Author Topic: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion  (Read 96346 times)

Offline Don Naconna

  • Posts: 257
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #15 on: January 14, 2010, 06:50:50 pm »
Is Joe Byrd a racist?

Ex-chief: Cherokees reviving racism
 
CRITIC
Former Cherokee Nation Chief Joe Byrd: “We cannot discriminate. We cannot be prejudiced in today’s time and yet call ourselves leaders of the state.”

 
By JIM MYERS World Washington Bureau
Published: 9/29/2007  1:57 AM
Last Modified: 9/29/2007  1:57 AM

He blasts the tribe's efforts to oust freedmen descendants.
WASHINGTON -- Former Cherokee Nation Chief Joe Byrd said Friday that his tribe's efforts to disenfranchise descendants of former slaves have allowed racism to resurface.

Without referring to him by name, Byrd blamed Chief Chad Smith for not stepping forward to stop those efforts.

Smith responded by accusing Byrd of making "hollow and desperate" allegations against his tribe to "salvage his devastated political aspirations."

"Basically he just called our own people racists, and it is fundamentally false," Smith said, recalling that Byrd voted for a bill 15 years ago that required Cherokee ancestry for tribal membership.

When asked about past votes, Byrd said he could not recall that issue ever coming before the council when he was a member.

Byrd sparked the exchange with an appearance at a forum on the freedmen descendants issue sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and hosted by U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., a critic of the tribe's move against the freedmen descendants.

Others on the panel included Jon Velie of Norman, an attorney for the freedmen descendants; Marilyn Vann, founder of a descendants group and a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit on the issue; Edward Crittenden, former tribal adviser and now an advocate for the descendants; and Rusty Creed Brown, a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians.


 "That's all he has to do is to do the right thing, and we can go home and leave the freedmen as they are, part of the Cherokee nation," Byrd said in an obvious reference to Smith.
"A 1866 treaty guarantees full citizenship and rights. Now for some reason in this time, where I thought that type of treatment was gone, we are resurfacing racism here."

A few minutes later, again without identifying Smith by name, Byrd made comments that appeared to be directed at the current leader of one of the nation's largest tribes.

"We cannot discriminate. We cannot be prejudiced in today's time and yet call ourselves leaders of the state," he said.

Speaking at times in Cherokee, Byrd spoke of the close ties the tribe has had with the original slaves, dating to the infamous Trail of Tears, and their descendants.

"This issue is not about sovereignty," he said. "This issue is about doing what is right."

As he was leaving the forum, Byrd was asked whether he was calling Smith a racist.

"I am just saying let us not make this what it is," he said. "We can't jeopardize 560 tribes because we want to move some people out of the tribe. That's the big issue right now. We cannot bring the other tribes into this."

Byrd said the United States has the prerogative to break treaties with tribes, but a tribe has never broken a treaty.

In another dramatic break with Smith, Byrd repeatedly praised Watson, who has introduced a bill that would strip the tribe of its estimated $300 million in annual federal funding and suspend its right to conduct its gaming operations in an attempt to force it to drop its efforts against the freedmen descendants.

"I really think it speaks to the fact he is more interested in himself than he is the welfare of the Cherokee people, and he will do anything to advance his political interests," Smith said.

Byrd is a senior adviser to the Watts Consulting Group, one of former Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts' companies.

Smith noted that one of the firm's clients is the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.

"So the strategy is a very simple one," he said. "He wants to harm or destroy the Cherokee Nation so his client can pick up the pieces."

Smith said Byrd knows that Cherokees are not racists.

"It is a function of ancestry, not race," he said, explaining the amendment approved in March that kicked off the current controversy with Watson and others in Congress.

On whether the 1866 treaty granted citizenship to freedmen and their descendants, Smith said Byrd needs to read the treaty and understand a subsequent law passed by Congress that clarified that issue.

"His first term was a disaster," Smith said. "He gave the Cherokee Nation a black eye by refusing to abide by our systems."

Smith pointed out that he has twice defeated Byrd in tribal elections.

Offline Don Naconna

  • Posts: 257
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #16 on: January 14, 2010, 06:56:07 pm »
David Cornsilk and Mike Graham (Mike Cherokee) debate, you decide.Mike is a racist and David Cornsilk is an advocate for the civil rights of the freedmen.
More to come...

