Aboriginals demand the right to exclude black people from their lands.

A week or two ago, I was sent a link on this issue and found it so bizarre I didn’t want to post it till I did a little research on my own. I did find more material on it and frankly, I can’t remember now if I posted it or not. But tonight Blazing Cat Fur sent me this link from MSNBC and hell now its mainstream.

I really look forward to reading the comments on this one.

Cherokee Indians: We are free to oust blacks

             US government wants second-largest Indian tribe to recognize as citizens 2,800 descendants of slaves that were held by Cherokees

OKLAHOMA CITY — 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.

Crittenden, who leads the tribe until a new principal chief is elected, went on to complain about unnamed congressmen meddling in the tribe’s self-governance.

The reaction follows a letter the tribe received on Monday from BIA Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk, who warned that the results of the September 24 Cherokee election for principal chief will not be recognized by the U.S. government if the ousted members, known to some as “Cherokee Freedmen,” are not allowed to vote.

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.

The U.S. government said that the 1866 treaty between the Cherokee tribe and the U.S. government guaranteed that the slaves were tribal citizens, whether or not they had a Cherokee blood relation.

Please click through for the balance (so to speak) of this story

 

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

4 Replies to “Aboriginals demand the right to exclude black people from their lands.”

  1. wow. but it doesn’t say why the Cherokees suddenly want to do this. Why now? What happened? the full story is not being told.

  2. Cherokee’s fought on both sides during the Civil War, Stand Watie (sp?) was the last Confederate General to surrender during the Civil War.

    I am not familiar with the story but I think the tribal members living on tribal land receive a share of the oil revenue from the wells that are still pumping. (If there are any)

  3. The NPR article quotes, “So, this latest chapter in this historical saga for now some 2,800 Freedmen have been stripped of their Cherokee citizenship, which means that they’re no longer eligible to receive, you know, whatever tribal benefits they had been receiving and that their votes won’t be counted in an upcoming tribal election.”

    It’s about benefits to a certain extent. Why should someone who isn’t of Cherokee ancestry recieve benefits? Cherokees take great pride in their heritage and have rescued their language from extinction. At one time Cherokees were forbidden to learn their own language in school, children were even removed from their homes to be educated away from the tribe. There has been a cultural resurgence since these things took place and there are now Cherokee language churches and a Cherokee app for example. They have their own alphabet that is taught in their schools. I think the freedmen are seen as interlopers who have very, very little to do with any of this yet they want whatever benefits they can get out of it. I only know some of this because I have a friend who used to attend one of their churches and who got to know some of the older people very well. They are also trying to be more precise on defining who is a Cherokee. Ex. Is the blond haired, blue eyed guy who’s great-great grandmother was Cherokee a Cherokee or not?