Here's their website and their version of their history.
http://mnof.org/our-history/Basically there's a lot of evidence that they could be Choctaw or NDN, but nothing I see which proves it.
One interesting thing is they claim to have over 400 members, but for their petition it dropped to only 77.
The BIA conclusions are that there's no evidence except some misunderstanding of a document of a single woman they CNF falsely misunderstood to be Choctaw.
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http://www.indianaffairs.gov/cs/groups/xofa/documents/text/idc013616.pdfOnly one document received from the petitioner in the comment period had any bearing on criterion 83.7(e): A
Dawes Commission Roll index entry for a Lucy Pope. The Department finds this evidence insufficient to document the
required descent for the petitioner under criterion 83.7(e) for the following reasons.
For the PF, the Department determined that most of the current group’s members descend from a Burton Hunter (b.ca. 1836–1842) and his wife Lucy (b.ca. 1844–1850) whose maiden name was not documented. The petitioner claimed Lucy’s last name was ‘‘Pope’’ and submitted for the PF two Federal census entries in an attempt to support its theory: An 1860 Federal census entry for an ‘‘L. Pope’’ of South Carolina and an 1870 Federal census entry for a ‘‘Lucy Pope’’ of Florida.
Evaluation presented in the PF demonstrates that the census entries pertained to two women, neither of whom could have been the wife of Burton Hunter. Further, the PF found no evidence in the record that Burton Hunter’s wife Lucy was a Pope or that either he or Lucy descended from a historical Choctaw Indian tribe or any other Indian tribe.
For the FD, the petitioner submitted a two-page index from an Internet Web site that listed a Lucy Pope among some Choctaw Indians whose names appeared on the 1898–1914 Dawes Commission Roll. The petitioner placed an asterisk next to the entry for Lucy Pope, Roll No. 8626. The Department believes the petitioner is using this annotation to advance a claim that the Dawes Commission, a Federal organization that Congress authorized in 1893, had enrolled one of its claimed ancestors as a member of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
The Department examined the evidence behind the Dawes Commission Roll index reference and found that theenrolled Choctaw Lucy Pope is different from Burton Hunter’s documented wife Lucy and different from both of the Pope women the petitioner claimed as
Burton Hunter’s wife. As explained in the PF, Burton Hunter’s wife Lucy was born around 1842 in Florida and died in 1907 in Florida. The ‘‘L. Pope’’ the petitioner claimed as Burton Hunter’s wife, citing the 1860 Federal census of South Carolina, was born between 1831
and 1833 in South Carolina, and the other ‘‘Lucy Pope’’ claimed as Burton Hunter’s wife, citing the 1870 Federal census of Florida, was born about 1832 in Florida. In contrast, the Dawes Commission enrollment record for a Lucy Pope, Roll No. 8626 on Census
Card #2933, submitted by the petitioner for the FD, shows that this Lucy Pope was born around 1878, her maiden
name was Sam, and she was married to a Pope. She appeared on the 1910 Federal Census as living with her family
in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma.
Therefore, this Lucy (Sam) Pope (b.1878–d.aft. 1910) is not the same person as any of the three women analyzed in
the PF as the wife of Burton Hunter: L. Pope (b. 1831–1833 SC), Lucy Pope (b. 1832 FL) or Lucy [—?—] Hunter (b. 1842.
