Cherokee Freedmen
In response, the Department of Housing and Urban Development froze $33 million in funds and the Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs wrote a letter objecting to the ruling.
[12]The civic position for Freedmen increased by the time of the Dawes Commission, which convinced the Cherokee and the other Five Civilized Tribes to break up tribal land in Indian Territory into individual allotments for households.
[14] Slavery was a component of Cherokee society prior to European colonization, as they frequently enslaved enemy captives taken during times of conflict with other Indigenous tribes.
[15] By their oral tradition, the Cherokee viewed slavery as the result of an individual's failure in warfare and as a temporary status, pending release or the slave's adoption into the tribe.
Some men acquired separate land and became planters, purchasing enslaved African Americans for laborers in field work, domestic service, and various trades.
[20] Cherokee slaveowners took their slaves with them on the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of Native Americans from their original lands to Indian Territory by the federal government.
The Cherokee tribe had a matrilineal kinship system, by which inheritance and descent were passed on the mother's side; children were considered born into her family and clan.
In July 1861, Ross and Muscogee chief Opothleyahola attempted to unite the Five Civilized Tribes in an agreement to remain neutral, but failed at establishing an intertribal alliance.
On October 7, 1861, Ross signed a treaty with General Albert Pike of the Confederacy and the Cherokee officially joined the other nations of the Five Civilized Tribes in establishing a Pro-Confederate alliance.
The Southern Cherokee delegates were Stand Watie, Elias Cornelius Boudinot, Richard Fields, James Madison Bell, and William Penn Adair.
The Northern Cherokee led by John Ross were represented by Thomas Pegg, Lewis Downing, H. D. Reese, Smith Christie, and White Catcher.
The Pro-Union Cherokee delegation, whose government abolished slavery before the Civil War ended, were willing to adopt Freedmen into the tribe as citizens and to allocate land for their use.
In testimony as a member of the Cherokee Freedmen's Association, before the Indian Claims Commission on November 14, 1960, Gladys Lannagan discussed specific problems in the records for her family, I was born in 1896 and my father died August 5, 1897.
[57] In 1924, Congress passed a jurisdictional act that allowed the Cherokee to file suit against the United States to recover the funds paid to Freedmen in 1894-1896 under the Kern-Clifton Roll.
In 1971, the Department of the Interior stated that one of the three fundamental conditions for the electoral process was that voter qualification of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole must be broad enough to include the Freedmen citizens of their respective nations.
Article III, Section 1 of the new constitution defined citizens as those proven by reference to the final Dawes Commission Rolls, including the adopted Delaware and Shawnee.
[65] In 1988, the Cherokee Registration Committee approved new guidelines for tribal citizenship that mirrored Swimmer's previous executive order regarding voting requirements.
A Freedman who voted in the 1979 Cherokee election, Nero and colleagues sent a complaint to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, claiming discrimination on the basis of race.
Leeds wrote, In this initiative petition process, there are numerous irregularities, clear violations of Cherokee law, and it has been shown that some of the circulators perjured their sworn affidavits.
On June 21, 2007, US Rep. Diane Watson (D-California), one of the 25 Congressional Black Caucus members who signed a letter asking the BIA to investigate the Freedmen situation, introduced H.R.
Chief Smith issued a statement saying that the introduction of this bill is "really a misguided attempt to deliberately harm the Cherokee Nation in retaliation for this fundamental principle that is shared by more than 500 other Indian tribes."
[108] In response, Jon Velie and the Freedmen descendants filed another motion for preliminary injunction in federal district court asking to reinstate their rights for the election.
[110] On September 14, Cherokee Attorney General Diane Hammons recommended reopening the case with the previous reinstatement to be applied while oral arguments would be scheduled.
After reviewing the motion for summary judgment submitted in January by the Department of the Interior, Judge Thomas F. Hogan stated that "he was skeptical the treaty allows the tribe to change its constitution to require Indian blood for CN [Cherokee Nation] citizenship."
[74] Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. nominated Vann to serve on the tribe's Environmental Protection Commission, and the tribal council confirmed her position on September 13, 2021.
[125] Freedmen descendant and journalist Kenneth Cooper said, "By rejecting a people whose history is so bound up with their own, the Cherokees are engaging in a massive case of denial.
Dr. Circe Sturm, professor, wrote in her book Blood Politics that many Freedmen descendants had little sense of the historic connection with the Cherokee and are ambivalent about getting recognized.
[51] In a June 2007 message to citizens of United Keetoowah Band Of Cherokee, Principal Chief George Wickliffe expressed his concern about threats to sovereignty because of this case.
Daniel F. Littlefield Jr., director of the Sequoyah Research Center at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, stated that the Treaty of 1866 granted freedmen their rights as citizens, and the case should not be made into a racial issue.
[137][138] Some people of descent are still excluded, like the author Shonda Buchanan who states in her memoir Black Indian that she has ancestors on Cherokee Rolls that were not the Dawes, so would thus still not be recognized.
