Congresswoman Watson’s Response to Heather Williams’ LA Times Editorial:

“Let Cherokees Decide Who’s Cherokee”

Los Angeles Times-07/10/07

Heather Williams’ op-ed, “Let Cherokees Decide Who’s Cherokee,” omits many crucial facts and events that prompted me to introduce legislation to sever U.S. relations with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma until such time as the Nation restores full tribal citizenship to the disenfranchised Cherokees of African descent, known as Freedmen.

Williams is correct to assert that the Treaty of 1866 is the underpinning of my contention that Freedmen are by treaty right members of the Cherokee Nation and have all the rights of Cherokee citizens.  The treaty is crystal clear on the Freedmen’s inclusion. The treaty further states that Freedmen are given the right to elect officials and sit on the national council, rights they are denied by the current Cherokee leadership.  

  What Williams fails to clarify is the historical context of the Treaty – the fact that many Cherokees not only owned slaves but also fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  A few even held positions in the Confederacy’s legislative and executive branches of government.  Certainly many members of the Cherokee Nation had good reason to oppose the United States Government after their forced removal (known as the Trail of Tears) from the South to present day Oklahoma decades earlier.  But the driving force behind the Cherokee’s support for the Confederacy centered on its having adopted many of the ways of the South, including owning slaves.

The Treaty of 1866 reestablished and formalized U.S.-Cherokee relations shortly after the end of the Civil War.  It also provided for the first time some guarantees for the safety and rights of Freedmen.  And yes, perhaps the treaty, as Ms. Williams notes, was controversial to some, particularly to those who fought on the losing side of the war and saw their chattel set free.  But the fact remains that the treaty, which the Cherokee leadership now seeks to abrogate, is the bedrock of U.S.-Cherokee relations and Cherokee tribal sovereignty.  

My question to Ms. Williams is why does the Cherokee Nation now want to undermine, perhaps irreparably, its sovereign relations with the U.S. to achieve an unjust end that will eviscerate the presence of Freedmen in the Cherokee Nation?  Why is the Cherokee Nation now intent on narrowing its definition of who is a Cherokee citizen to those who can prove they have a “by-blood requirement” when in the past it has admitted to the Cherokee Nation Shawnees and Delawares who have no Cherokee blood?  Why is the Cherokee Nation now seeking in the case of its Freedmen citizens – whose relatives suffered the travails of the Trail of Tears, ate Cherokee food, wore Cherokee clothes, and spoke the Cherokee language – new requirements of exclusivity when it has had a proud history of inclusiveness?  

Ms. Williams fails to mention the illegal manner in which the Cherokee Nation has attempted to divest itself of Freedmen citizens.  In 2003, the Cherokee Nation ratified a new constitution that removed the requirement that the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) approve amendments to the Cherokee Nation’s constitution.  Cherokee Freedmen were not permitted to vote in the election or run for office.

In March 2007, the Cherokee Nation, still operating under the unapproved new constitution, voted to remove Freedmen from the Cherokee Nation.  Less than 4% of the Cherokee Nation participated in the election.  Two months later, BIA belatedly informed Chad Smith, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, that the amended constitution would not be approved out of concern that some may use it “as a validation or evidence of legitimacy of the Cherokee Nation’s removal of its Freedmen members in apparent violation of the 1866 treaty.”

What is most distressing is that, in 2002, the Seminole Nation attempted under similar circumstances to disenfranchise its Freedmen.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs took a proactive stance, terminating its relations with the Seminoles until the Freedmen were reinstated.  Sadly, BIA has in the instance of the Cherokee Freedmen failed to act decisively and exercise its fiduciary responsibility to uphold the rights of Freedmen.

The Cherokee Nation receives roughly $300 million a year in various benefits from the federal government.  The Nation earns a similar net amount from its gaming activities.  This is not an insignificant amount of money.   If the Cherokee Nation succeeds in expelling 2,800 Cherokee Freedmen, most will no longer be eligible for health, education, and housing benefits provided by the U.S. Government.

The bottom line is this: why should your or my tax dollars go to a group whose actions in fact will exclude a whole group on the basis of race?   Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that no person shall be excluded or denied benefits on the basis of race, color, or national origin.  If the Cherokee Nation chooses to exclude its Freedmen, then I believe it must also forgo the generous benefits it receives from U.S. taxpayers. 

The Cherokee Nation has every right to exercise within the law its sovereign right to determine who is a member of the Cherokee Nation.  But the sovereign right to discriminate is no right at all.