The New York Times
Room for Debate
2011-09-15
Kevin Maillard, Associate Professor of Law
Syracuse University
Matthew L. M. Fletcher, Professor of Law
Michigan State University
Cara Cowan-Watts, Acting Speaker
Cherokee Nation Tribal Council
Rose Cuison Villazor, Associate Professor of Law
Hofstra University
Heather Williams, Cherokee citizen and Freedman Descendent
Cherokee Nation Entertainment Cultural Tourism Department
Carla D. Pratt, Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs
Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson School of Law
Tiya Miles, Professor of History and Chair of the Department of Afro-American and African Studies
University of Michigan
Joanne Barker (Lenape), Associate Professor of American Indian studies
San Francisco State University
Introduction
When the Cherokee were relocated from the South to present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, their black slaves were moved with them. Though an 1866 treaty gave the descendants of the slaves full rights as tribal citizens, regardless of ancestry, the Cherokee Nation has tried to expel them because they lack “Indian blood.”
The battle has been long fought. A recent ruling by the Cherokee Supreme Court upheld the tribe’s right to oust 2,800 Freedmen, as they are known, and cut off their health care, food stipends and other aid in the process.
But federal officials told the tribe that they would not recognize the results of a tribal election later this month if the citizenship of the black members was not restored. Faced with a cutoff of federal aid, a tribal commission this week offered the Freedmen provisional ballots, a half-step denounced by the black members.
Is the effort to expel of people of African descent from Indian tribes an exercise of tribal sovereignty, as tribal leaders claim, or a reversion to Jim Crow, as the Freedmen argue? Kevin Noble Maillard, a professor of law at Syracuse University and a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, organized this discussion of the issue.
Read the entire debate here.
