Midtown Hottie, (6/27/2008 11:10:18 AM)

Justin,

You should brush up on your history of the Dawes Rolls. There were many people who did rush to Indian Territory to get "free" land. There were whites and freed slaves from all over the south trying to get their slice of the pie. But if you look at many of the original documents (which can be easily found online), many, many people were rejected because they were not an ounce of Cherokee.

And contrary to popular belief, people didn't simply have to option to "not sign up." The Dawes Commission spent seven or eight years finding people! Instead, many were jailed for not cooperating with the government's official census, which was the information the Dawes Rolls was based on. I know that contradicts what your grandmother or others in your family have told you, but that is the truth. You can find extensive interviews conducted during the days of the Dawes Commission online and see for yourself.

And while no one agrees the Dawes Rolls were perfect, it was a mandate of Congress back then, and the best and ONLY thing we have today to go on. Blame Congress for screwing it up a hundred years ago... not the Cherokee Nation or other tribes.

Lastly, these "idiotic tribal rules" you speak of are the right of each tribe to make. As dependent sovereigns, tribal governments can pass any laws they so choose, as it is their inherent right.
I'm guessing you're just upset because you're unable to leech off any tribe today.

Midtown Hottie, (6/27/2008 11:11:47 AM)

Well, it appears Justin's comment was deleted before everyone could be enlightened by it. We're all better off anyway.

Allen L. Lee, (6/29/2008 1:19:13 AM)

This does nothing to address the human rights violation of removing citizenship of from tose Cherokee nationals who were in lawful possession of it.
Anyhow, I submit a history addressing antis-miscegenation in the historic Cherokee Nation and clan affiliation.
"From Rootsweb ,the story of an African slave named Molly made Cherokee, no Indian blood:

"Surrendered and delivered up when a girl Some time previous to the
> revotutconary war by a white man named Saml Bend to the authorities of the
> Cherokee nation for certain important consideration & that said Molly was
> then emancipated & adopted into the Clan Composing the Deer family
> agreeably
> to the then existing custom & usage of said nation, & since that time she
> has continued in the Anton & enjoyed the liberty of freedom & that her two
> sons Edward & Isaac Tucker were born at the beloved Town called Echota on
> the Tennessee River & has ever been free & resided in this Nation
> Sworn to & subscribed to before me at Red Clay this 18th Octr 1833
> Danl McCoy, J S Court"

From, Tiya Miles- "Ties That Bind"
The story of the African descent slave and wife of Cherokee male Shoe Boots:
Doll had been transported west with the Ridge family in 1837..."
after Doll was set free around 1850 she:
" went to live with her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who resided in the Deleware District close to the Ridge estate..."
Of course not showing up on the Dawes Rolls by-blood section would qualify or disqualify the descendants of these non-Indian matriarchs, but the Dawes Rolls by themselves do not represent a traditional form of Cherokee recognition. Add onto this the known anti-miscegenation laws the Cherokee Nation and several states practiced regarding Indian/Black relationships prior to the 1866 treaty and I have to ask how reasonable a 1900's by-blood roll will actually be from a genealogical point of view?
Allen L. Lee

Corn Fed, (6/29/2008 2:08:36 PM)

I'm glad to see that the Cherokee Nation is offering these services in the Tulsa area. Sometimes the process of all the geneological research is overwhelming for those unfamiliar with it. It is encouraging to see leaders from two different entities working together in a joint effort to help members of the community.

Allen L. Lee, (6/30/2008 12:16:21 AM)

You must be logged in to post a comment.

1.,"A Race or a Nation? Cherokee National
Identity and the Status of Freedmen’s
Descendents
S. A. Ray
University of New Hampshire Year 2006
“Yet, the Freedmen’s roll systematically excluded evidence of Native
American ancestry, and agents refused to record it, even when proffers of
proof of “Indian blood” were made by enrollees themselves. For example,
Mary Walker, a woman of African-Cherokee heritage, attempted to enroll
as a Cherokee citizen “by blood,” after reciting her Cherokee ancestry to an
agent of the Dawes Commission. She was refused by a second agent
present, who insisted she be enrolled as a Freedman’s descendent, saying,
“She ain’t no Cherokee. She’s a "N". That woman is a "N" and you are
going to put her down as a "N".”213”"
note:This excerpt edited for appropriate language. (A.L.)

