The Pamunkey Indian Tribe, which gained federal recognition only in 2015, says Tree Hill Farm in Eastern Henrico County is sacred ground. The property, more than 500 acres of farmland and woods overlooking downtown Richmond, is where Powhatan was born nearly 500 years ago. BGRE, the real estate arm of Brookfield Asset Management, wants to turn the site into a mixed-use development.
The Pamunkeys say they have inhabited the region east of Richmond for 13,000 years. They were a core component of the Powhatan Chiefdom, an alliance of more than 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes in Southeast Virginia’s Tidewater Region that formed as English colonists established Jamestown in the early 1600s.
