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Cherokee Nation votes to expel 'freedmen'

Tribe revokes membership of an estimated 2,800 descendants of slaves

OKLAHOMA CITY - Cherokee Nation members voted Saturday to revoke the tribal
citizenship of an estimated 2,800 descendants of the people the Cherokee
once owned as slaves.

With all 32 precincts reporting, 76.6 percent had voted in favor of an
amendment to the tribal constitution that would limit citizenship to
descendants of “by blood” tribe members as listed on the federal Dawes
Commission’s rolls from more than 100 years ago.

The commission, set up by a Congress bent on breaking up Indians’ collective
lands and parceling them out to tribal citizens, drew up two rolls, one
listing Cherokees by blood and the other listing freedmen, a roll of blacks
regardless of whether they had Indian blood.


Some opponents of the ballot question argued that attempts to remove
freedmen from the tribe were motivated by racism.

“I’m very disappointed that people bought into a lot of rhetoric and
falsehoods by tribal leaders,” said Marilyn Vann, president of the Oklahoma
City-based Descendants of Freedmen of Five Civilized Tribes.

Tribal officials said the vote was a matter of self-determination.

“The Cherokee people exercised the most basic democratic right, the right to
vote,” tribal Principal Chief Chad Smith said. “Their voice is clear as to
who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to
make that determination.’

Smith said turnout — more than 8,700 — was higher than turnout for the
tribal vote on the Cherokee Nation constitution four years ago.

“On lots of issues, when they go to identity, they become things that people
pay attention to,” Smith said.

The petition drive for the ballot measure followed a March 2006 ruling by
the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court that said an 1866 treaty assured freedmen
descendants of tribal citizenship. Since then, more than 2,000 freedmen
descendants have enrolled as citizens of the tribe.

Big money at stake
Advocates of expelling the freedmen call it a matter of safeguarding tribal
resources, which include a $350 million annual budget from federal and
tribal revenue, and Cherokees' share of a gambling industry that, for U.S.
tribes overall, takes in $22 billion a year. The grass-roots campaign for
expulsion has given heavy play to warnings that keeping freedmen in the
Cherokee Nation could encourage thousands more to sign up for a slice of the
tribal pie.

"Don't get taken advantage of by these people. They will suck you dry,"
Darren Buzzard, an advocate of expelling the freedmen, wrote last summer in
a widely circulated e-mail denounced by freedmen. "Don't let black freedmen
back you into a corner. PROTECT CHEROKEE CULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN. FOR OUR
DAUGHTER[S] . . . FIGHT AGAINST THE INFILTRATION."

The issue is a remnant of the "peculiar institution" of Southern slavery and
a discordant note set against the ringing statements of racial solidarity
often voiced by people of color.

"It's oppressed people that's oppressing people," said Verdie Triplett, 53,
an outspoken freedman of the Choctaw tribe, which, like the Cherokee, once
owned black slaves.

Cherokees, along with Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles, were long
known as the "Five Civilized Tribes" because they adopted many of the ways
of their white neighbors in the South, including the holding of black
slaves.

Court challenges by freedmen descendants seeking to stop the election were
denied, but a federal judge left open the possibility that the case could be
refiled if Cherokees voted to lift their membership rights.

Tribal spokesman Mike Miller said the period to protest the election lasts
until March 12 and Cherokee courts are the proper venue for a challenge.

Vann promised a protest within the next week. “We don’t accept this
fraudulent election,” Vann said.

The Associated Press and The Washington Post contributed to this report.


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