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.native/browse_thread/thread/8020ec8515b9d02a/bd6fc3c644d0d13d?q=racism+101&rnum=2

Offline Don Naconna

  • Posts: 257
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #17 on: January 14, 2010, 06:59:23 pm »
William Loren Katz in a friend and colleague who wrote Black Indians. he wrote this in response to the Cherokee expulsion of the freedmen descendants...

 Disturbing Expulsion
Racism and the Cherokee Nation
By WILLIAM LOREN KATZ

As President Bill Clinton and others arrived in Selma, Alabama for the 42nd anniversary of the "bloody Sunday" march that prodded Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Cherokee Nation chose a lower road. It voted overwhelmingly for an amendment to their constitution that revokes citizenship rights for 2,800 members because their ancestors included people of African descent.

Marilyn Vann, president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, has long fought racism from both governmental officials and indigenous figures. In this instance, she claims, Cherokee leaders misled voters by insisting "freedmen don't have Indian blood", "the freedmen were forced on the tribe", "the freedmen do not have a treaty right to citizenship", "the people have never voted on citizenship provisions in the history of the tribe", and "the amendment will create an all Indian tribe." Cherokee voters were also influenced by the racist charge "that the freedmen if not ejected, would use up all of the tribal service monies."

The design of the amendment, Vann points out, is patently discriminatory. It removes membership from descendants of enrolled African Cherokees whose documentation of Indian ancestry was affirmed by the Dawes Commission more than a century ago as well as those without documentation of Indian ancestry. On the other hand it accepts Cherokee members with white blood or even people whose ancestors are listed as "adopted whites."

This development comes at a moment of re-examination of African and Indian alliances that followed 1492. Governor Nicolas de Ovando of Hispaniola arrived in the Americas in 1502 with a Spanish armada that carried the first enslaved Africans. Within a year, Ovando wrote to King Ferdinand that the Africans "fled to the Indians and never could be captured." To the fury of Europeans, Native Americans, the first people enslaved in the New World, accepted African runaways. Indians saw no reason to face the invasion alone.

In their maroon colonies beyond the European settlements that dotted the coastlines of the Americas, each group contributed invaluable skills. As victims of the triangular trade, Africans brought their unique experience of European intentions, weapons, and diplomacy. Native American villages offered runaways a safe haven for families and a base for operations, and allowed the two peoples to forge the first "rainbow coalition." So ubiquitous were maroon communities that a French scholar called them "the gangrene of colonial society." Seeing these alternative societies as a threat to their hegemony, Europeans repeatedly deployed search and destroy armies.

British colonial officials in what is now the United States required Indian Nations to sign treaties promising the return of Black runaways. (There is no record of any fugitives being returned!) To keep Native American villages from becoming an escape hatch, officials from Florida to Canada offered Indians staggering rewards for runaways. And to that same end, British traders introduced African slavery to the Five Nations -- the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles. Once these Nations adopted European-style dress, Christianity and African bondage, they were called "The Five Civilized Tribes." In Florida where the terrain permitted guerilla warfare, African Seminoles played a commanding role in a resistance that at times tied up half of the U.S. Army, held the U.S. military forces at bay from 1816 to 1858, took 1500 U.S. military lives, and cost Congress $30,000,000.

By Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831, southern planters, frantic that leaks in their labor system would have explosive consequences, joined with whites seeking valuable Indian land, to demand removal of the Five Nations. President Martin Van Buren had 7,000 U.S. troops drive 60,000 Indians, including black members, to distant Oklahoma. As thousands perished on this "Trail of Tears," Cherokees of every color and station comforted one other.

Even before they reached Oklahoma African bondage dominated the social, political and economic life of the Five Nations, and created the class and racial divisions evident today. A minority of Cherokees with white blood owned slaves, claimed a superior status and rose to leadership. "Pure Indian blood" Cherokees, the majority, became "inferior." African Cherokees, slave and free, were relegated to the lowest rung. However in the 1850s Heinrich Mollhausen, a noted German artist, visited the Indian Territory and described a form of bondage unlike any southern plantation:

These slaves receive from the Indian masters more Christian treatment than among the Christian whites. The traveler may seek in vain for any other difference between master and servant than such as nature had made in the physical characteristics of the races; and the Negro is regarded as a companion and helper, to whom thanks and kindness are due when he exerts himself for the welfare of the household.

