The Cherokee Nation Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the tribal nation is removing the phrase “by blood” from its constitution and other tribal laws. That change formally recognizes that the descendants of black people who were once enslaved by the tribe – known as the Cherokee Freedmen – have the right to tribal citizenship, meaning they qualify for tribal office and have access to resources such as tribal healthcare.
The recent Cherokee Nation Supreme Court decision is in response to a 2017 U.S. district court ruling that the descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen are entitled to full tribal rights under a treaty the Cherokee Nation concluded with the Cherokee Nation in 1866. US has closed. .
“The rights of freedmen are inherent,” Cherokee Nation Supreme Court Judge Shawna S. Baker wrote in the opinion. “They extend to the descendants of Freedmen as a birthright resulting from the oppression and displacement of their ancestors such as people of color that are enshrined and commemorated in Article 9 of the 1866 Convention.”
The history of the Cherokee Freedmen exemplifies how complex and layered issues of race, inequality, and marginalization are in the US.
Many Native Americans were enslaved alongside African Americans during the colonial period – Brown University historian Linford D. Fisher estimates that 2 million to 5.5 million Native people were enslaved from the time of Christopher Columbus to about 1880.
But some wealthier tribesmen, especially in Southeastern tribes who had adopted certain standards of white settlers, also practiced slavery themselves. So are the Cherokee people, some of whom began enslaving African Americans in the early 1800s.
Then, in the late 1830s, the US government forcibly expelled the Cherokee from their homeland and ordered them to move to what is now Oklahoma – an exodus known as the Trail of Tears. However, what is not so widely known is that enslaved African Americans made the journey along with the Cherokee citizens who enslaved them.
According to the National Museum of the American Indian, by 1861, approximately 4,000 enslaved black people were living among the Cherokee people.
The tribe abolished slavery in 1863. And shortly after the end of the Civil War, the Cherokee Nation signed a treaty with the US government granting full citizenship rights to those previously enslaved by Cherokee citizens.
But in practice, Freedmen were often denied and excluded from the tribe, Lolita Buckner Inniss wrote in a 2015 article in the Columbia Journal of Race and Law. Over the decades, Cherokee Freedmen have fought to protect those rights through various legal processes.
Freedmen have long been fighting to protect their rights
In 2007, the Cherokee Nation amended its constitution to limit pedigree citizenship to people with ‘Indian blood’. That expelled about 2,800 Cherokee Freedmen descendants from the tribe, the National Museum of the American Indian States website says.
Chad Smith, the chief leader of the Cherokee Nation at the time, argued that the tribe was a sovereign nation and should therefore have the right to determine who qualifies for pedigree citizenship. But the Freedmen pushed back, resulting in a series of legal battles over the next decade.
In 2017, a federal district court ruled in favor of the Freedmen – a decision that the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court has now reaffirmed.
“The ‘by blood’ language found in the Cherokee Nation Constitution, and all the laws that flow from it, are illegal, obsolete and repugnant to the ideal of freedom,” Baker wrote in the recent opinion. “These words insult and humiliate the Freedman’s descendants, much like the Jim Crow laws that lingered on the books in the Southern states about fifty-seven years after the expiration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. praised the decision.
“Cherokee Nation is stronger as we as citizens move forward together and on an equal footing under the law,” he said in a statement Monday. “… The court recognized in the strongest terms our ancestors’ commitment to equality 155 years ago in the 1866 Convention. I hope we will all share in that same commitment in the future.”
According to a press release from the tribe, approximately 8,500 of Freedmen’s descendants are currently enrolled as citizens of the Cherokee Nation.
