This is some of the best news I've heard in these parts for a long time.
And it's a long and complicated story, and one which would require a lot of history I'm too tired to relate. So suffice it to say, after years of grueling work and more than a few dirty tricks pulled on them, one Cherokee Nation member, David Cornsilk, and one Cherokee Freedman, Lucy Allen, just managed to get the tribal membership of the Cherokee Freedmen reinstated.
Of course, their reinstatement was helped along by the Freedmen and some righteous Cherokee Nation members. But the powers that be have fought this tooth and nail from day one, and pulled dirty tricks so rotten, they'd make Rove's head spin.
The Freedmen are the descendents of slaves owned by Cherokees, as well as descendents of original Dawes enrollees. And given that tribal membership in the Cherokee Nation is limited to descendents of Dawes enrollees --- and given the Freedmen fulfilled this qualification --- there has been no good reason why the Freedmen were stripped of their membership.
Except --- except there are thousands of Freedmen, all of whom oppose the power structure of the Cherokee Nation, and for good reason. The Nation is so corrupt, it genuinely eclipses BushCo by a few lightyears. Yes, I know, it looks all bright and shiny in the brochures and everyone wants to be a Cherokee. Get up close, though, and you see what's really going on. It's pretty gruesome.
In any case, this is totally fabulous news and is, for me, a shining glittering ray of hope in the midst of all the chaos being perpetuated on us.
Here is the story in our local paper:
Freedmen added as tribal citizens
By Teddye Snell, Press Staff Writer
The Cherokee Nation Judicial Appeals Tribunal ruled 2-1 Tuesday that descendants of black freedmen must be recognized as citizens of the tribe.
The ruling sets aside a previous opinion against the descendents, and strikes down a 1992 Cherokee Nation Tribal Council law limiting citizenship to those who are "Cherokee by blood."
Lucy Allen, the daughter of freedmen, petitioned the court. Her supporters celebrated the victory against what they consider to be racism.
Diane Hammons, general counsel for the Cherokee Nation, issued a statement on the tribe's Web site regarding the ruling:
"In holding that Freedmen descendants are entitled to be citizens of the Cherokee Nation, our supreme court, the JAT, today reversed its earlier decision in the Riggs case, in which it had reached the opposite decision," wrote Hammons. "The decision today holds that the Cherokee Nation's registration statute is unconstitutional, because it limits registration to Cherokees by blood, and adopted Shawnees and Delawares. Although the 1975 Constitution makes no specific mention of Freedmen descendants, the Court ruled that they were included in the wording `by reference to the Dawes Commission Rolls,' and that if the 1975 framers intended to exclude the Freedmen descendants, they would have more explicitly stated.
"We had argued that the intent of the framers of the 1975 Constitution was to limit citizenship to Indians by blood, either Cherokees by blood or adopted Shawnees and Delawares," Hammons wrote. "We made that argument based upon our reliance of a prior JAT decision, a review of the historical documents surrounding the 1975 Constitution, and interviews with surviving framers."
Freedmen are descendants of former slaves of Cherokee citizens who were enrolled with the Dawes Commission. According to Tahlequah attorney Nathan Young III, yesterday's ruling will provide freedmen the right to access tribal services and to vote in tribal elections.
David Cornsilk, a Tulsa Cherokee, served as lay advocate for Allen in the court.
"This case has been traveling through the court system since 2004," said Cornsilk. "[The ruling] has been a long time coming."
According to Cornsilk, the freedmen were "unceremoniously dismissed without a vote of the Cherokee people in 1983."
"Since then, it's been a long struggle," he said.
Young is concerned the decision could put unintended stress on services to Cherokees. He told an area newspaper the programs offered by the nation are already stressed to the limit.
Cornsilk doesn't believe the issue is about services, but about voting rights.
"Freedmen descendents are not a group of impoverished beggars," said Cornsilk. "They are very diverse, and include lawyers, doctors, teachers and homemakers. They [opponents] are making an assumption the freedmen are seeking services, when the original lawsuit centered around voting rights."
Cornsilk thinks Young and others are providing an alarmist response to something the tribe should have corrected 20 years ago.
"The Cherokee Nation has known something like this could have been coming for years now," said Cornsilk. "They've had ample time to prepare. The onus is on them for not being prepared and not doing what was right."
-snip-
Cornsilk hopes the ruling puts an end to racism within the tribe.
"It [ruling] shows our court system is fair," he said. "This was a huge blow to racism in the Cherokee Nation. I hope this ruling will be the end of it."
Cornsilk said freedmen are estimated to number anywhere from 12,000 to more than 25,000.
Black freedmen included free blacks and former slaves who settled in the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes following the Trail of Tears. Those freedmen were listed with the Cherokees in the 1866 Treaty with the U.S. government, the ruling read.
"For almost 150 years, the Cherokee Nation has included not only citizens that are Cherokee by blood, but also citizens who have origins in other Indian nations and/or African and/or European ancestry," Leeds wrote.