Jim Crow in Indian Country

Imagine yourself as an African American and resident of the State of Alabama in 1964, the year that President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the historic Civil Rights Act. And again imagine in 1964 that Alabama Governor George Wallace, in an act of defiance that not even he considered, introduced legislation to expel all African Americans from Alabama.

Now fast forward to the year 2007, over four decades later, when the citizens of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma voted last March to expel their black citizens in a manner that equaled if not surpassed the most vitriolic attacks against African Americans in the once segregated South.

Many Americans do not realize that some Native American tribes owned slaves of African descent. As an independently recognized nation in the 19th Century, the Cherokee Nation embraced and promoted African slavery, a position it maintained after removal to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the 1830s.

During the Civil War, the Cherokee Nation fought on the side of the Confederacy in order to preserve its southern slaveholding tradition of trafficking in the ownership and sale of black slaves. In fact, Stand Waite, the last Confederate General to surrender to the Union Army, was Cherokee.

The Cherokee Nation emancipated all its slaves in 1863. In 1866, the Cherokee Nation signed a new treaty with the United States Government that formally ended the practice of slavery and made the former slaves citizens of the Cherokee Nation. The Treaty of 1866 resulted in an amendment to the Cherokee constitution that same year, which read in part: "All native born Cherokees, all Indians, and whites legally members of the nation by adoption, and all freedmen (the term used for freed slaves of African descendants of the Cherokee Nation) shall be taken and deemed to be citizens of the Cherokee Nation."

Toward the end of the 19th Century, a distinction, a product of the new Jim Crow South and later codified in practice by the U.S. Government, had emerged between black freedmen Cherokees and those who were categorized as Cherokee by blood. The distinction is used today by the current Cherokee leadership that claims it is primarily concerned about preserving the Cherokee Nation's heritage for those who can prove that they have Cherokee blood lineage.

But such claims, as Professor Robert Warrior of the University of Oklahoma elegantly makes the case, "fail to rise to the level of those earlier Cherokees who understood that the tragic absurdity of reconciling a nation to its history of slavery requires wisdom and compassion, not insulting and ridiculous appeals to faulty membership requirements and the poses of victim-hood."

Today, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma receives roughly $300 million a year in federal taxpayer dollars. The Cherokee Nation is also the beneficiary of a federal gaming franchise that is estimated to yield it another $300 million yearly. This is not an insignificant amount of money.

If the Cherokee Nation is allowed to pursue its current policy of expelling black descendants of the Cherokee Nation, black descendants obviously will not be able to receive federal assistance from the Cherokee Nation in the form of health, education, and housing assistance.

I do not believe that your or my taxpayer dollars should go to any group that practices discrimination. First and foremost, it is against the law. That is why I have introduced legislation, H.R. 2824, that cuts off all U.S. government relations with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma until it agrees to accept the black descendants of the Cherokees as full participating citizens of the Cherokee Nation.

I respect the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma as a sovereign entity. But no sovereign nation, particularly one within the confines of the United States, should be given a free pass to exercise its sovereign rights to expel its citizens on the basis of ethnicity, class, or race. And when a nation violates its treaty obligations with the United States, Congress is obliged to take action.

Comments

[GayleRoss]

Despite what Rep Watson says, federal law upholds the Cherokees’ rights to determine our own citizenship. In Nero vs the Cherokee Nation, the courts said that race discrimination laws don’t apply to an Indian Nation’s citizenship because it would constitute "an unacceptable interference" with the Nation's right to self-government. Rep Watson says we are breaking a treaty. She ignores the fact that the United States NEVER honored a treaty and that modern federal Indian policy guaranteeing Indian self-determination is in itself an abrogation of Article IX. Rep Watson is not "enforcing" a treaty. She wants to re-instate one article of one treaty, ignoring every broken treaty that cost the Cherokee so much. And she would hurt the true Black Cherokees who are tribal members.

Rep Watson simply wants to provide ongoing reparations to non-Indian descendants of freed slaves in the form of Indian benefits. When only 2 percent of the Cherokees owned slaves, 296 to be precise. When 70% of the Cherokees fought for the Union to end slavery and more died than ever owned a slave. When no Southern State ever gave the land and money reparations that the Cherokees did. If Rep Watson wants the Cherokees to continue making reparations for slavery, she should have the honesty, courage and political conviction to engage America in a national dialogue on the issue of reparations and who really still owes them. Instead, she is attacking an indigenous nation with no regard for the truth of either Cherokee history or modern Indian law. Her attempts to promote anti-Indian sentiment amount to nothing less than racist hate speech.

Rep Watson tries to make this about race and money, but to Cherokees it is about ancestry and identity. Like every other INDIAN Nation. We are the most inclusive tribe in the country. There are Cherokee citizens whose blood is mingled with white people, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and other Indian tribes. But we are one family united by our Cherokee ancestors. We have always honored our treaties, Rep Watson. We still wish the United States had.

[redbow40]

Preach on !! The raw truth!!

[deleweye]

As I said below, reacting to Watson's bill is simply diverting the argument from the matter of honor that needs to be dealt with - if you were of John Ross' kin you would have been taught such things, even if you chose to forget them.

