​What is Okesia Melungeon Kin?

Okesia Melungeon Kin is a Diasporic Melungeon kinship network. 

 

What does that mean though? 

 

Within Melungeon communities, closely connected kinship networks are often treated as tribes or clans and our Kinnets are typically bound through shared ancestry, oral tradition, and generations of interconnected family ties. The Okesia kin refers to one such kinship network. Roots of the Okesia kin can be traced back to the Appalachian ridges and hollers of our forefolk. However, discrimination and poverty saw large branches of kin displaced and scattered northward to the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, and that is how a diaspora gets born. This happened in the largest numbers during the hillbilly highway migration which was heavily tied to ongoing poverty and ever hardening social conditions surrounding race and ethnicity. That kind of large scale displacement found us separated and disconnected from our ancestral hillside communities.  Despite this separation, we held tight to our traditions, stories, spirituality, dialect, and deep family ties.  Thus, forming a diasporic Melungeon community on these newfound flatlands. 

 

The Elder Council of Okesia Melungeon Kin are dedicated to the documentation, protection, and education of our people, our ancestors, our traditions, our history, and of our greater community, the Hillbilly Highway Melungeon Diaspora that landed in Michigan. We are committed to historical, genealogical, and cultural preservation.  OMK upholds credibility standards regarding source records, oral histories, and community corroborated knowledge. 

 

​We offer a variety of resources for cultural reconnection, genealogy research, and history archives.