Catawba Indian Nation

“A” is for Ayers, Sara Lee Harris Sanders (1919-2002). Native American potter. Ayers was born on the Catawba Indian Reservation near Rock Hill. She probably learned to make pottery from her grandmother, a full-blooded Catawba.

“A” is for Ayers, Sara Lee Harris Sanders (1919-2002). Native American potter. Ayers was born on the Catawba Indian Reservation near Rock Hill. She probably learned to make pottery from her grandmother, a full-blooded Catawba.

A national newspaper reports that the husband of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and brother of U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn were given shares of a company that leased slots machines to a North Carolina tribal casino. The casino run by the Catawba Indian Nation in South Carolina needed political help to open last year. The Wall Street Journal reported that John Clyburn introduced backers of the project to people he knew and never discussed it with his brother. The newspaper reported that Michael Haley's company did physical and cybersecurity consulting for the project in 2018. A spokesperson for Nikki Haley told the newspaper she did not advocate for casino.

The military says that remains exhumed from a U.S. Army base in Pennsylvania do not belong to the Native American teenager recorded to have been buried there more than a century ago. The Army is disinterring the remains of eight Native American children who died at the government-run Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and plans to transfer custody to the children's closest living relatives. On Saturday, the Army exhumed a grave thought to belong to Wade Ayres of the Catawba Indian Nation of South Carolina. The Army says the remains were not a match. The unidentified remains have been reinterred in the same grave and marked unknown.

A new federal law now affirms the operation of a casino in North Carolina by the South Carolina-based Catawba Indian Nation, ending a yearslong dispute between the two tribes. The Rock Hill Herald reports that President Joe Biden signed the The Catawba Indian Nation Lands Act on Monday. A preliminary gambling operation is already up and running at the site off Interstate 85 in Kings Mountain as construction is ongoing. Catawba chief William Harris called the law "the final step in a decades-long fight" to receive federal support for the casino. The law also effectively halts a legal attempt to try to stop the project by a competing tribe that runs two casinos in North Carolina.