Thanks for the response. I would like to know Al where the documentation is to some of what you posted:
Relation to black caucus
Marilyn Vann tied to Natin of Islam
Use of freedman to get Federal reparations for slavery?
CNO ouster of Freedmen not about race, it was about Dawes Roll
Having read Jeff Nanney's opinion piece and now reading Sarah Hoklotubbe's rebuttal (Cherokee Portrayal Was Misinformed And Unfair" Published On Friday, April 27, 2007 12:24 AM By SARAH HOKLOTUBBE) I feel it important that some facts be presented which Ms. Hoklotubbe obviously chooses to ignore. My responses follow Sarah's:
Sarah said:
It is a sad day when students of such an esteemed institution as Harvard can be so uneducated about American Indian history. Jeff D. Nanney’s opinion piece (“Who You Are Not??? Apr. 22) is full of erroneous information.
David replies:
It is an even sadder day when an author, whom we hope would do some research and present their argument in a cogent and accurate fashion to edify the reader does the opposite. A student might be excused because of youth and inexperience. However, Ms. Hoklotubbe is neither and her attempts to misinform the readers in inexcusible.
Sarah said:
The Cherokee Nation did not “purge its ranks of nearly 3000 members–all of them black.
David replies:
The March 3rd vote did in fact remove from membership 2,800+ citizens of the Cherokee Nation, all of them having African ancestry. If this is not a purging of persons who are black and because they are black, I'd like to know what to call it. Perhaps we should call it a paper genocide.
Sarah said:
The March 3 vote defined Cherokee Nation citizenship to include those citizens who can link their heritage to an ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls. It doesn’t matter if you are black, red, white, or green: As long as you have an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls you can be a card-carrying Cherokee citizen.
David replies:
Ms. Hoklotubbe's statement is only partially correct. The 1976 Cherokee Constitution, interpreted by the Cherokee Supreme Court in 2006, includes ALL Cherokees listed on the Dawes Rolls. The ruling was in response to unlawful exclusions of Cherokees whose names appear on the Freedmen section of the Dawes Rolls who are of African ancestry. To understand the misinformation being spread by Ms. Hoklotubbe and the leadership of the Cherokee Nation, it is important to know that the Dawes Rolls (note plural) is made up of several sections, each made to list Cherokee citizens whose rights originated under various laws or circumstances. There is the By blood section, listing Cherokee, Delaware and Shawnee Indians, as well as several adopted whites with no Cherokee or Indian blood. There is a Delaware section listing 110 older Delaware Indians and white spouses who were parties to the Cherokee/Delaware agreement of 1867. There is the intermarried white section listing white men and women who married Cherokee Indians prior to November 1, 1875. All of their children appear on the By blood section. And there is the Freedmen section. This sections is a compilation of Cherokees who were classsifed by the Dawes Commission or the Cherokee Nation as a former slave of the Cherokee Nation and/or their descendants. According to research done by both Kent Carter of the National Archives and Dan Littlefield, professor of history at the Univ. of Arkansas in Littlerock, the Dawes Commission arbitrarily placed many Cherokees by blood on the Freedmen roll simply because they "looked" black. The Freedmen have ancestors on the Dawes Rolls. This was proven in the Cherokee Supreme Court. Any attempt to imply or infer otherwise is deception of the worst kind.
The amendment recently passed by the Cherokee people, with less than 3 percent of the population voting, excluded from the Dawes Rolls the Freedmen section and the Intermarried whites sections. The Freedmen section was excluded because those who appear there are black, period. They were citizens of the Cherokee Nation, thus they were all Cherokees. The Freedmen have ancestors on the Dawes Rolls, thus they were eligible before the amendment. The only thing that sets them apart from the rest of the Cherokee population is their African ancestry. The Intermarried whites section was excluded by the amendment as a "red herring" to make the vote appear less racist. However, the Intermarried Whites were married to Cherokees by blood. Their children appear on the By Blood section, thus, none of their descendants were actually excluded even though most of their living descendants today have blood quantums less than 1/4 and most are 1/64 or less.
Sarah said:
The Freedmen have tried to use the mainstream media to turn this into a racial issue. After all, it makes great sensational news and sells newspapers.
David replies:
The Freedmen did not use the mainstream media. The media came to the Freedmen after seeing a tremendous and heinous wrong committed in the Cherokee Nation against an innocent minority. We don't hear Ms. Hoklotubbe accusing the refugees of Darfur of using the media to their advantage. A member of the American family of governments has willfully and wantonly trampled on the rights of its own citizens. That, my friends is newsworthy. Just because it is one of the 500+ domestic dependent governments makes it no less horrific or newsworthy. What Ms. Hoklotubbe calls for is silence. She is no different than those in the old South who decried the writings of northern newspapers who dared to chronicle racism, civil rights violations and murder.
Sarah said:
But the truth is that those Freedmen who have Cherokee ancestors shall now and forever remain Cherokee citizens. It is only those who cannot prove Cherokee ancestry who lost their right to citizenship.
David replies:
Ms. Hoklotubbe's statement is outright false. The freed slaves and free blacks of the Cherokee Nation were granted citizenship in the Cherokee Nation by the Treaty of 1866 and an amendment to our constitution as EQUAL citizens to native (by blood) Cherokees. They became citizens of the Cherokee Nation and thus, became Cherokees. Therefore, by law, they all have Cherokee ancestors listed on the Dawes Rolls. But further, there are hundreds of Cherokees by blood listed on the Freedmen section of the Dawes Roll who now find themselves outcasts from the Nation of their birth and blood. There exists a multitude of examples where siblings, with the same Cherokee Indian ancestry, were split between the By blood section and the Freedmen section simply because one looked more negro than the other. The one thing everyone on the Freedmen section of the Dawes Rolls have in common in NEGRO ancestry. The ONLY reason to segregate those individuals was because of that NEGRO ancestry. And today, the ONLY reason to exclude that section, even though the individuals listed thereon were Cherokee citizens, many having Cherokee blood ancestry, is because they are part NEGRO.
