HR 2824 Seeks To Punish The Cherokee Nation
H.R. 2824: To sever United States’ government relations with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma
To sever United States’ government relations with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma until such time as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma restores full tribal citizenship to the Cherokee Freedmen disenfranchised in the March 3, 2007, Cherokee Nation vote and fulfills all its treaty obligations with the Government of the United States, and for other purposes.
This is just shameful, and it makes me furious. Not only because my closest friend is Cherokee, but because it is just low. Earlier this year the Cherokee Nation voted to limit citizenship to those with Indian ancestors on the Dawes Roll. This wasn’t done out of hand, or without much thought and deliberation. It was what they thought was right and fair. They are a sovereign nation who have been governing themselves for centuries, with far more intelligence and dignity than has been granted to them by the United States.
Hasn’t this country done enough to the First Nations?
We can’t change the fact that when the first immigrants began arriving in the now United States that the sheer numbers of them succeeded in pushing the tribes out of their traditional lands and treating them very, very poorly. The concept of manifest destiny spread from coast to coast and touched all native peoples. Our ancestors told themselves it was “for the good of the country” and sent the Indians to live in places they would not live themselves. They took advantage of the Indian’s naivete and to this day would have them live in poverty and squalor. No one ever says it, but in my mind the whole purpose was to just erase them from this earth.
Now, we have a House Resolution to punish the Cherokee, one of the largest and strongest Indian nations in our country for choosing to govern as they see best. (Full text of the bill; and here are the current sponsors). After you read and get the gist of this bill, please do read the Assembly of First Nations press release dated 13 Dec 2007.
Contact your elected officials and take action to tell them you are against this interference in the civil and Tribal Courts. The link above will let you send an email to them, or a printed copy.
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My Hawaiian neighbors and their ancestors have received equally shameful treatment from our government. Manifest Destiny? More like manifest greed, institutionalized.
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skeet’s last blog post..Four Foods on Friday
That’s all it comes down to Skeet, greed. Most of the woes of the world seem to revolve around it. That and power. I was thinking of your Hawaiian neighbors too when I was writing the post. We act shamefully to our own indigenous people and then try to condemn other nations. What a bunch of pucky.
We saw a show on PBS in the P.O.V. series on Alex White Plume an Indian hemp farmer in South Dakota. I hate linking but this show aired back in July, here is the PBS link http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2007/standing/. If you get a chance it is a really good show. They were going broke and started farming hemp for clothing and other things, then they started getting raided by the FBI because the government considers hemp to fall in with marijuana. We come in and take all of their land and then harass them.
As I was watching the weather channel this week while we were in sunny southern CA they were announcing how cold it was in Montana. Imagine how cold it is when you live in poverty forced on you like the Indians, and your residence doesn’t have even an adequate heat source. Worrying about someone growing hemp is just ludicrous when they should be more concerned with their well-being.
I am a Cherokee Nation citizen and have been working hard advocating for the many citizens that live in extreme poverity in the Nation. By extreme poverty I mean houses with dirt floors and no running water. CNO brings in millions upon millions from casino revenue and recieves approx. 300 million from the fedral government and we still have people living in third world conditions. Federal funds are not being used to help the poorest of the poor and it needs to stop. The Freedmen were given citizenship through the 1866 treaty. Our Cherokee Nation supreme court ruled in favor of the Freedmen. Less than 3% voted to illegally disenroll the Freedmen. The Cherokee Nation has long been a tribe who excepted non bloods into their tribe for over 200 years. Look at Nancy Ward she married a white man. These people were given Cherokee names and treated like excepted members of the tribe. They were never about blood quantum. It is not congress that is doing my Nation wrong it is the Leaders of the Nation doing wrong to thier own people, which makes it 100 times worse! By the way, I have actually seen all this poverty with my own eyes, I traveled in rural areas through washed out gravel roads and met Elders who got their drinking water from creeks and had outside bathrooms. It is really sad.