2., "LOVING INDIAN STYLE: MAINTAINING RACIAL CASTE
AND TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH SEXUAL
ASSIMILATION
CARLA D. PRATT*
The first law that the Cherokee Nation passed after their removal to
Indian Territory was an antiblack miscegenation law.131 The 1839 law,
entitled An Act to Prevent Amalgamation With Colored Persons,
The 1839 law provided that
intermarriage shall not be lawful between a free male or female
citizen with any slave or person of color not entitled to the
rights of citizenship under the laws of this Nation, and the same
is hereby prohibited, under the penalty of such corporeal
punishment as the courts may deem it necessary and proper to
inflict, and which shall not exceed fifty stripes for every such
offence—but any colored male who may be convicted under
this act shall receive one hundred lashes.134""

3., Loving v. Virginia
"...All bans on interracial marriage were lifted only after an interracial couple from Virginia, Richard and Mildred Loving, began a legal battle in 1963 for the repeal of the anti-miscegenation law which prevented them from living as a couple in their home state of Virginia. The Lovings were supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Japanese American Citizens League and a coalition of Catholic bishops."
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License"

4., "The Fortieth Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia: The Personal and Cultural Legacy of the Case that Ended Legal Prohibitions on Interracial Marriage
Part One in a Two-Part Series
By JOANNA GROSSMAN
Wednesday, May. 30, 2007

...The Case's Path to the Supreme Court
Loving v. Virginia was, ultimately, a case about one marriage: that of Mildred Jeter, a part-African, part-Cherokee woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who crossed the border in 1958 from their home state of Virginia to neighboring Washington, D.C. to marry"

I can only hope some of the NAACP attorneys who fought for the "Loving" Supreme Court case can review the Cherokee anti-miscegenation laws and realize the error of this genealogical assistance.
This purpose of this genealogy assistance legitimizes the race laws that the NAACP fought against. They might as well ask for a reversal of the "Loving" decision and say they were wrong.
Allen L. Lee

shamasi1968, Lovilia (7/12/2008 12:48:27 AM)

I have been trying to chase my genealogy for years, I have my great grandmother's name and have found it on the Dawes but can't get any help to get my family registered. Any Ideas?

DT, (7/17/2008 10:44:15 AM)

Mr. Lee, I have seen you refer many times in your responses to the "human rights violations" of freedmen descendants by the Cherokee Nation. I challenge you to quote the international law which backs up your statements. The non-Indian freedmen descendants have NO "human right" to enrollment in an Indian tribe, while the Cherokee Nation has a very real set of collective human rights as an indigenous nation. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples spells out in several articles that the Cherokee Nation has an absolute right to exist as a distinct people, to determine their national identity by deteriming their own citizenship and to be free of government interference in matters of autonomy and self-government. For the US government to do otherwise is racial discrimination, pure and simple. In March of this year, the Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination expressed strong concerns about US failures to protect indigenous rights and issued concluding observations which linked the provisions of the Declaration to the United States LEGAL OBLIGATIONS under the International Convention to End All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Dianne Watson is violating two international TREATIES. As a member of the Congressional Committee on Human Rights, she is supposed to know and follow these laws.

As far as your rant on miscegenation, the Cherokee Nation certainly DOES NOT have such laws on the books and you know it. Thousands of citizens were and are intermarried with African-Americans and Black Cherokees ARE citizens now and will remain citizens. Virginia may have kept such laws on the books until 1963 but the Cherokees ended them a hundred years earlier. Loving has no relevance to Indian citizenship and to suggest that it does is nothing but racist propaganda.

Ed 8 R, (7/17/2008 12:05:03 PM)

Mr. Cornsilk is correct. The terms “Indian blood” and “one must have an Indian ancestor to be in an Indian Tribe” are new innovations of racism designed to sway public opinion far enough to allow the CNO to continue to violate the civil rights of Cherokee Citizens who are black. We hear from the leadership of the CNO that 500 or more Indian Tribes across the US require that every member be an Indian. This is an outright lie designed to sucker good people into believing that CNO is not acting according to their racial prejudice. The truth is that the Tribes or Native American Nations require that their members be descendants, by blood, of their Nation not “Indian.” There is a very important reason why the CNO insists on using the terminology “Indian” and “Indian blood” rather than Cherokee Blood. That is because the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma cannot restrict their membership to Cherokee by blood without violating the very constitutional and statutory laws they try to use to disenfranchise Cherokee Citizens that have a legal and undeniable claim to rights of CITIZENSHIP.