In 1860 Cherokees in Oklahoma owned 2,511 slaves, and at the outset of the Civil War, Cherokee leaders, pressured by pro-slavery Indian Agents and virtually surrounded by Confederate armies, agreed to support the Confederacy. However, Opothle Yahola, a Creek chief and pacifist, was able to lead 7,600 people -- including half of the Seminole Nation, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and others, to Union lines in Kansas. By April 1862 the young men of this multicultural exodus had joined the Union Army and helped free slaves in Missouri.

The defeat of the Confederacy allowed U.S. officials to scrap its Indian treaties. Whites who had forced African slavery on Indians now demanded Indians accept Lincoln's "new birth of freedom." The Seminoles, who had long treated their African members as allies rather than slaves, embraced equality. Cherokees followed. African Cherokees soon ran barbershops, blacksmith shops, general stores and restaurants or became ferryboat operators, cotton-gin managers, teachers and postmasters. O.S. Fox, editor of the Cherokee Afro-American was enthusiastic:

The opportunities for our people in that country far surpassed any of the kind possessed by our people in the U.S. . . . It is nonsense for any Afro-American to emigrate to Africa or anywhere else if he can make a living in the Indian Territory.

In 1879 African Cherokees, petitioning for full equality, based their appeal on a shared history:

The Cherokee nation is our country; there we were born and reared; there are our homes made by the sweat or our brows; there are our wives and children, whom we love as dearly as though we were born with red, instead of black skins. There we intend to live and defend our natural rights, as guaranteed by the treaties and laws of the United States, by every legitimate and lawful means.

How ironic and sad that people of African Cherokee lineage still have to fight for natural rights being denied them by the New World's first victims of virulent bigotry, imported by the European invaders.

William Loren Katz is the author of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. His new, revised edition of The Black West [Harlem Moon/Random House, 2005] also includes information on the Philippine occupation, and can now be found in bookstores. He can be reached through his website: www.williamlkatz.com

Offline Don Naconna

  • Posts: 257
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #18 on: January 14, 2010, 07:02:32 pm »
This article is very good at presenting the freedmens case...

Commentary:  Analysis
Who's the Racist Now?
Attorney General Eric Holder once called the U.S. "a nation of cowards" for discriminating against its black citizens. How is it now that his department is helping the Cherokees of Oklahoma to expel its black citizens?
Friday, August 21, 2009By Anita Crane
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With his reaction to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, President Obama diverted attention from his ill-formed healthcare agenda by throwing racism into the mix. We all know how that turned out and since the American people were not silenced, Obama’s fans in Congress and media are trying to brand us as bigots. But when will pundits at the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and MSNBC question Obama’s part in a real federal case of racism?

Lest we forget, Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, condemned the United States as “a nation of cowards” who discriminates against its black citizens. In that Black History Month speech, Holder also promised, “[T]his Department of Justice, so long as I am here, must and will lead the nation to the new birth of freedom so long ago promised by our greatest president.” However, under Holder the Justice Department is helping the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) to expel its own black citizens, the descendents of Cherokee slaves known as “Freedmen.”

According to our 1866 Treaty with the Cherokee Nation, Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants “shall have all the rights of native Cherokees.” These rights include voting in tribal elections, per capita representation in Cherokee government, as well as assets and benefits bestowed by the U.S. Department of the Interior through its Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

Since the treaty can be abrogated only by an act of Congress, in 2007 Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA) introduced a bill to cease federal funding of the Cherokee Nation until the Freedmen’s rights would be restored. She also requested support from presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL.). As reported in The Hill, Obama refused in 2008. In part, he replied, “Discrimination anywhere is intolerable, but the Cherokee are dealing with this issue in both tribal and federal courts.” Watson’s bill died with the 110th Congress. Nevertheless, Obama’s golden opportunity has arrived. The 1866 Treaty, a supreme federal law, says the president of the United States “is hereby authorized and empowered to correct such evil.”

Justice Department v. Black Cherokees



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General says Obama should go 'off script' in HaitiWhile Bill Clinton was president, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma attempted to expel its Freedmen in 2000. Consequently, the Interior Department withheld funding to that tribal nation because it had violated its 1866 Treaty with the United States. As George W. Bush was president, the Seminole Nation filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Interior Secretary Gale Norton, and it lost the case in 2002. Federal funding resumed to the Seminole Nation after its Freedmen were reinstated.

