Biography

The Deer Clan Singers of the Tuscarora Nation are lead by Dave Locklear with Mark Deese, Pura Fé,Chad Locklear and occasionally joined by other cousins in performance. Together, the Deer Clan Singers are singers and educators. They travel to native community schools, centers, festivals and perform abroad singing Tutelo-Tuscarora and Iroquois Social Dance Songs.

How We Helped:
The Deer Clan Singers are part of Music Maker Relief Foundation’s Next Generation Artists Program. Music Maker helped the group recorded their first CD, Deers R Us. The Deer Clan Singers learned from Pura Fé Crescioni as young children in Robison County, and they appeared on her first solo record as well as her latest release, Pura Fe Trio Live: A Blues Night in North Carolina.” The group, which represents the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, plays complicated harmonies that are distinctive in the Indian genre. They have performed at Merle Fest, Shakori Grassroots Festival, and the River People Festival.

Tuscarora oral history relates that for some time, Iroquois people filled out long tracks of land spanning from present day South Carolina to N.Y. and leading all the way into Canada. Along one side, their long-time South to North Coastal Algonquin neighbor/kin lived and on the other side their South Eastern Siouan relatives. All shared the common Tutelo Trade Language and often lodged together in the present day Carolinas and Virginia. Tracing back the steps of ancient kin is like following the umbilical cord, a race, a trail connecting to many corn people, bringing you to the birth place, the navel, the starting point as human beings and migration North and South from Central America. As Tuscaroras from North Carolina, we’ve come a long way, to bring back what’s been buried, lost and taken.

– Pura Fé