Congressional Black Caucus Attacks Sovereign Status of Indian Nations

The Congressional Black Caucus, in attacking the sovereign status of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is placing in question and in jeopardy, the sovereign status of all Indian nations. At least that is the conclusion drawn by many tribal leaders across America.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the CBC, of which Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is member, demanded that he support their efforts to deny federal funding to the Cherokee Nation. The letter reads:

When H. R. 2786, the Native American Housing and Assistance and Self-Determination Reauthorization Act of 2007, was considered and passed the House Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others insisted that the bill include a provision that would prevent the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from receiving any benefits or funding under the bill until the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is in full compliance with the Treaty of 1866 and recognizes all Cherokee Freedman and their descendants as tribal citizens.

We understand that the Senate may be considering a version of this bill that does not include these critically important requirements. We are writing to advise you that the members of the CBC will not support, and will actively oppose, passage of a NAHASDA bill that does not include this limitation. We must send the unequivocal message to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma that failure to provide full citizenship rights to the Cherokee Freedmen will have severe consequences.

This is probably the first time in history that a Congressional Black Caucus, or any other Black organization for that matter, has severely threatened not only the sovereign status of an Indian nation, but also the withholding of funds that could cause widespread damage to the citizens of an Indian nation.

The people of the Cherokee Nation exercised their democratic rights when 70 percent of them voted to extinguish the tribal citizenship to the Cherokee Freedmen. The Freedmen are former Black slaves that became a part of the Cherokee Nation under the provisions of the Treaty of 1866.

The bill was introduced by Representative Diane Watson (D-CA). Tribal leaders across America feel that this bill could threaten Indian housing nationwide. They also believe that this action by the Congressional Black Caucus could set a precedent where any Indian legislation could be threatened by any special interest group.

In a memo sent out by Indian activist Ron Andrade it was noted that Obama is also a member of the CBC. "Someone needs to ask him how he can reconcile his support of the Congressional Black Caucus and his rhetoric about supporting the sovereign status of tribal governments," Andrade wrote.

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina met on Wednesday of last week in a joint tribal council meeting. At the meeting they denounced legislation that would cut federal funds to the Cherokee Nation unless the Freedmen are restored to citizenship. The Eastern Band of Cherokee would not be affected by the legislation.

A joint resolution issued after the meeting reads, "This alarming, inappropriate and unacceptable overreach could set a precedent that undermines the sovereign tribal governments throughout Indian country. These proposed legislative actions threaten to turn back the clock on hard-won rights and to cease a nation's right to exist."

It should be noted that California is one of the worst states in the Union where tribes are systematically removing and denying citizenship to members. Rep. Watson represents a voting district in that state. What has she done about this problem in her own district? And what about the rest of the Congressional Black Caucus? Are they not concerned that Indian people are often removed from tribes in California without even a democratic vote? Or will they only speak up when Black Americans are involved?

And the final question: What gives the Congressional Black Caucus the right to interfere in the internal affairs of an independent sovereign Indian nation?

These are all questions that every Native American leader and citizens should be asking every member of the CBC including presidential candidate Barak Obama.

And isn't ironic that the very word "Caucus" is derived from the Algonquin Indian language and means, "A group of people united to promote an agreed -upon cause."

When the CBC begins to use its power to go after some of the tribes of California for ejecting and denying citizenship to their members then, and only then, will their actions against the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma have the appearance of justice or otherwise their objectivity will always be in question to the sovereign people of the Indian nations.

Comments

[Lauramae]

It seems that the reason some in the tribe want to eliminate the freedmen have to do with racism. Tribal members are by no means universally in agreement with the actions of the current leadership.
Readers who want to know more about the issue from a Cherokee perspective can learn more about the issue from their perspective at http://www.cornsilks.com/

Sovereignty is definitely something to be carefully guarded by tribes. However the actions of the Cherokee leadership is shameful and other tribes should voice their strong disapproval by boycotting the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Certainly tribes can determine their own membership, but they did in agreement to their original treaty. The Freedmen were citizens in the tribe since the 1800s. And other tribes are free to disagree with their decisions. Giago is a scare monger.

[NDNlady]

Mr. Giago knows Indian Country far better than you do. He does not depend on internet message boards to know what's going on. If you think that board represents "a Cherokee perspective", you obviously don't know any Cherokees in real life, just "internet" ones. You know nothing about our history or Indian law. This is not about who is chief, but who has the right to our constitutional process. If you knew any actual Cherokees you would know that.

