Obama right on Cherokee Freedmen controversy
Race has been and will continue to be an issue in this year’s national elections. But now it seems tribal affiliation can be added to the list of campaign issues.
Last month, Sen. Barack Obama outlined his position on the rights and affiliation of Cherokee Freedmen. Freedmen, the descendants of mixed Indian and freed African slaves, have filed an injunction to prohibit the Cherokee Nation from ousting them from tribal rolls. In March of last year, Cherokees voted overwhelmingly to approve an amendment to the tribal constitution that "limits citizenship in the Cherokee Nation to descendants of people who are listed on the Final Rolls of the Cherokee Nation as Cherokee, Delaware or Shawnee and excludes descendants of those listed on Intermarried White and Freedmen rolls taken at the same time."
Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, made clear that in the ongoing dispute between the Cherokee Nation and Cherokee Freedmen he supports the tribe’s right to determine tribal affiliation. He also said that he did not agree with the decision but that “tribal sovereignty must mean that the place to resolve intertribal disputes is the tribe itself.” This is just the latest iteration of a storied battle for tribal self-determination within the Cherokee Nation. The conflict resulted from the Congressional Black Caucus attempting to get Obama to support their efforts to prohibit the Cherokee Nation from disenrolling Freedmen by withholding treaty obligations.
A bill that seeks to "sever United States’ government relations with the Cherokee Nation" until full tribal citizenship is restored to Cherokee Freedmen was introduced in 2007. Supported by 35 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, HR 2824 was a reaction to Cherokee Freedmen’s appeals to U.S. lawmakers to weigh in on their removal from the Cherokee tribal roll. This new conflict over tribal sovereignty and what it means to be part of a tribe finds its roots in the relocation and allotment policies of the 19th century.
During the mid-1800s the Cherokee people were forcibly removed from their homelands in the southeastern United States in what is known as the Trail of Tears. Their expulsion to reservation territory in Oklahoma was a policy implemented to make land available in the east for European settlers. During the removal the Civil War was raging and several tribes had sided with either Confederate or Union forces. New treaties were forged between the U.S. government and newly relocated tribes during Reconstruction. And tribes which had kept African slaves up until then were forced to free them. With the freeing of slaves who had been deeply involved in the culture of traditional Cherokee life and who spoke the language, there were many marital unions formed between Cherokees and Blacks.
As it had been for hundreds of years the Cherokee accepted these new in-laws and children of mixed heritage as full members of the tribe regardless of the foreign concept of "race." Formalized through treaty documents, the self-determination of tribes in matters of enrollment were left to the tribal governments. During this time Cherokee Freedmen became prominent business owners and leaders within the tribe. The age-old system of adoption and cultural inclusion was successful and functioned as it always had.
But as Indian policy morphed from removal to assimilation, the U.S. government introduced a new paradigm – blood quantum. Quantum was an attempt to influence tribal self-determination. For the most part, the tribes had been fairly homogeneous and in cases like that of the Freedmen, the Cherokee Nation had accepted outsiders that had already been initiated into tribal culture. But by introducing this new concept of race -- a system based solely upon ancestry -- the US government had devised a way to whittle down the tribes and their subsequent obligations to them over time. Faced with what appeared to be an arbitrary requirement the tribes adopted blood quantum requirements. And at the time many tribes required that ¼ or ½ “Indian blood” to be a tribal member. In this way the criteria for tribal enrollment came to be based solely on ancestry.
The fallacy of blood quantum has had tremendous repercussions over the last century. In many ways it has divided tribes and created a class system where a person’s degree of “Indian blood” is what determines their status in a community. Before quantum, tribal members were accepted based on their willingness to sacrifice for and support the tribe and leaders were chosen because of their values and character rather than racial purity.
Due in no small part to the assimilation policy of blood quantum the Cherokee Nation first started discussing whether Cherokee Freedmen should have rights as citizens in the early 1980s. The combination of a forced paradigm shift, off-reservation populations that weren’t as connected to the cultural aspect of the tribe, a century of racist federal policy targeting blacks and dwindling resources culminated in the 1990s with the first real attempts to oust Cherokee Freedmen from the rolls. And then last year the Cherokee Nation, through an election fraught with voter disenfranchisement passed a referendum that prohibited Cherokees designated as Freedmen from being enrolled members.
The Congressional Black Caucus and other lawmakers have attempted to make the case that this is a treaty issue and not one of sovereignty. They believe that because Freedmen were "granted" the same rights as Cherokees in treaty documents that this should carry through to their descendants today.
I find it humorous that the same government that has implemented these policies is now trying to find fault with them. I agree with Obama in that the Cherokee Freedmen should continue to be recognized by the tribe but that the decision should come from the Cherokee Nation. He put it this way: “Our nation has learned with tragic results that federal intervention in internal matters of Indian tribes is rarely productive - failed policies such as Allotment and Termination grew out of efforts to second-guess Native communities. That is not a legacy we want to continue.”
