Derek Noffsinger

Elected October 25th, 2025 – Present Day

I am a proud father of three wonderful grown children, hold a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and retired captain from the Charleston Fire Department. It has truly been an honor to serve as a council member with the tribe since October 2025. I am the 4th great-grandson of Chief Jean Baptiste Vallery, son of Chief Solomon the Apalachee. While growing up, I was told that we descended from a Native American Indian tribe in Louisiana. However, there was no further information about what exact tribe we belonged to, so it became my mission to find our people, our family, our tribe. After researching my ancestry through databases, social media, and historical publications, I finally located our Apalachee tribe and discovered we had been in hiding and forgotten about for more than two centuries until not too long ago. We are no longer in hiding. We are the living descendants of the Apalachee Indians of Anhaica. We survived the 1704 Apalachee Massacre in Florida and the journey to Mobile and Louisiana afterward. We are still here. My goals as a council member are to help increase public awareness and visibility of our remarkable history through community outreach and educational programs, and partner with Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, our ancestral home and capital of the Apalachee province, Anhaica, to ensure we are never forgotten again.