Cherokees kick African Americans out

[rogue06]

This is interesting

Cherokee Indians: We are free to oust blacks

The nation's second-largest Indian tribe said on Tuesday that it would not be dictated to by the U.S. government over its move to banish 2,800 African Americans from its citizenship rolls.

"The Cherokee Nation will not be governed by the BIA," Joe Crittenden, the tribe's acting principal chief, said in a statement responding to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

...

The dispute stems from the fact that some wealthy Cherokee owned black slaves who worked on their plantations in the South. By the 1830s, most of the tribe was forced to relocate to present-day Oklahoma, and many took their slaves with them. The so-called Freedmen are descendants of those slaves.

After the Civil War, in which the Cherokee fought for the South, a treaty was signed in 1866 guaranteeing tribal citizenship for the freed slaves.


Source

© source where applicable

This is in response to a letter sent by the BIA on Monday to the Cherokee Nation demanding that the tribe reinstate the black “Cherokee Freedmen" after the tribe’s Supreme Court ruled that African Americans can be excluded from the tribe. The BIA warned that it would not recognize any election by the tribe that doesn’t include the freedmen and will be withholding a $33 million disbursement from the tribe.

[Cow Poke]

This is interesting

Cherokee Indians: We are free to oust blacks

The nation's second-largest Indian tribe said on Tuesday that it would not be dictated to by the U.S. government over its move to banish 2,800 African Americans from its citizenship rolls.

"The Cherokee Nation will not be governed by the BIA," Joe Crittenden, the tribe's acting principal chief, said in a statement responding to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

...

The dispute stems from the fact that some wealthy Cherokee owned black slaves who worked on their plantations in the South. By the 1830s, most of the tribe was forced to relocate to present-day Oklahoma, and many took their slaves with them. The so-called Freedmen are descendants of those slaves.

After the Civil War, in which the Cherokee fought for the South, a treaty was signed in 1866 guaranteeing tribal citizenship for the freed slaves.


Source

© source where applicable

This is in response to a letter sent by the BIA on Monday to the Cherokee Nation demanding that the tribe reinstate the black “Cherokee Freedmen" after the tribe’s Supreme Court ruled that African Americans can be excluded from the tribe. The BIA warned that it would not recognize any election by the tribe that doesn’t include the freedmen and will be withholding a $33 million disbursement from the tribe.

Talk about a sensitivity minefield.

[Xru]

Talk about a sensitivity minefield.

Wow . . .. everyone's ducking for cover it seems.

I read the source . . . looks politically motivated . . . what's new.

[Catholicity]

The Cherokee Nation, has a right, to govern itself, the way it wishes to, without the US dictating who it should call citizens. A Native American to a Cherokee is either born of blood or, in the rare circumstances, adopted and initiated as such with the Elders present. The BIA should keep its claws OUT!

[Conductor42]

Isn't it ironic that they're basing their logic on a treaty made in the 1800's, given that our government broke virtually every treaty ever made to Native Americans in that century?

[Teallaura]

The change meant that Cherokee Freedmen who could not prove they have a Cherokee blood relation were no longer citizens, making them ineligible to vote in tribal elections or receive benefits.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44516027.../#.TnCthk_VRSc

*emphasis mine

The BIA has a legit interest here since it is providing the funding. "He who pays the piper calls the tune."

Also, the move stinks of disenfranchisement for financial gain.

[Challenger Grim]

The BIA has a legit interest here since it is providing the funding. "He who pays the piper calls the tune." Also, the move stinks of disenfranchisement for financial gain.

Maybe, but getting off government funds might be the best thing for the Cherokee.

[Teallaura]

Maybe, but getting off government funds might be the best thing for the Cherokee.

Granted - but as long as you take the funds you take the conditions attached.

[Challenger Grim]

Granted - but as long as you take the funds you take the conditions attached.

Obviously.

If anything, I'm sad THESE are the conditions that they finally decide are worth giving up money for.

[rogue06]

Obviously.

If anything, I'm sad THESE are the conditions that they finally decide are worth giving up money for.

They haven't indicated that they are willing to give up the money though.

[Epoetker]

The BIA is wrong, the Cherokees are right.



The people in question were only granted citizenship for a short time due to imprecise legal language. The Cherokees, at least, are trying to be rigorous in how they apply their laws-you have to have at least one Indian ancestor to be a member of an Indian tribe.

Since a tribe is kind of a racial term by default, I don't see what the problem is (besides slighting a certain other tribe with far more positive media influence and current political power.) Not too strange to see that most people consider a "nation" to be the cap of the man-wife-family-extended family-clan-tribe-race-nation line of reasoning, but only America has had the prosperity and non-corrupt legal system necessary to fund the equal enforcement of laws across all races under its purview. When the money that funds such optimistic universalism runs dry, people tend to go back to more basic and instinctual forms of security-trusting only the people who are actually related to them, and thus have incentives to stick together besides naked self-interest. Eh, Mr. Christian Evolutionist?

This is where multiculturalism inevitably leads, as sure as the sun rises.