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...

Descendants of Native Americans' Slaves Left Out of $3.4 Billion Settlement By RYAN ABBOTT http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/12/21/32757.htm COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) - Descendants of slaves owned by the so-called (so called?; they were called civilized because they were farmers in the SE) Five Civilized Tribes challenged the $3.4 billion class action settlement in Elouise Cobell et al. v. Ken Salazar, in a class action of their own. The Harvest Institute Freedman Federation says the Cobell settlement was racially discriminatory, with the United States paying off descendants of treasonous (lol - treasonous? - lol - give it a rest already!) Indian slave-owners who took the South's side in the Civil War, while stiffing descendants of the Indians' slaves. The $3.4 billion settlement in Cobell v. Salazar, which will be implemented under Title I of the Claims Resolution Act of 2010, "is racially discriminatory and perpetuates past unlawful racial discrimination," the Free...

Feinstein wades into urban gaming fight By Malcolm Maclachlan 12/02/10 12:00 AM PST http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=zbfozf2sq3hu5p&xid=zbf7ptghovltry&done=.zbfozf2sq45u5p Opponents of urban casinos in the Bay Area have a powerful ally in Washington: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein, a Democrat and California’s senior senator, has proposed changes in the law that would make it harder for tribes to take new lands into trust. It’s a seemingly obscure legal designation that has serious implications for just about any tribe that would want to build an urban casino. Under Feinstein’s changes, a tribe would have to show both a “substantial direct aboriginal connection to the land” and “substantial direct modern one.” (Duh! This was all Native Lands at one time - direct aboriginal connection; and the fact they were forced from it should be a continuing trespass which would prevent applying a *direct modern connection*; in other words Natives can't have a direct ...

Tester, senators told road funding system on Indian reservations 'broken' By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian missoulian.com Posted: Friday, October 15, 2010 9:15 pm http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_1ddfee76-d8d9-11df-82e1-001cc4c002e0.html POLSON - Almost three-quarters of the roads on American Indian reservations are unpaved, yet too much of the federal money meant to rectify that goes to states and urban tribes that don't need it, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester was told repeatedly Friday. Tester, a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, took testimony on the issue at a field hearing at KwaTaqNuk Resort - the first time a U.S. senator has convened a committee hearing on the Flathead Indian Reservation. The first of two panels to testify included some heavy hitters from Washington, D.C., including Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk, and Michael Black, the director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But it was the second panel, of Monta...