Freedmen vs Cherokee Nation

January 14, 2011 Tribal District Court Rules Citizenship Amendment Invalid In a lower court ruling today, Cherokee Nation District Court Judge John Cripps overturned an amendment to the Cherokee Nation Constitution passed by the Cherokee people with 77% of the vote in 2007, which denied citizenship to about 2,800 non-Indian freedmen descendants who had gained citizenship since a previous court ruling in 2006. “We have received the district court decision with which we respectfully disagree,” said Cherokee Nation Attorney General Diane Hammons. “We believe that the Cherokee people can change our Constitution, and that the Cherokee citizenry clearly and lawfully enunciated their intentions to do so in the 2007 Amendment. We are considering all options, including our right to appeal to the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court." "We believe that there are some legal decisions affecting the interpretation of the 1866 Treaty which the District Judge ignored, but no decision on an appeal h...

Tribal ruling raises dispute over slaves owned by Indians By Ben Fenwick OKLAHOMA CITY Sat Jan 15, 2011 3:49pm EST http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70E1YW20110115 OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - A tribal court ruling that the Cherokee Nation must allow descendants of former slaves owned by Indians to be tribal members, has again raised the painful history of the forcible removal of the Indians to Oklahoma in the nineteenth century. A Cherokee Nation tribal court ruled on Friday that the nation cannot exclude the so-called "Freedmen" from tribal membership even though some of them are not blood descendants of the Indians. The issue arises because when the U.S. government forced Indian tribes to walk from the Southeast U.S. to Oklahoma in 1831, in what the Indians described as the "Trail of Tears", some of them brought their African-American slaves with them. They brought them because the Cherokee owned plantations in the U.S. South. When the tribe was ejected from the...