You trot out the jurisdictional smokescreen, and the "it's been done to us" smokescreen, and even come up with a new one: "Only 2%...owned slaves", which is precisely irrelevant. If so few of us owned slaves, they couldn't have that many Freedmen descendants to get "reparations...in the form of Indian benefits" - which, being largely Federal money, doesn't come out of your pocket in any case.

Which in practical terms raises the question of why now, and why so important? Is it really the prospect of casino money? That sounds more plausible to me than your cant of "ancestry and identity". Still on that practical level, we both know that intermarriage has gone on so long, and records were so poorly kept, that "ancestry" pre-1894 is as often by guess as by documentation. That is particularly true of slave women, who at best could usually only guess at paternity. My own Cherokee blood came into the family in 1790; Principal Chief John Ross, who headed that pro-Union faction you trumpet, had so little Cherokee blood it surprised almost everyone when he declared his identity to be Ah-ni-yv-wi-ya.

Identity is the one point of truth you passed over - lightly. These were our people, historically and spiritually. They worked with us, they walked the Trail of Tears with us, and more often than you would like to admit, they are kin to us. They paid for their membership in the Nation in the same ways our families did - and now, over a hundred years later, on the pretext of a few Yankee dollars, you say it is "right" to tell them they have no place with us.

[deleweye]

(cont.)

Do not speak to me of honor, and save the pretentious rhetoric for someone less likely to call you out for it.

You dishonor our ancestors, our Nation and our heritage.

[tbone99]

You defined the crux of the matter well in your last paragraph-- - tribal membership is not "earned" and can't be bought , either by suffering or cash.

Tribal membership is determined by ancestry , guidelines set by the tribe.

You speak frequently of honor, yet do you think Rep Watsons efforts to strip the tribe of federal recognition is an honorable solution ,especially considering use of her political position to present Cherokee history falsely?

[horseface]

Hey! Black Americans have kicked out OBAMA for not being "black" enough, whatever that means.

[tbone99]

On June 21, 2007, US Rep. Diane Watson (D-California), one of the 25 Congressional Black Caucus members who signed a letter asking the BIA to investigate the Freedmen situation, introduced H.R. 2824. This bill seeks to sever the Cherokee Nation’s federal recognition, strip the Cherokee Nation of their federal funding (estimated $300 million annually), and stop the Cherokee Nation’s gaming operations if the tribe doesn’t honor the Treaty Of 1866. H.R. 2824 was co-signed by eleven Congress members and was referred to the Committee Of Natural Resources and the Committee Of The Judiciary.

Chief Smith issued a statement saying that the introduction of this bill is “really a misguided attempt to deliberately harm the Cherokee Nation in retaliation for this fundamental principle that is shared by more than 500 other Indian tribes”. The National Congress Of Native Americans (NCAI) have expressed their disapproval of the bill.

[deleweye]

I really wish we had gotten this thread going before Watson introduced her bill. All this is doing is giving you cowardly bigots weasel room, when the relevant discussion is your betrayal of the pride and honor that once came with Cherokee heritage.

You have dishonored the Nation; as you continue to refuse to address the issue, I must conclude that you also have no shame.

[factsarefacts]

The Cherokee Nation is the only entity with the right and authority to determine its own membership (or citizenship). This authority comes from its inherent human right of self-determination as an Indigenous people or group.

[It is important to note that Indigenous peoples’ rights derive from their identities as peoples with historic rights, a land base, a common history and cultural identity, governments and economies, among other factors. The inherent rights of Indigenous peoples do not derive from their race or minority status, although Indigenous peoples are minorities (in number) in most of the countries where they live.]

Self-determination is a fundamental collective right of all peoples under international human rights law. It is the right of a people to choose, to make decisions, according to their own values for their own continued existence as a distinct member of humankind.

In 1992 the United States voluntarily ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, making the Covenant’s implementation in the United States a legally binding obligation of the government.

Article 1, paragraph 1: All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

The U.S. government affirms the right of Indigenous peoples to determine their own citizens as just one aspect of their right of self-determination.

The threat of monies being withheld, businesses being closed, or lawsuits being legitimized by Congress in order to force the government of the Cherokee Nation to cede its right of self-determination is a grave violation of the Nation’s collective human rights.

No Indian nation should ever be told by a member of Congress – You can’t be who you are. We won’t let you. We will determine what’s best for the survival of your culture. Or else you won’t survive.

To interfere with or undermine the Cherokee Nation’s right to determine its own identity as a distinct nation is a form of cultural genocide. Representative Watson is a member of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. She should know better.

[Lon]

This seems like a more complicated issue than this article sets it out to be. Given that there are programs in place because of the special history if American Indians in this country, and others because of the special history of African Americans, whether descendents of freedmen incorporated into the Cherokee nation should fall under one or the other or both or neither of these sets of programs would seem to depend on knowing more about whether they suffer the hardships that justify the programs.