Sarah said:
Is that awful? You decide. In the end, shouldn’t everyone have to play by the same rules?
David replies:
Well since you asked, yes it is aweful. Majority rule can be a horrible tool of oppression. We saw it in the old South and we see it all the time in countries around the world most American's consider ignorant and backward. Most certainly, the Cherokee people can use majority rule to oppress its minority populations. But the power to do it does not make it right.
Sarah said:
There are scores of Cherokee people whose ancestors are not listed on the Dawes Rolls. This is because they either refused to sign up, or they were simply missed by the white census-takers. Unfortunately, these Cherokee-by-blood people have never been able to be Cherokee citizens either. But these people know where they came from, who their ancestors are, and they don’t need a Cherokee “blue card??? to validate their existence.
David replies:
One has to wonder, if a Cherokee "blue card" does not validate Cherokee heritage, then why is Ms. Hoklotubbe in possession of one. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that persons of Cherokee descent who abandoned their relationship with the Cherokee Nation have become "strangers to the Nation." Being Cherokee is a nationality, not a blood. When the first non-Cherokee was adopted into the Nation, the word Cherokee stopped meaning Cherokee Indian and from then forward meant Cherokee citizen. A comparison of the rise of German nationalism and xenophobia can be made closely to the Cherokee Nation vote. There are those in virtually every country where ethnic minorities exist who would seek to "send them back" or otherwise exclude them from the political process. The acts of exclusion by the Cherokee Nation belong in a by-gone era of Nazi hatred of Jews, Serbian hatred of Croatians, Hutu hatred of Tutsis and white American's hatred of Indians and blacks.
Sarah said:
The Dawes Rolls are the most authentic document we have to trace ancestors. If we didn’t use those rolls, then what would we use?
David replies:
Well finally Ms. Hoklotubbe said something truthful. The Dawes Rolls, including all of its sections, is the most authentic list of citizens of the Cherokee Nation. The Dawes Rolls were meticulously created to include ONLY Cherokee citizens and exclude any other claimant. Many individuals who had Cherokee blood ancestry, but who were not citizens of the Cherokee Nation, were ineligible. Citizenship in the Cherokee Nation has NEVER been about blood ancestry. Blood is a tool of the United States used in their effort to destroy Indian tribes and resolve the "Indian problem." The Cherokee Nation has sets it feet on the path laid out long ago for its destruction. We have now cut off a portion of our tribe that our own ancestors adopted, loved and charished enough to incorporate. They were not forced on us. Not only was slavery voluntarily adopted by the Cherokees, the institution was protected by tribal laws. And when the slaves were freed, the Cherokee Nation VOLUNTARILY amended its constituton to include them as citizens. Only now, with racism at the fore and greed following right behind, do we see Cherokees, who are themselves predominately white, telling Cherokees who are predominately black, they cannot be citizens of the Cherokee Nation.
Sarah said:
Should we just open the tribe up to anyone who says they have a great, great, great-grandmother who was a Cherokee princess? We wouldn’t have an Indian tribe anymore, would we?
David replies:
Ms. Hoklotubbe's inquiry begs the question of WHO IS NEXT on the chopping block? We have set our Nation on a slippery slope of exclusion that could, in the very near future, lead to a rise of the age old question, "Who is an Indian?" Congress would like nothing more than to define Indian in very strict terms. Is it legitimate that a person of 1/256 Cherokee blood (the rest being white) gets to tell a Freedmen descendant with 1/8 blood the Dawes Commission refused to record that she is not a Cherokee, when both have their rights protected by law not blood?
Sarah said:
The Cherokee Nation is a sovereign nation and its people have the right to define its citizenry just as every other nation on earth.
David replies:
I agree, it is our right. But attenuated to that right is also responsibility. Just because we can, does not mean we should. Majority rules must be softened by concern for the rights of the weak and small in number. It must be cognizant of the impact on the future and on those in the present. As a majority in the Cherokee Nation, the Cherokees by blood should have asked themselves the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What we have done in the Cherokee Nation is give license to those who, in the majority, hate Indian governments and can now point to the sovereignty and majority rule argument to bring forth congressional bills to limit or even destroy the rights of the indigenous nations of the U.S.
Sarah said:
On March 3, the Cherokee people voted to include everyone as citizens, regardless of their race, with one stipulation—they must link to an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls.
David replies:
WRONG. The Freedmen do have ancestors ON the Dawes Rolls. We have voted to exclude a section of the Dawes Rolls simply because those persons listed there are of NEGRO descent.
Sarah said:
When it comes to this issue, it is not “racist attitudes??? Mr. Nanney needs to worry about. He needs to put his efforts into curbing sensationalism by doing his homework. A good place to start with research on this topic is at
www.cherokee.org.
David replies:
If the United States had depended upon the official news organ of the Soviet Union, Pravda, to learn the truth about communist aggression against the west, we'd be speaking Russian right now. Mr. Nanney did his homework. His piece can be lauded for accuracy, empathy and authenticity. Unfortunately, since Ms. Hoklotubbe depends on the Cherokee Nation's version of Pravda, Cherokee.org, it is she who should be ashamed of herself. She should be ashamed for supporting a racist amendment, for destroying the rights of an innocent minority, for attempting to mislead the readers of this forum. She should be ashamed for not doing her homework.
DAVID CORNSILK
Tulsa, Oklahoma
April 27, 2007
Weheli
