MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians

[9] Kevin Gover (Pawnee), then Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, and the US Department of the Interior denied their petition in 1997 and again in 1999.

"[1] It went on to state, "The Final Determination noted that the petitioning group is derived from two core families that were resident in southwestern Alabama by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century.

This insignificant Indian ancestry for a few individual members does not satisfy the criterion that the group as a whole descends from a historical tribe.

The MOWA ancestors, most of whom were well documented, were not identified as American Indians or descendants of any particular tribe in the records made in their own life times.

... these families generally were classed as nonwhites, either as 'free persons of color' or black in the antebellum period, with certain individuals listed in government documents as white.

Socially they were not accepted by local whites, and because they were free the MOWA ancestors were set apart from the enslaved blacks of the area," as historian Mark Edwin Miller writes.

[15] Members of the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians have a high frequency of Marinesco–Sjögren syndrome, a rare autosomal recessive disorder which can lead to intellectual disability, muscle weakness, and balance and coordination problems.