Likewise, over the centuries, the Cherokee Nation has attempted to disenfranchise its black citizens. Under Chadwick Smith, principal chief since 1999, the matter has come to a full-blown crisis because he claims that the Freedmen have no tribal rights unless they can prove Cherokee blood through the federal government’s Dawes Rolls.

From 1898 to 1907, the scene for racism was set by government agents who took the Dawes Rolls to determine members of the Cherokee Nation. Jon Velie, lead counsel for the Cherokee Freedmen, explained that those agents took it upon themselves to segregate people according to perceived race. “As a result,” said Velie, “the Freedmen were subjected to Jim Crow laws and other forms of state-sanctioned discrimination.”

On the Dawes Rolls, some persons are labeled as “Cherokee by Blood” and others as “Cherokee Freedmen.” Yet the 1866 Treaty lacks any requirement of Indian blood for Cherokee Freedmen to be tribal citizens.

Still, under Smith in 2003, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma denied certain Freedmen their right to citizenship, and others with Cherokee voter cards were physically blocked from the polls. Smith was reelected and an illegal ballot measure was passed to remove federal oversight of amendments to the Cherokee Constitution.

Therefore, Marilyn Vann established the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association in Oklahoma City. She and numerous other black Cherokees filed a 2003 federal lawsuit against Secretary Norton in the same court that settled the Seminole case.

Ironically, like many Freedmen, Vann has Cherokee blood. She said, “I am a person of mixed African, Cherokee and Chickasaw descent. As a Freedman, my citizenship is guaranteed by the Treaty of 1866. But Chief Chad Smith uses some of the Cherokee Nation’s hundreds of millions of dollars to file frivolous lawsuits against the Freedmen and block the progression of our federal lawsuit.”

Smith, a lawyer, and his attorneys have tediously delayed the Vann case. He and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma were inserted as defendants. Meanwhile, the BIA permitted violations to the 1866 Treaty. Then, after Vann and her fellow Freedmen won a Dec. 2006 hearing, Smith and the CNO filed an appeal.

In May 2008, five hired guns, including Cherokee Nation contract lobbyist and lawyer Lanny Davis, represented Smith and the tribe in the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In July 2008, Judge Thomas Griffith issued the court’s decision that Vann, et al, may proceed with their lawsuit against tribal officers, but a district court must determine whether they can sue the Cherokee Nation itself.

Griffith wrote, “Denying the Freedmen the right to vote in tribal elections violates the Thirteenth Amendment and the 1866 Treaty, so the Cherokee Nation cannot claim tribal sovereign immunity against a suit complaining of such a badge and incident of slavery. … The tribe does not just lack a ‘special sovereignty interest’ in discriminatory elections – it lacks any sovereign interest in such behavior.”

Currently the case is pending against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Smith.

Nevertheless, 11 days after Obama was inaugurated, Justice Department lawyer Amber Blaha filed a hefty motion to dismiss the Vann case. So the court’s decision could disenfranchise an estimated 25,000 black Cherokees and their descendents, but Eric “New Birth of Freedom” Holder hasn’t withdrawn the motion to dismiss it.

Cherokee Nation v. Citizen Nash

In 2007, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma further breached the 1866 Treaty with a constitutional amendment expelling its Freedmen.

Freedman Raymond Nash, a resident of Nowata, Oklahoma, who earns his living as home improvement contractor, voted against the amendment via absentee ballot.

After the vote, the CNO registrar sent some 2,800 black Cherokees notice of tribal disenrollment, indicating they had 30 days to send a written appeal. When 386 replied, the CNO filed a class-action lawsuit in its own District Court of the Cherokee Nation as Raymond Nash v. Cherokee Nation Registrar.

Nash said, “People had been calling me and asking what this case is. I said, ‘No. It can’t be me because I don’t know [any]thing about this.’”