Is the idea that having any blood from a Cherokee freedman disqualifies one from membership, or that having blood from a Cherokee freedman cannot be the basis for ones claim th membership? A lot of the comments suggest it is the former, which would clearly be discriminatory and reprehensible. But it seems more plausible that the argument is about the latter.

If it is the former than everything Watson says above seems right. But if it is the latter than it becomes part of a more complicated discussion about why we respect, to varying degrees, the sovereignty of the Indian nations.

Are there Cherokee members whose claim stems from whites who were adopted by the Cherokee nation as adults?

[fact finder]

No matter who doe's it DISCRIMINATIION IS DISCRIMINATION. End of story.

[tbone99]

The real problem is not how can the freed men get federal monies from the Cherokee nation. The real question is when will the wealth of this nation provide the people who have created it with their blood ,sweat and tears-- dependable healthcare, living wages,
educational opportunities and a peaceful way of resolving conflicts with other nations.
Rep Watson is kicking sand on a 90 lb weakling to avoid the real bully in the room.

[deleweye]

Smokescreen - "fix their problems and ignore ours".

[LocalCrank]

This ought to start some trouble: I've never been quite comfortable with the "sovereign" nature of any of the reservations. To my mind the laws of the United States still apply..including the voting rights act(s) and the 14th amendmant. Anyone agree/disa­gree?...tm

[desertdweller]

The Cherokees could learn a thing or two from the Narragansetts in Rhode Island...

[choada777]

For those that had too look it up:

"...they suffered greatly from King Philip's War, the Narragansett absorbed members of other tribes to reboost numbers, especially the Niantic tribe, now fully merged into the Narragansett."

[deleweye]

The Cherokees have adopted any number of outsiders - among them Big Drunk, whose second wife was one of my Rogers cousins, before he deserted her and went to Texas to become the great Sam Houston.

[bronceye]

A left handed Jefferson statement?

[JScott]

And while you're at it make it law that the tribes hafta pay decent wages and give decent benefits to their casino workers as well as letting them organize labor unions. Yup the white man treated them shabbily but now some of em are just getting a little too greedy.

[HaveFaith]

I think you guys have it wrong. I think that the reason some black people are not considered Cherokee is because they lack the features of a Cherokee and poses the features of African. Meaning, that the dominant gene in their makeup is the African side thus making the indian side a recessant. There is enough money to go around and it isn't like any blacks are crying that they aren't able to run freely on any reservation. I think we had enough of that. I am of Cherokee decent and I am mixed with black and white. I look Indian but I dont' claim it and I know I am not missing anything.

[SeaBlood]

I feel bad for the disgraceful way this country has treated the indians; it is one more instance of man's inhumanity to man. But that was in the past, and the perpetrators, as well as the victims are long dead. It's time to forget about things that we, ourselves, had no part in. We should all join hands and stand up as the "brotherhood of man" Forget whether you are a red, white,black or yellow skinned individual. We should welcome everybody into our presence and work together to help restore health to our gravely ill planet. We are all members of only one race , the human race.

[bravedeer]

This is one of the worst things I've ever seen at Huffington Post. Another example of a politician going after the sheep to score political points...

But I guess you congress people these days have so much free time from DOING ABSOLUTELY nothing about the real problems that you have to take up bogus issues at the expense of the least fortunate! WAY TO GO!

[sparkandy]

Fortunately, it's not gonna happen. The State won't allow the Cherokees to have it both ways - throw out the blacks and keep the casinos. About half the State is on the rolls with some tribe or another, anyway. Anyone whose family has been here more than two generations has some Indian blood somewhere. My great, great, etc grandfather came with his wife on the Trail of Tears in the 1830's, but to look at me, you'd never suspect a drop of Indian blood. Same with my kids, blue eyes, freckles and all, who are on the rolls thanks to their Dad's family. The Cherokees would have to throw out the whites, too, and that REALLY will never happen. And if the Cherokees do it, will the Creeks be next? They have a very large number of members with African blood. None of the tribes will be able to disallow citizenship to African members.
This is just a tempest in a teapot.

[redbow40]

I wonder if this post will get through. Huffington is very one sided. Diane Watson should be investigated for not allowing American Latinos jobs and public education in South central Los Angeles. I'm from the area. I remember her politics well. How Diane Watson could write this article and sleep at night is beyond me.

[Melkor]

Ah, human nature. Redbow40, first you complain that Watson is trying to force reparations on the Native American community. And then you ask why shouldn't African Americans be made to pay reparations for the actions of the Buffalo Soldiers. But weren't the Buffalo Soldiers members of the armed forces of the United States and therefore aren't Native American tribes ALREADY being paid reparations for their actions in total? We don't have separate racial branches of Government yet.

Then you talk about Watson's policies towards American Latinos looking for jobs and education but you don't elaborate. I'd be interested in seeing what legislator can target a single ethnic group's right to employment and education - as long as they are legally working and going to school in the US.

But even so, that's just misdirection. Why don't you deal with the issue? Do you think it's just for a sub-group within the Native American community, assimilated partially through slavery, to be expelled from that group on racial grounds?

[anghiari]

Let's not forget many of those same slaves and later freedmen (women) were assimilated through marriage and/or just living together and having children with the Cherokee.