This story is excerpted from an interview conducted in Bennettsville in October 2026

Karen Montoya: My name is Karen Montoya. My tribal affiliation is the PD Indian Tribe. Vahidi Tribe is the correct pronunciation. It’s Vahidi. 

Savannah Turgal: Awesome. So, you just said off camera that you helped put this exhibit together. So, what do you think is the importance of an exhibit like the Americans exhibit? 

Karen : To share our culture. To share in school, children are taught about other cultures, not the Indian culture. And then, when it is shared, it’s not exactly accurate. Yeah. and we still practice a lot of our traditions that have been handed down from you know grandma and grandpa to their children, and from their children to their children, their children to their children. So that’s what we do, and the only way we can do that is by educating our children and educating our community, and we’ve been doing that For 76, 

Savannah Turgal: wow, 

Karen: yeah, in this in Marlboro County, yeah, 

Savannah Turgal: wow, 

Karen: and in other counties now because we’ve we’ve gone to Washington, D.C. 

Savannah Turgal: Wow, we 

Karen: took the tribal the youth tribal council. See, we had a youth tribal council that was we were grooming to move into tribal council positions, right? You educate your children, and you to move into positions. I’ll say positions, but we took that. We did a federal recognition petition, and we took our tribal, our youth council. Oh my goodness! Did they have any writing on it? 

Savannah Turgal: No, it’s fine. Okay, it can go in the way. 

Karen : You might need to secure things more. They put you in a bad spot. You should have gone back now. But anyway, we took them. They took the federal recognition petition with the original tribal roll to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and submitted it themselves, which was awesome for them for a lot of reasons. They went. We did a lot of you know sightseeing and so they could see D.C. Some of them had never been outside of Marlboro County, and so I mean they’ve been to the Muskogee Museum. We were invited down there to dance, and we’ve danced down there. We’ve danced down at the beach. We’ve gone down and danced at the Sun Fun Festival in Conway. So we were trying to not only educate Momoh County, but our surrounding counties as well.