Russell Martin didn’t know how a trip to his tribe’s homelands would end. But as he hiked up the central Texas mountain where the Tonkawa people are from, the trek felt transformational.
The Tonkawa Tribe had been forced to cede the land more than a century ago. The tribe ended up in what is now northern Oklahoma, 450 miles from Naton Samox, the mountain at the center of its creation story.
Martin made the eight-hour drive there in November 2022 to meet with a documentary crew. The peak overlooks a sweeping rural landscape about 80 miles northeast of Austin. Martin took the scene in and knew the mountain had to be preserved.
“It was a very overwhelming feeling,” said Martin, who leads the tribe’s governing body. “You could imagine, picture in your head, what it would have been like hundreds of years ago.”
Recently, he returned to the mountain under different circumstances. He joined other Tonkawa leaders to celebrate the tribe buying back the mountain and land surrounding it.
“I really feel like God had a hand in this,” Martin said, adding that this purchase was unlike any other. “Never, ever has anything moved along so smoothly and quickly as this project.”