Truemors
Flag this story
Digg
del.icio.us
AddToAny
is reporting from
Member
NP Rank:
NP Rank:
Cherokees flee the moral high ground over Freedmen
by angryindian | August 31, 2007 at 05:40 pm | 888 views | 5 comments
by angryindian
This is an excellent piece by Robert Warrior on the issue of the Freedmen and their ejection from the "official" Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
For those not aware of the issue, The Cherokee nation, an Aboriginal entity, was among the first North American nations to rapidly Europeanise and the damage of such genocide virtually extinguished Cherokee culture as a whole. Adopting via strong pressure from zealous Christian missionaries and the federal government the practises of a plantation economy which included the ownership of African slaves. While there has been a great effort to redefine Indigenous slave ownership as benign, the many African slave narratives that still exist saw it was virtually no different than any European settler master but differing from White colonialist culture, the Native slave owners claimed thier mixed-ethnicity offspring. When the Cherokee along with the other four "civilised Tribes" were forced by bayonet to endure the "Trail of Tears" death march, their slaves and mixed children were brought along as well.
The Abolition movement within the nation was just before and during the American civil war quite strong but Cherokees who owned slaves, nearly 50% of the nation, were dead-set against changing the status quo and officially sided with the southern Confederates with the only commissioned Native American general in either army, Stand Watie not surrendering even after the war was officially over.
Bias against Cherokees of African descent while always present was not a major factor of Indian day to day affairs until the mid 1980's following the release of a book by William Loren Katz titled "Black Indians" which exposed the legacy of Indian slave ownership which many Native societies found insulting. Since that time, the Seminole, the Pequot and the Cherokee amongst several others Tribes have either passed legislation to "banish" members of African descent or historical ethnic animosities make the social climate tense and often, violent.
Since the Cherokee Nation as all federally recognised Aboriginal nations by the rules set by the colonial government are required to acknowledge the U.S. Constitution and all federal laws, including laws that prohibit racial, ethnic, gender and theological bigotry in American civil society. By fiat, the actions undertaken by the Cherokee government to even suggest such a eugenicist policy is in clear violation of these very laws. A legal recognition that the Europocentric mainstream American society is not entirely fair when it comes to perceptions of race. And the Cherokee Nation is not an entity that can after total acquiescence to European socio-political domination after our society was destroyed once crude oil was found in Oklahoma (literally..."Red Man's Land") and land was given in many cases for free to immigrants fresh from Ireland and Germany. Pushed aside and often killed to make way for White settlers, The Cherokee Nation story of survival has been one of graceful living under the yoke of colonialism. But like the overwhelming European world around them, they has adopted the tradition of anti-African biases from them as well. And under American law, at least in theory, the removal of a significant national minority, (many of which like myself carry more than the eugenic requirement for satisfaction of blood-quantum) on the pretext that because they are visibly African, or the suggestion there is a discord in relation to an ancestor listed on the final of several various federal Indian rolls is a violation of the federal laws. And under international law, it is genocide. - The Angryindian
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cherokee Chief Chad Smith is wrong and Representative Melvin Watt (D-North Carolina) is right. As those who follow the American Indian political world know, earlier this year an overwhelming majority of Cherokee voters decided to deny descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen, freed slaves who trod the Trail of Tears with their Native American owners, rights to political enfranchisement guaranteed to them in an 1866 treaty the Cherokees signed with the United States in the aftermath of the Civil War.In June, Chief Smith campaigned on this popular issue and won a new term as elected leader of the largest Native nation within the border of the United States.
Watt is among a group of Congressional Democrats that also includes Maxine Waters and Diane Watson who are responding by calling into question whether or not United States taxpayers ought to be funding Cherokee programs. Most recently, the House Financial Services Committee decided to give the Cherokees a month to clear up the Freedmen issue before voting on Rep. Watt’s amendment to an affordable housing bill that would exclude the Cherokees until they are in compliance with the 1866 treaty. Smith and the Cherokees must respond by the time Congress comes back from its current recess.
Morality, however, has been the missing topic in the wrangling thus far, and I would argue is the basis for why it is important for everyone, especially American Indian people who have been silent thus far, to support efforts like those of Representative Watt.