[digoweli]

I grew up in Indian Country and my home and community has been destroyed by both Government Indians and the U.S. Government. There are many of us of Indian descent who resent your tone and your message that you are the only spokesman or point of view out here. John Cornsilk is closely related to the "Cherokee Observer" independent Cherokee newspaper and has never shied from speaking his mind when he sees an injustice. That is a real person thing to do. There are six thousand Cherokee families not eligible from the Dawes rolls who were Cherokee patriots who refused to dissolve the nation and collaborate with the U.S. government. Many of them are in the United Keetoowah Band but simple lineage is not a part of the UKB's membership rights either. So there are thousands of people of Cherokee lineage who have no right to enter any of the government approved bands. The scientific problem of birth defects in small groups and blood lines is the problem not only of the Bedoin people but the Aristocratic families of Europe as well. Science is natural and it matters not what you say. Only what the reality of life happens to be and most approved American Indian Tribes have a problem that relates to a small gene pool but a financial incentive not to include other relatives close or distant. This comment of Giago's is political purely simply and has no future IMHO. Digoweli

[larrystill]

Freedmen were not made citizens in any treaty. No treaty ever mentions citizenship for non-Indians. It is up to the Cherokees to decide who it's citizens are, and it seems fair that they want everyone to be Indian who is in their Indian tribe.

[digoweli]

"Encyclopedia of American Indian Legal Tradition" Pg. 309 on Sovereignty:

"In the United States, most of the qualifications (about sovereignty) stem from court decisions made during the 1820s and 1830s by John Marshall..­.......The­se cases.....­..have defined various degrees of internal sovereignty for Indian nations while maintaining that they are 'domestic' and 'dependent' on the United States. "

Tim, I would suggest that you give the whole thing more thought. If you put all Native Americans recognized by the government from all of the various Tribes together, you would not equal the size of many of America's cities. The “large” Cherokee Nation west is smaller than Tulsa and the voting members that booted out the Freedmen were less than the city of Tahlequah. Only one city in the Cherokee Counties. To call it a big turn out is silly.

There is a need for transparency here and for a look at the various racist modes of determining Indian citizenship in most tribes. Perhaps it would be better to abandon the term "tribe" at all. The original Cherokee Nation was the size of France at the time and had as many people. We are Nations and like the Kurds, Armenians and Basques we are disenfranchised. How do we solve that problem? Not by making the Nations into tribes and having a blood base that is so small that they well eventually resemble the birth defect ridden Bedouin in Israel who have 100,000 as their blood base. Digoweli

[SCharb]

Who signed this idiotic letter?

[Sylmason]

I can almost guarantee you Obama doesn't have a clue what those dummies are doing. Most of them do not support him.you think they would inform him they are actually dissing american Indians? Of course not? Most of those dummies have dranked the clinton Kool-Aid and really aren't responsible for their stupid actions. Remember..­..........­..........­..........­Obama didn't receive not one vote in Charlie Rangel's all black district of Harlem....­..........­.wink wink......­..........­....when Harlem had an Obama for president group.

[NDNlady]

Mr. Obama is not one of the thirty-three CBC members who signed the letter to the Senate. I truly believe that he would not support racist attacks on Indigenous rights either but he has not spoken out against them either. Interestingly enough, Rep Butterfield of the CBC recently introduced a resolution in the House praising the Concluding Observations of the UN Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination. CERD is the monitoring body for the International Convention to End All Forms of Racial Discriminations and their Observations followed the periodic review of US compliance with this international treaty, which the US ratified in 1994. The CERD recommendations include many areas in which racial disparities in the US still exist so Rep Butterfield wants to call attention to them. However he ignores the fact that the CERD also criticized the US failure to protect indigenous rights and called for the US to follow the recent UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Declaration (as does the ICERD) strictly upholds Indian rights to self-determination and says indigenous peoples have the right to exist as "distinct peoples". Forced assimilation OR forced integration of an indigenous nation is considered "cultural genocide" and is a grave violation of human rights. By trying to cut Cherokee funding, Rep Butterfield is "praising" an international treaty and breaking it at the same time.

[NW1]

I think somehow you are misrepresenting the international view of indigenous rights.
Be that as it may, speaking of forced assimilation and integration, the African descent slaves of Cherokee slaveowners suffered the same fate in the Cherokee nation as well as in the the U.S. I believe three historical attempts have been made to establish "Black States" in America to no avail, one of the best known attempts was in none other than Oklahoma. Why would a sovereign ethnic right be preserved for one race of people and be forbidden for everyone else?
The biggest anomoly I see with your international position is the difference between the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples as opposed to sovereignty of Nations. No historical evidence can define the current Cherokee people as an exclusive group of Indigenous people. Ethnic sovereignty doesn't require a national protection, only of freedom of association. National sovereignty emerging from a will of a people requires national protection but also national responsibilty to respect the human rights of both foreigners and a nation's own citizens in order to achieve recognition from other nations. Which sovereignty do you evoke, ethnic tribal sovereignty or national sovereignty? They are not interchangeable.

[tbone99]

hard to believ that A.American­s would turn on us, but when the pie is getting so small I guess the forks get drawn.