The CNO court provided an attorney to represent Nash and the other so-called plaintiffs. When that attorney was disbarred, the court appointed Ralph Keen II, a 2003 tribal council member. Keen said the suit was filed according to tribal law. He also admitted, “I’m not sure they [the Freedmen] realized anything because the notice that was mailed out by the Cherokee Nation did not offer a good description of the legal appeal process.” Jon Velie said Nash didn’t receive notice until two years after the CNO filed this suit in his name. Keen said he notified the Freedmen 30 days prior to the July 17, 2009, hearing for summary judgment and the Cherokee court’s decision is pending. Keen also said, “And if we prevail, we could literally render the two federal actions moot.”

Evidently, filing the tribal case in Raymond Nash’s name wasn’t pleasure enough for Smith and his collaborators. On Feb. 3, 2009 – the same day that Holder took his oath of office – the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma filed a federal lawsuit against Nash and four other black Cherokees, plus Secretary Salazar, in the U.S. District Court for Northern Oklahoma. Again Velie said the Cherokee Nation didn’t notify Nash or his fellow defendants, but he found out and took up their case. In other words, the unsuspecting black Cherokees could have lost rights for all Freedmen as soon as they failed to show up in court. Furthermore, Mike Miller, communications officer for the CNO, didn’t dispute Velie’s claim.

Keen has petitioned the court to intervene for the Freedmen in this case, but Velie opposes it as another CNO attempt to be on both sides. In May, under Holder’s nose, anti-Freedmen Justice Department lawyer Blaha filed as Salazar’s defense attorney. The case is stalled as all parties await court decisions.

The President’s Power

Considering the Freedmen’s plight, on April 30, 2009, Rep. Diane Watson and six other U.S. representatives, including John Lewis (D-GA), sent Attorney General Holder a letter requesting that he launch a full investigation. So far, Holder has not replied.

Excluding the Freedmen, Mike Miller estimates 290,000 Cherokee citizens. He said, “Congress has unilaterally shredded many aspects of the Treaty of 1866 and one of those aspects had to do with the treaty rights of non-Indians.” He also said that federal courts “have specifically stated that non-Indian freedmen descendants do not have the right to citizenship in the Cherokee Nation.”

As noted above, federal judges of the Vann case have ruled precisely the opposite.

Thus, on June 8, Watson introduced a House bill to sever government relations between the United States and the Cherokee Nation until the CNO restores full tribal rights to its Freedmen.

Watson’s bill threatens losses of at least $380 million in annual federal funding to the CNO, $5 million in stimulus funds, plus the other assets and benefits. In March, when Smith testified before a House appropriations subcommittee, he referred to the 1866 Treaty to bolster his request for a $40 million increase to cover health services in 2010. Yet according to Smith’s agenda, and despite ever increasing Cherokee casino revenues ($441.2 million in 2008), Freedmen would be ineligible. In fact, one Freedman in the Vann case was denied treatment for glaucoma until she got legal assistance. And on the CNO website, Smith decries Watson’s bill as an injustice to the needy, but he expects Obama to do nothing for the Freedmen.

No wonder. On June 15, President Obama rewarded the rogue Cherokee Nation by announcing the new position of senior policy advisor for Indian Affairs. He appointed Kimberly Tehee, a Cherokee, and said, “he will provide a direct interface at the highest level of my administration.”

Now, under Eric Holder, the Justice Department is trying to prove his absurd notion that the United States is a nation of cowards. Blacks in Nowata tell 62-year-old Raymond Nash that there must be a reason he’s the Cherokee Nation’s sacrificial Freedman. Indeed there is reason and President Obama has the lawful power to end it. New York Times, Huffington Post, and MSNBC, do tell us: Who is a racist?

Anita Crane is a freelance writer and journalist. See AnitaCrane.com
 

Offline Don Naconna

  • Posts: 257
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #19 on: January 14, 2010, 07:10:02 pm »
More on racism and the freedmen...

Original Pechanga's Blog
Pechanga's Casino fuels greedy faction of tribal members to deny civil rights to rightful members. PECHANGA'S Chairman Macarro claims sovereignty, but immunity from prosecution doesn't = Innocence of Action.

Friday, August 21, 2009
Cherokee Freedmen: President Obama "Who is the Racist Now?" Atty Gen Holder "Who is the the Coward NOW?
 