As our world becomes smaller, tribal nations will find that we have tribal members with African, European, American and even Asian descent. Tribal sovereignty must be respected and as Obama has said the tribes must not be interfered with in their process of determining membership. But the termination policies of the past, including blood quantum must be abolished or they will continue to divide and conquer our communities, family by family.
It is time for us to make a change. It is time to for our tribal nations to evolve back.
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About Keegan King
Keegan King, the director of New Mexico Youth Organized, is also a member of Acoma Pueblo.
Comments:
Posted 06/23/2008 12:27 with
I agree with Mr. King that there is much that could be found humorous about how the federal government has implemented anti-Indian policies for centuries, and now is even trying to tell tribes that tribes can’t decide for themselves who is Indian. HA! It’s funny, until you realize it’s real and the same Congress that has broken treaties hundreds of times wants to terminate the Cherokee Nation because a couple of members from California who wouldn’t know an Indian if they were standing right next to them think they know what Indian treaties say, even though no court has ever said the Cherokees are breaking the treaty. Congress should just take their word for it and terminate the Cherokee Nation.
Also, there are plenty of Cherokees who are also black, hispanic and asian, like you said… but they are also Cherokee so they are eligible for citizenship. This whole thing is about whether or not someone who is not Indian can be a citizen of an Indian tribe, and if so, do the Indians get to decide to enroll non-Indians or does Congress step down from on-high in Washington D.C. and just randomly decide?
Posted 06/25/2008 16:53 with
Thank you for this article, Mr. King! I have much respect for Senator Obama for taking this position even though his fellow members of the CBC are not taking very kindly to it. I would want to point out one small thing, though, to clarify the issue for readers who are unfamiliar with the Cherokee and Freedmen background: in paragraph one, you define the Freedmen as “the descendants of mixed Indian and freed African slaves” who have filed an injuction to keep from being ousted from the tribe. Please understand that the descendents who the Cherokee Nation’s people voted against including in the tribe are those who are NOT descendents of Indians, or who at least can not prove it in the same way any other person must: by having an ancestor on the 1907 Dawes Rolls as a Cherokee By Blood. Any descendent of a freed African slave is more than welcome to be a member, so long as they meet the same requirement as everyone else, which is to prove blood relation to an individual listed on the Cherokee By Blood rolls.
Thanks again for your piece and for bringing awareness to an issue that will be a sticking point for the Native American community when they vote for a President in November.
Posted 06/25/2008 21:17 with
Thanks for your comment hflanagan. I understand that you are trying to clarify a very convoluted case but you make my point again. The Dawes Rolls are skewed. Often when the US Gov’t implemented quantum requirements they would make generalizations about who was descended from whom based on appearances or hearsay. And so many people that may have appeared Black to the person creating the list may have been descended from Cherokee, as proper records were not always kept. This is a problem because they were accepted to some degree until a century later when they were told that the implicit understanding that were a part of the community wasn’t good enough.
And so as many cases of blood quantum and sovereignty the solution isn’t easy but this situation should be taken as an opportunity to reevaluate tribal affiliation. As we grow more diverse, we must view that diversity as strength and not weakness while maintaining traditions of community and love for one another.
Posted 06/28/2008 02:13 with
You and I agree on almost all points. I continue this discussion mainly for the benefit of others who read your article and the subsequent comments without prior knowledge or context.
The rolls are indeed skewed, for many groups including the Freedmen. Which lands us back into what was no doubt a quandry when tribal membership determinations were originally set: what makes one a Cherokee? How do you retain the integrity of the tribe and culture most subjectively? How do you ensure that others do not falsely claim the culture just to personally benefit?
I often wish, as maybe others also have, that there were a more precise way to ascertain the information needed, but, it seems the Dawes Rolls, though very imperfect, are the most complete subjective record available. Everyone on those rolls had to apply, and according to the National Archives, 2/3 of the applications were rejected. Some people, especially those who were illiterate or out of the area at the time, did not find their rightful places on the rolls- if they ended up there at all. Realisticly, though, as an entity, how can an operation such as the BIA or the CNO use anything else? It is a troubling question, indeed, but one that must be handled by the tribe. Not by congress. So on this point, Obama is spot on, and you and I are in total agreement.
For the sake of other readers who may be unfamiliar, I would also like to make the following point: Cherokee tribal membership can be attained by anyone who can obtain a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) from the U.S. Government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). No minimum blood quantum is required in order to obtain either a CDIB or Cherokee Nation Tribal Membership. There are members today who are 1/512th or less Cherokee, and they may be mixed with any and all cultures in their ancestry; they are entitled to the same membership and benefits as a full blood Cherokee. This makes the Cherokee Nation members one of the most diverse tribes in this country, and that diversity is very much welcomed and embraced. Membership is based solely on proveable blood relation to an ancestor on the “Base” Dawes rolls. To those who claim the Cherokee Nation is merely targeting African Americans, I offer this counter fact: not even the adopted children of Cherokees can be members of the tribe if they are not biologically a descendent of a By Blood individual on the rolls.
Should tribal affiliation be re-evaluated? Maybe so. But that will bring up a host of questions that only the tribes themselves can answer. So thanks again to Senator Obama for understanding this!