Cherokee Indians says race matters

A reader informed me about all those wanting to benefit from the free labor of slavery. That it included African-Americans and Indians. I believed I've blogged on some of the reasons for African-American involvement in slavery. Here, I point out the decision by Cherokee to kick out of descendant of Freedmen before slavery was abolished in the United States.

From the New York Times:

At issue is a group barely known outside of Indian country, the Freedmen. These are the descendants of black slaves owned by Cherokees, free blacks who were married to Cherokees and the children of mixed-race families known as black Cherokees, all of whom joined the Cherokee migration to Oklahoma in 1838.

The Freedmen became full citizens of the Cherokee Nation after emancipation, as part of the Treaty of 1866 with the United States. But in 1983, by tribal decree, the Freedmen were denied the right to vote in tribal elections on the ground they were not “Cherokee by blood.”

It appears that the Cherokee Nation is growing, and their is preference in who can be a citizen and who can vote !

Officially, the election will ask voters whether to amend the Cherokee Nation Constitution. Overriding the 1866 treaty, it would limit citizenship to those who can trace their heritage to “Cherokee by blood” rolls, part of a census known as the Dawes Rolls of 1906. The Freedmen would automatically be denied citizenship because the Dawes Rolls, a census commissioned by Congress to distribute land to tribal members, put the Freedmen on a separate roll that made no mention of Indian blood.

Proponents of the amendment say it is about drawing a line, a blood line. The Cherokee Nation, the second-largest tribe in the country after the Navajo, is also one of the fastest growing, with 270,000 members and 1,000 new citizens enrolled every month. Members are entitled to federal benefits and tribal services , including medical and housing aid and scholarships.

It appears that the Freedman was between a rock and hard place, slavery in the United State and a non citizen in the Indian nation under the Dawes Rolls. The Rolls were used to give land to members of the Indian Nation. The issue did that mean could a Freedman marry or have children by a Cherokee and become a Cherokee or would the fact that it was not full blooded denied him or her citizenship. But this did not applied to Cherokee with raced white children or marriages!

Cherokee blacks will have to prove they are not passing! Read more on Alas, a blog for background. Read more here