The politics of this issue are certainly interesting—the embarrassingly low number of Cherokees, for instance, who participate in their nation’s electoral process (less than 8000 in a group of well over 150,000), the predictable way that this decision by one group exposes all American Indian nations to alienating people who have been important, reliable friends (the Congressional Black Caucus most visibly). Morality, however, has been the missing topic in the wrangling thus far, and I would argue is the basis for why it is important for everyone, especially American Indian people who have been silent thus far, to support efforts like those of Representative Watt.
The moral case against the Cherokees is straightforward. As a duly constituted nation in the nineteenth century, they legally embraced and promoted African slavery, a position they maintained after Removal to Indian Territory in the 1830s. The vast majority of Cherokees could not afford slaves, as was also the case throughout the American South, and historians of Cherokee slavery have demonstrated that some aspects of the Cherokee social world gave a different, less negative character to being enslaved by wealthy Cherokees rather than wealthy whites. Make no mistake, though. No one is on record as having volunteered to become a Cherokee slave. History records plenty of Cherokee slaves attempting to escape to freedom, as well as Cherokee slave revolts.
News Tools
August 31, 2007 at 05:40 pm by angryindian, 888 views, 5 comments
Add a comment
Comments (5)
at 18:15 on August 31st, 2007
A small note: the Cherokee culture isn't extinguished at all.
The issue of the Freedman is an emotional and complex one. The Cherokees were forced to put the Freedmen on the Dawes Rolls as part of their punishment for many having fought with the Confederacy (the Cherokees are originally a southeastern US tribe, with major portions forced to Oklahoma). The issue of tribal sovereignty is a many-faceted one with different issues throughout the more than 500 Indian tribes in the U.S., all of whom have treaties to work with, as well as government agreements and individual cultures.
All nations, including the US and Canada, have the right to define citizenship. The Cherokees voted to restrict their citizenship to only those of proven Cherokee descent. Note: not all blacks have lost tribal status. If they are proven Cherokee, the "color" doesn't matter. Even though the Dawes Rolls were often flawed, as well as corrupted by politicians, the bottom line here is (according to the Cherokees): you can't be a tribal member unless you can prove Cherokee Indian descent, and that rule is enforced whether the person is black, white, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Dutch, you name it.
It's not an easy issue. It's causing great stress and rifts. But at risk is this: any nation's right to determine their own citizenship requirements.
It would also be fair to put a link to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma website to share the other side of this very prickly issue.
at 19:55 on August 31st, 2007
We are going to have to agree to disagree. As one of the "former" members of the nation the purity issue is simply an excuse. While not every Cherokee of African descent was booted out, the vast majority were. And as some preliminary DNA studies have shown, most, if not all, African Cherokees do indeed possess measurable Cherokee blood. If the Cherokee government was serious about people being of blood to be recognised under an entirely colonialist system of population reduction, they would never have relaxed the rules to allow anyone who could legally prove that a direct ancestor was listed on the final Dawes roll no matter which side of the family was included, (We are traditionally a matrilineal people) nor the imposed U.S. rule of blood-quantum. Of the three federally recognised cherokee nations, the western band is the only one to eliminate the blood-quantum requirement which has led to legions of "My Great-great-great grandmother was a Cherokee princess" claimants to flood Tahlequah asking for their AKC pedigree cards. Some say there are more blue-eyed members than brown or black-eyed folks and many elders who themselves are of mixed blood say they have a hard time trying to see Cherokee in the faces of the people who claim to be from the nation.
DNA exams could settle the question for good, but then on that issue, virtually no one within the federal or Cherokee governments wants to review it for fear of questions surrounding colonialism, sovereignty and eugenics. But this was always a problem primarily due to the U.S. government. In yet another effort to destroy the population, Indian agents were instructed not to list the many hundreds of full-blooded Cherokees in favour of the substansial de-culturalised mixed European-Cherokees they assumed righty would literally hand over what was left of their liberty to the settler colonial authority in return for a very limited and dependent autonomy. And then during the Oklahoma rush, the ever present missionaries of God's Army encouraged Indiangenous women to marry Europeans. And according to some Native women's narratives concerning the frontier, more than a few of these marriages were forced in order to gain a land deed. In the history of the "Indian" and his clash with civilisation, the rape and slavery of Indigenous women by frontiermen, prospectors and the U.S. Army is the most overlooked of all.