Columnist Anita Crane calls out our President Barack Obama and our Attorney General Eric Holder for their handling of the Cherokee Freedmen issue. (one that we've chronicled here often)

With his reaction to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, President Obama diverted attention from his ill-formed healthcare agenda by throwing racism into the mix. We all know how that turned out and since the American people were not silenced, Obama’s fans in Congress and media are trying to brand us as bigots. But when will pundits at the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and MSNBC question Obama’s part in a real federal case of racism?

Now, it look like Chad "OUR slaves were treated well" Smith is trying some end arounds our Federal laws. And maybe their HUGE donation helped the Cherokee Nation in this case.

Evidently, filing the tribal case in Raymond Nash’s name wasn’t pleasure enough for Smith and his collaborators. On Feb. 3, 2009 – the same day that Holder took his oath of office – the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma filed a federal lawsuit against Nash and four other black Cherokees, plus Secretary Salazar, in the U.S. District Court for Northern Oklahoma. Again Velie said the Cherokee Nation didn’t notify Nash or his fellow defendants, but he found out and took up their case. In other words, the unsuspecting black Cherokees could have lost rights for all Freedmen as soon as they failed to show up in court. Furthermore, Mike Miller, communications officer for the CNO, didn’t dispute Velie’s claim.

President Obama and AG Holder can provide justice in this case IMMEDIATELY. Why won't they? Don't be a COWARD Mr. Attorney General and Mr. President, you have a CLEAR example of racism in front of you. Unless you DO belive that because the Cherokee slaves WERE treated well, the Cherokee Nation deserves some special consideration??

Offline earthw7

  • Posts: 1415
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Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #20 on: January 14, 2010, 08:48:34 pm »
i could careless about the cherokee
But I have relative tribes in canada
This Don is saying that my relatives have
no rights in canada. he is saying they they don't matter
then then he says that we are only nations because the US government
we have always been a nation before that guy named columbus
got lost and today and if there was no federal money we would still
be a nation the only differnce is we would close off our borders.
We have 14 reservation and a few in three of the canadia provence under our nation that is
lot of land.
In Spirit

Offline BlackWolf

  • Posts: 503
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #21 on: January 14, 2010, 09:00:47 pm »

Quote
i could careless about the cherokee
Thanks for the support earthw7!

In all you listed Don, I still don't see one shred of evidence that Freedmen of Cherokee blood were SYSTEMATICALLY taken off or not put on the Cherokee by blood rolls.  Nor have I seen evidence that whites with no Cherokee blood SYSTEMATICALLY got on.  These whites that are always mentioned are listed as "Intermarried Whites" on the Dawes Roll.  Any intermarried white on the Dawes Roll, just for the very nature of being listed on the Dawes Roll as an "Intermarried" white" would mean that he or she was married to a Cherokee man or woman, and it would be logical to conclude that their descendants would be Cherokee by blood.  Because the wife or husband would be of course Cherokee and their descendants would be mixed blood.  With that said, there were about 10 or so descendants of "Intermarried" whites who were NOT ALSO descendant from the Cherokee spouse.  This happened for example, when an "Intermarried White” would divorce, or for whatever other reason have a child with a different non Cherokee partner.

That’s all well and good that you listed the opinions of Cherokees such as Joe Byrd and Cornsilk in regards to the Freemen issue.  I can tell you now though that their opinion is in the minority whether it be with full bloods or mixed bloods.

Offline Rattlebone

  • Posts: 256
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #22 on: January 14, 2010, 09:05:29 pm »
I I am nt appears that once again people seem to have a rather distorted view of the historical context of these documents. Remember the Cherokee fought for the defeated confederacy. In fact the Cherokee Braves commited atrocities against the freedmen at Cabin Creek after the treaty at Appomattox.

 
 

 If anyone needs to get their history straight, it's you. The Cherokee, just like other tribes in eastern Oklahoma did not fight in the Civil War as a "tribe." They were just as divided in the matter as the United States. Your constant statements of how "the Cherokee" fought for the confederacy are false ones, and are not unlike trying to say something as preposterous as "the northern states fought the northern states in the Civil War."

 The facts are that the Cherokee Nation and other tribes split into factions just like the United States and it's northern and southern states, with one side being pro Union and the other being pro Confederacy. In fact during the war, members of the Cherokee Nation fought each other, and members of other tribes including my own too fought each other.

  These statements and twisting of history on your part to further your agenda I find offensive considering men like my gg grandfather were against slavery, and fought our own people in the white man's war to free the black man.


