talents and wisdom of Muscogee citizens into our institutions, our classrooms, our government, our places of worship and our businesses,” he wrote. “When the people who thrived here for thousands of years are once again living life and thriving among us — when their words are once again spoken in these lands — only then will we have an authentic ‘Muscogee to Mvskoke’ relationship. This delegation’s trip to the Muscogee reservation is a great first step in pursuit of that dream. It will not be the last time we do this and I hope that other city leaders and citizens can do this with us next year.”
This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 12:57 PM.
