http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2779207/posts
Cherokee Indians: We are free to oust blacks
MSNBC ^ | 9/14/2011
Posted on 16 September 2011 10:08:12 by Altura Ct.
The nation's second-largest Indian tribe said on Tuesday that it would
not be dictated to by the U.S. government over its move to banish
2,800 African Americans from its citizenship rolls.
"The Cherokee Nation will not be governed by the BIA," Joe Crittenden,
the tribe's acting principal chief, said in a statement responding to
the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Crittenden, who leads the tribe until a new principal chief is
elected, went on to complain about unnamed congressmen meddling in the
tribe's self-governance.
The reaction follows a letter the tribe received on Monday from BIA
Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk, who warned that the results of
the September 24 Cherokee election for principal chief will not be
recognized by the U.S. government if the ousted members, known to some
as "Cherokee Freedmen," are not allowed to vote.
The dispute stems from the fact that some wealthy Cherokee owned black
slaves who worked on their plantations in the South. By the 1830s,
most of the tribe was forced to relocate to present-day Oklahoma, and
many took their slaves with them. The so-called Freedmen are
descendants of those slaves.
After the Civil War, in which the Cherokee fought for the South, a
treaty was signed in 1866 guaranteeing tribal citizenship for the
freed slaves.
The U.S. government said that the 1866 treaty between the Cherokee
tribe and the U.S. government guaranteed that the slaves were tribal
citizens, whether or not they had a Cherokee blood relation.
The African Americans lost their citizenship last month when the
Cherokee Supreme Court voted to support the right of tribal members to
change the tribe's constitution on citizenship matters.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
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