Quote
In fact the Cherokee Braves commited atrocities against the freedmen at Cabin Creek after the treaty at Appomattox.

 You act as if only the Cherokee were guilty of such atrocities. There was at least one case where black soldiers went into a Choctaw town of mostly women and children, and slaughtered them. In retaliation for those atrocities, that black unit was hunted down, and it's men killed and or tortured to death.

 So if you wish to talk about war time atrocities, please take the time to mention every single one of a similar nature.

What you are doing in this thread is twisting history and historical things to meet your agenda.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2010, 09:30:53 pm by Rattlebone »

Offline BlackWolf

  • Posts: 503
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #23 on: January 14, 2010, 09:06:22 pm »
Quote
The design of the amendment, Vann points out, is patently discriminatory. It removes membership from descendants of enrolled African Cherokees whose documentation of Indian ancestry was affirmed by the Dawes Commission more than a century ago as well as those without documentation of Indian ancestry. On the other hand it accepts Cherokee members with white blood or even people whose ancestors are listed as "adopted whites."

Quote
A minority of Cherokees with white blood owned slaves, claimed a superior status and rose to leadership. "Pure Indian blood" Cherokees, the majority, became "inferior." African Cherokees, slave and free, were relegated to the lowest rung. However in the 1850s Heinrich Mollhausen, a noted German artist, visited the Indian Territory and described a form of bondage unlike any southern plantation:

This article is alluding to the fact that light skin Cherokees all had slaves and claimed a superior status.  For anyone that knows anything about cherokees, they would agree that The pure indian blood thing really wasn’t the only determining factor in classifying mixed bloods and full bloods.  It had more to do with whether one spoke the language fluent and lived a Cherokee life.  Red Bird Smith would be considered full blood even thought he didn’t have a 4/4 BQ.  The Cherokees integrated the children of whites and Cherokees, not the other way around.  The vast majority identified as Cherokee and not white. That’s just how it was.  Now the citizenship issue is more of a political definition of an independent Nation.  Racial in the sense that one must possess Indian blood, but not in the sense of being racially Indian. At least not entirely anyway  

The Dawes Rolls weren’t’ the only Cherokee rolls.  So if there were incidents of Freedmen with Cherokee blood not being put on the Dawes Roll, then I would assume that they at least might have an ancestor on some other Cherokee roll before the Dawes Rolls 1898-1906.  Lets say pre 1906.  Even if someone was 3/4 black freedmen, and 1/4 Cherokee, then they would have one full blood grandparent.  This grandparent would have 2 full blood parents, and their parents would have parents, cousins and so on and so forth.  I’m not going to list all the other Cherokee rolls and censuses, but Here’s a few other rolls.  If these Freedmen had high BQS, then I’m assuming they would be on the Drennen Roll of 1852.  That would mean if a full blood from these rolls intermarried for 2 generations with blacks, then they would be a 1/4 by blood during the Dawes Roll.  ( Give or take a few years )
And if they had low BQ’s like the Cherokees with the ½56 degree that Don mentions all the time, then that would mean were talking about pre Trail of Tears. Nothing wrong with low BQS, ( you are or you aren’t) just trying to make a point.   So I’ve listed a few of these rolls also that would have taken place in the East.  The low BQ Freedmen would at least be able to trace to these rolls.  One could make the argument that they were systematically not put on any and every roll because the family continued to intermix with blacks, but this is highly unlikely.

After studying the issue based on evidence, not heresy, I’ve concluded that there actually were at least some cases of Freedmen not being put on the by blood rolls.  But I’ve also concluded, that these cases were the exception to the rule, not the norm,  and the overwhelming majority of Freedmen don’t have Cherokee blood.  It’s a shame that some of them at least were not put on the by blood rolls, but That’s our rolls and they are ours.  Are they flawless.  No.  Were they pretty accurate.  Yes.  Don, if you have any concrete evidence that a substantial number of  Freedmen are in fact Cherokee by blood, I’d like to hear about it or see the evidence.  Opinions from Cherokees is fine.  But I go more on evidence then hearsay.