I mention all of this background to show that the genocide and literal erasure of the Aboriginal identity was an opportunistic effort to water-down and erase Aboriginal poplations and cultural self-identification. The Cherokee like all other federally accepted nations has lost its core soul despite what the elite members may say in an effort to sound positively "American." The Cherokee religion is dead aside from the traditions still followed by the Keetowah branch of the nation who still only recognise people of at least one-quarter blood-quantum. They know that Baptist Christianity is not our religion and hasn't been since zealous missionaries entitled themselves to convert by any means possible the entire nation. The assertion that our respective Aboriginal cultures are still alive is in my view defeatist. A nation has nothing unless it has its freedom. And like Yonaguska, I do not recognise their right to rule. Just being alive is not the continuation of a culture, whereas true freedom from foreign domination and cultural restraints is. The settler population knew this and practised it against their king, while denying the same principles to the original inhabitants of these continents and others. If the Cherokee wants to start doing the necessary work to act on the sovereignty they claim to possess, this was the wrong issue to start the revolution with. I can think of a few dozen more pressing Issues the Cherokee government could have focused on. Instead like the Seminole, they decided to attack its African population. Some way to assert your Aboriginal rights.
at 03:35 on September 1st, 2007
I think that we can agree on many things, including the horrors of the Dawes Plan and the Dawes Roll. You are/were a member of CNO, based on Cherokee heritage? This is such a tough issue, the sovereignty thing, the Freedman, and the idea of "cards" and "rolls" at all, based on external laws. I take issue with the loss of traditional ways of inclusion, including adoption. Nonetheless, I think the Cherokees are between a rock and a hard place: the non-Cherokee Freedmen were forced upon them by the government, which, in current threats over the issue, apparently intends to continue to force upon them. Shouldn't the people have the right to choose for themselves? But I do agree with you re: low voter turnout, but that's a problem not only within many tribes, but also many Euro nations. Nothing is ever simple in Indian Country. Nothing. Thanks for your thoughts and contribution.
- reply
Tazminat 00:06 on October 3rd, 2007
The issue is not about race at all but about the sovereign rights of a tribal government. Cherokee Nation voted that people (all people) who could not prove that they were Cherokee by blood (lineage to the Dawes roll registry) that they could not be citizens of the Cherokee Nation and be called Cherokee. Makes sense…you have to be Indian to claim it. This sounds simple enough but this would mean excluding a group called the Freedmen who were former slaves of the Cherokee, from having citizenship rights. The issue here is the Freedmen had citizenship rights for a 1 full year (ONE YEAR) only due to a judge who had her own agenda to run for Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. After failing, the saga has been set to motion. The only thing the press picked up was that that the Cherokee were kicking out all black people when that is not the case at all. If any black, white, yellow, or other race can also prove that they have Cherokee blood (like everyone else does), then they also can gain citizenship into the tribe.
The only thing that the media picked up on was the "R" word, Racism, which is being used as a buzz word to to invoke people in seeing nothing but that word and ignore the facts.
The Treaty of 1866 did not give the freedman citizenship rights within the Cherokee Nation, as stated it only gave them the same rights as the Cherokee had with the US government.
1866 Treaty
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/che0942.htm
The demand from Watson is that the Cherokee Nation abide by the Treaty but there is absolutely no talk about the rest of the Treaty. As a PROUD Cherokee citizen, I would invite the enforcement of the Treaty in it's entirety.
Of course this matter should be decided in the courts where evidence is presented and reviewed. It should not be in Congress or where government is allowed to force a a tribe to succumb to their theories. This is exactly what former president Andrew Jackson did that led to the Trail of Tears. This is what Diane Watson is also doing.
at 13:09 on October 3rd, 2007
To say that American-style racism is not a factor within the nation is disingenuous. Most, if not all of us who are both African and of Cherokee blood are not Freedmen at all except on paper. being Black was enough for the Indian Agent to put you on the Freedman list. If the Cherokees were at all serious about standing on their rights, there are many other issues like real seperation from the colonial U.S. government.