These days it’s not often that American Indian affairs make for national news. But the press is now knee deep in coverage of a political dispute in the Cherokee nation. The issue concerns the citizenship of so-called Cherokee Freedmen, the descendants of slaves once held by Cherokee plantation owners.
The Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogees, and Seminoles were the five most powerful Indian nations in the American South during the 18th and 19th centuries. All of them, except for the Seminoles, developed cotton plantations and U.S. style, race-based slavery. Among these Native nations, as was the case in the United States, it was a small minority of wealthy plantation owners who owned the slaves.
During the early 19th century, the U.S. engaged in an ethnic cleansing policy euphemistically called Removal, which reached its apex during the Andrew Jackson administration of the 1820s-30s. Under threat of military action, all five of these nations were forced to move west to what was then called Indian Territory and is now Oklahoma. The slaveholders among them brought along most of their slaves.
When the U.S. Civil War erupted, the Cherokee government pledged its loyalty to the Union, but received no immediate support. Bordering Texas, the Cherokee nation came under intense pressure from the Confederacy. In 1861, Principal Chief John Ross agreed to a treaty of alliance with the Confederacy, though the agreement stipulated that Cherokees would not fight outside of Indian Territory, thereby precluding their use as an aggressive force against the Union.
Trapped by circumstance, Ross was arrested by Union troops during the summer of 1862. His sentence was commuted and he spent the remainder of war in Philadelphia. Maintaining his government in exile, Ross issued an order banning slavery in the Cherokee nation in 1862, three years before the United States would ratify the 13th Amendment.
However, Ross’ absence opened the door for the Cherokee slave owners, who raised a militia and sided with the Confederacy. Their leader, Degataga Oo-Watee (Stand Watie), replaced Ross as Principal Chief in a sham election. Watie would eventually rise to the rank of Brigadier General and attain the dubious honor of being the last Confederate general to surrender.
All of this of course had little bearing on the outcome of the U.S. Civil War, but in Indian Territory the results were absolutely catastrophic. A brutal Cherokee Civil War ensued as Stand Watie’s militia fought Ross’ supporters. Perhaps a quarter of the Cherokee nation died from combat, starvation, and disease.
In 1866, the United States proclaimed the Cherokees to have been Confederate allies and subject to reconstruction. Against their wishes, the Cherokees were forced to accept a new treaty that confiscated land, granted right of way to private railroad companies, and mandated that all of their former slaves receive full citizenship rights in the Cherokee nation.
So how does this lead to a national news story in 2011?
The political standing of the Freedmen’s descendants has long been a very disputatious subject in the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations. However, in 2006 the Cherokee Tribal Council voted to amend the Cherokee constitution and revoke citizenship from those who could not demonstrate any Cherokee descent. The next year, the Cherokee nation approved the amendment in a national referendum by a vote of 6,693 – 2,040. Freedmen who cannot demonstrate Cherokee descent have been stripped of their citizenship, while over a thousand freedmen descendants have maintained it.
This may sound harsh to many readers. But the issue comes down the rights of a sovereign nation to decide its own citizenship qualification. Indeed, the United States itself is currently debating a similar issue: should illegal immigrants who arrived as small children be granted limited citizenship rights such as drivers’ licenses and in-state college tuition rates despite their illegal status?
While Americans heatedly debate that issue, no one questions the right of the United States to decide the issue for itself.
Indian nations, on the other hand, are still subject to American colonialism. I’ve locked horns with other scholars about this, but I believe it is an honest, real politik assessment; this case is just one among countless examples of the United States’ disregarding Indian governments and forcing its policies upon them. The United States officially supports Cherokee citizenship for the descendants of all freedmen. The Cherokee nation has bucked, and U.S. retribution for that is severe.
Beyond threatening to withhold $33,000,000 in promised housing funds, the United States is also proclaiming that it will not recognize the results of the upcoming Cherokee election if the Cherokee nation does not reverse itself on this issue. And if the Cherokees won’t do it themselves, federal attorneys are poised to ask a federal judge to order them to do so.
My stance on this issue is firm. I am a supporter of Indian national independence. Whether the Cherokee nation’s decision to abolish the citizenship of certain Freedmen’s descendants was right or wrong, on whatever level you wish to consider it, the decision is not mine or yours to make. It should be up to the Cherokee nation. And federal interference in the matter is nothing less than proof-positive of ongoing U.S. colonialism vis a vis Native nations.