"What gives the Congressional Black Caucus the right to interfere in the internal affairs of an independent sovereign Indian nation?I"

I think reading Trinity's black ten commandments is a good start.

They're not into national unity or even an inclusive christianity - they're into their own black thing.oh, and after that Africa.Oba­ma's a front for high finance so I guess his donors pay him to acquire all the land that can be milked for cash, no matter who's on it. Foreclosing on families isn't enough , now they're foreclosing on the first nations.

[getitrighthistime]

So the "BLACK" Caucas shouldn't be concerned about Black people???

[NDNlady]

The Black Caucus can be concerned with black people but not to the exclusion of the rights of others. The first racist language heard on this continent was the doctrine of discovery divesting the original peoples of legal rights to their own land. Because they were "savages". That same racist language was furthered in the principles of the Founding Fathers, advanced in the Supreme Court and crystalized in the so-called "plenary powers" of Congress. It is still very much alive today.
.
I was an impressionable Indian kid in the sixties, growing up away from Cherokee community in a redneck Texas town. The words of Dr. King changed my life. But I never heard him say that lies transform into truth because a black person speaks them. I heard him preach respect. Equal rights. And for Indians, that includes the right to be citizens of our Indian nations. This is guaranteed by federal and international human rights law. Told by an Indian reporter that a Supreme Court decision protects the right of tribes to determine citizenship, Rep Watson stated that she does not care. That's what Andrew Jackson said before the Trail of Tears. Is it supposed to matter to the Cherokees that Jackson was white and Watson is black?

[larrystill]

The "BLACK" Caucus (as you call it) should be concerned about Black people. What they are doing is saying that if you are black and Cherokee and part of the tribe, well too bad, we're going to terminate the tribe because they won't let people in who are black and NOT Cherokee.

CBC would have you ignore all the black citizens of the Cherokee Nation who have Indian blood and whose citizenship is not effected by this controversy. They want you to think that there are no black Cherokees, when in fact there are thousands, way more than the 2-3 thousand non-Indian freedmen who want to get into an INdian tribe even though they aren't Indian.

The CBC is actually taking steps that will HARM thousands of Blacks who are also Cherokee. They are basically acting like black people who are also Indian don't matter to them, and that's what's pretty freaky about this whole deal.

[ray3]

Sovereign nation status is the only protection of independence the U.S. government has afforded Native Americans. To take this away is equivalent to taking over the government in Washington D.C.

[PioneerKing]

So what are you getting at? It's OK for the Cherokee Nation to ignore the provisions of the Treat of 1866. "The people of the Cherokee Nation exercised their democratic rights when 70 percent of them voted to extinguish the tribal citizenship to the Cherokee Freedmen. The Freedmen are former Black slaves that became a part of the Cherokee Nation under the provisions of the Treaty of 1866."
If the Cherokee Nation does not uphold the provisions of the treaty why do they expect congress to uphold the provsions?

[tbone99]

The Cherokees were forced to sign that treaty as a punishment for being being caught up in the Civil War.( which split the nation in half , punishment enough) .

[EliGrayson]

part 1....
Yes they were forced to sign a new treaty with the United States. The Cherokee Nation ended their old treaty and signed a new treaty with the Confederates to protect their slave trade and slave traditions. They threw their hope to the wrong side and lost.
To re-establish its government to government relationship back with the United States it had to meet certain conditions and slavery was one among many.
Taken from the Cherokee Nation constitution of 1838 and amended because of the reconstruction treaty of 1866;
Proclamation by the Principal Chief. (Adopted November 26th, 1866)
Whereas the national council adopted certain amendments to the constitution of the Cherokee Nation, and submitted the same to a general convention of the people of the Cherokee Nation, called at Tahlequah on the 26th day of November, A.D. 1866, and which said amendments, with the preamble thereto attached, were in the following words, to wit:
Whereas by the treaty executed at Washington on the 19th day of July, A.D. 1866, between the United States and the Cherokee Nation, through its delegation, ratified by the Senate and officially promulgated by the President of the United States August 11, 1866, certain things were agreed to between the parties to said treaty, involving changes in the constitution of the Cherokee Nation, which changes cannot be accomplished by usual mode; and
(continue to part 2)

[NDNlady]

It is the other way around. CONGRESS abrogated those treaty provisions over a hundred years ago! It destroyed our country and turned a thriving Indian nation into isolated pockets of Cherokees struggling against poverty and the destructive policies of forced assimilation. We survived. We revitalized our government in the 1970's ad since then we have again built something to be proud of. We have flourishing business and self-governance compacts that deliver desperately needed services to our people. We have no treaty provisions regarding our citizenship and haven't for over a hundred years. We don't allow any non-Indian enrollment. This isn't about color. It's about our right to self-determination, which is guaranteed us by Cherokee, federal and international law. We have always upheld our treaty provisions. The United States never has.