DT, (7/17/2008 5:23:41 PM)

Ed8R, you should check your facts because you don't know what you're talking about. The Cherokee constitution extends citizenship to Cherokee by blood, Delaware by blood and Shawnee by blood. Thus we require "Indian ancestry" because we are NOT limited to just Cherokee by blood. And before you claim that freedmen descendants have the same rights as Shawnees and Delawares, look it up. They don't.

Ed 8 R, (7/17/2008 6:38:03 PM)

The fact is that the CNO spokespersons desperately want to mix apples and oranges and say it is the same fruit. The Shawnee and Delaware are as different as German and Jew. To say that “Indians” have a more valid claim to citizenship in the Cherokee Nation than the Freedmen is totally racist. It is a fact that the Freedmen were recognized as citizens by the Cherokee Nation in 1863, again with the treaty of 1866, again on the Dawes roll, again when issued cards in the 1970s and again when the CNO Court ruled, in the 2006 Allen case, that Freedmen descendants were citizens before the 1975 constitution and still are now. It is foolish to argue about the valid claim of Freedmen citizenship. The only issue here is if the actions promoted by the CNO leadership striping Cherokee Citizens of their citizenship are legal.

Ed 8 R, (7/17/2008 7:07:38 PM)

Here are the laws DT misrepresented. As we can plainly see in both versions the Delaware and Shawnee are tagged by their Cherokee citizenship not blood.

1975 CNO constitution
Article III. Membership
Section 1. All members of the Cherokee Nation must be citizens as proven by references to the Dawes Commission Rolls, including the Delaware Cherokees of Article II of the Delaware Agreement dated the 8th day of May, 1867, and the Shawnee Cherokees as of Article III of the Shawnee Agreement dated the 9th day of June, 1869, and/or their descendants.
1999 CNO constitution

Article IV. Citizenship

Section 1. All citizens of the Cherokee Nation must be original enrollees or descendants of original enrollees listed on the Dawes Commission Rolls, including the Delaware Cherokees of
Article II of the Delaware Agreement dated the 8th day of May, 1867, and the Shawnee Cherokees of Article III of the Shawnee Agreement dated the 9th day of June, 1869, and/or their descendants. The Cherokee Nation recognizes the basic rights retained by all distinct People and groups affiliated with the Cherokee Nation, retained from time immemorial, to remain a separate and distinct People. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Cherokee-Shawnee or Delaware-Cherokee from pursuing their inherent right to govern themselves, provided that it does not diminish the boundaries or jurisdiction of the Cherokee Nation or conflict with Cherokee law.

Ed 8 R, (7/18/2008 11:08:02 AM)

Mr. Cornsilk, thank you for your informative response. I appreciate your considered effort to avoid violating the terms and conditions of this forum. As you can see, when you eliminate the unnecessary insults and inflammation your detractors are left with nothing to say in response. Keep up the good work and if anyone cares to see how you really feel about CNO they can go to your website.

Allen L. Lee, (7/19/2008 12:48:20 AM)

An additional observation about human rights and "The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" This declaration seems intended to address the rights of people who exist as non-centralized collectives existing with-in and between the boubaries of nations/states. It adressess "Peoples" as those who do not exist as citizens of self determined states which have centralized forms of government, like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and several other native nations recognized by the U.S.. Peoples such as those non-state tribes in the Sudan who are under attack by the state of Sudan are the ones intended to be addressed by this declaration. there are probably several Indigenous groups of people with-in the jurisdiction of the U.S. that would fit this collective non-centralized definition, but the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is definitely not one of them. The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has executive government officials, a tribal council serving as a legislature, and a much touted judicial system. The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is a well defined nation/state recognized as such under U.S. federal jurisdiction and not simply a non-centralized collective of tribal "peoples"
Allen L. Lee

Allen L. Lee, (7/23/2008 10:08:49 PM)

From Allen L. Lee
ear Editor,
re:"DT, (7/17/2008 10:44:15 AM)
Mr. Lee, I have seen you refer many times in your responses to the "human rights violations" of freedmen descendants by the Cherokee Nation. I challenge you to quote the international law which backs up your statements. "
It might be fairer to remove the challenge along with the response. As it stands now it appears that the challenge was not answered, though I have answered in three different posts, two of which were deleted. I understand if you can't post excerpts, but if a discussion calls for quotes, monitor both debaters equally,
Allen L. Lee