Old Settler Rolls 1851,
Reservation Rolls 1817
Emigration Rolls 1817-1835
Henderson Roll 1835
Mullay Roll 1848
Siler Roll 1851


Here’s the Cherokee Heritage Center’s website that deals with Genealogy. The CN has even offered to help Freedmen and offer them genealogical help free of charge in helping them trace their ancestry.  


http://www.cherokeeheritage.org/cherokeeheritage/genealogy.html

 


Offline Rattlebone

  • Posts: 256
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #24 on: January 14, 2010, 09:12:39 pm »
i could careless about the cherokee



 Why the disrespect Earth? Would you like it if somebody said the same about your people in times of bad? It seems that everyone regardless of their tribe is giving Lakota people support over Crow Creek; so why come in this thread and make such a statement?

Offline Paul123

  • Posts: 148
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #25 on: January 14, 2010, 09:17:02 pm »
@BW,
Isn't it true that the CN has given every Freeman that was on the rolls A free certified genealogist?
And put them back on until the courts rule on this?

Offline BlackWolf

  • Posts: 503
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #26 on: January 14, 2010, 09:40:25 pm »
Quote
@BW,
Isn't it true that the CN has given every Freeman that was on the rolls A free certified genealogist?
And put them back on until the courts rule on this?

Absolutely  Paul. 

Quote
MYTH: The Cherokee Nation is expelling all the descendants of their former slaves.
FACT: There are more than 1,500 descendants of former slaves who are Cherokee citizens today because they can find an Indian ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls. The Cherokee Nation is offering free genealogical expertise to assist any descendant of Freedmen who wants to research whether they can find such an Indian ancestor and thus become a permanent citizen. That said, slavery was a grave injustice and a painful chapter in our nation's history, when 2% of Cherokees owned slaves. It should be noted, however, that the Cherokee Nation voluntarily freed these slaves in 1863.


I don't the exactly who they should contact.  But I would contact the Cherokee Nation Tribal Complex main switchboard and ask.  They would know who to contact or where to transfer them.  They can also contact the Cherokee Nation Heritage Center and ask. 

Don get your pen and paper out and write these numbers down.  Pass it on to any Freedmen friends you have that need to establish that they are Cherokee by blood, or maybe you need the info for yourself. Good Luck.

Cherokee Nation
918-453-5000
(OK Toll Free) 1-800-256-0671

Offline BlackWolf

  • Posts: 503
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #27 on: January 14, 2010, 09:42:11 pm »

Cherokee Heritage Center
Contact Information

Gene Norris, CGSM, Board Certified Genealogist at genealogy@cherokeeheritage.org.

(918) 456 - 6007 ext 6159

http://www.cherokeeheritage.org/cherokeeheritage/genealogy.html

Offline Rattlebone

  • Posts: 256
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #28 on: January 14, 2010, 09:56:14 pm »
 Don keeps talking about how bad the Freedmen have had it.

 Well I would like to know what makes the lives of the Freedmen soo much harder then any other person of African descent in the United States, to the point if they are not kept in the Cherokee Nation, it would prompt the CBC to terminate the Cherokee Nation??


 Furthermore, hands down the truth is, that in the United States; the American Indian in general has had worse then, and is still suffering more then the average black person.

 So all that in mind,

 DON CAN YOU FINALLY ANSWER WHY THE CBC IS NOT SAYING A WORD ABOUT THE DISERNOLLMENTS GOING ON IN TRIBES IN WATSONS OWN BACKYARD IN CALIFORNIA, AND CAN YOU SAY WHY YOU HAVE FAILED TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION YOURSELF AFTER I HAVE NOW ASKED IT MANY TIMES?
« Last Edit: January 14, 2010, 10:04:08 pm by Rattlebone »

Offline BlackWolf

  • Posts: 503
Re: Cherokee Freedmen Discussion
« Reply #29 on: January 14, 2010, 10:13:01 pm »
If anyone wants to support the Cherokee Nation on the Freedmen issue, then they should support this man and his campaign for Congress.     He’s running against Don’s partner in disinformation, US House of Representatives from California’s 33rd District Diane Watson.  Not only does he support the Cherokee Nation, but he also supports Tribal Sovereignly.  And this issue effects ALL American Indians and Tribes, NOT JUST the Cherokees.  earthw7 mentioned this before in one of her other posts. 

Felton Newell

http://www.feltonnewell.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5V46VzWJSQ