Cedric Sunray on the Attacks on Non Federally Recognized Tribes, Supported by Gaming Tribes

Cedric Sunray has an interesting (and long, there is more after the jump) piece on tribes that are not federally recognized.  We recently published on the Juaneno's that are having a problem with recognition.   Recognition can take 20 years. And disenrollments?  43 Federally recognized tribes have disenrolled their own tribal members within the last 10 years.  All run gaming enterprises  And don't you think tribes don't want MORE tribes to be recognized, so they can't open competing casinos?

From Cedric Sunray:

Here is brief narrative for those who do not have time to visit the site.  I thank you for supporting social justice and integrity.

Let us start it with a quote that guides my life. The quote comes from Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

At the last two National Congress of American Indians gatherings members of historic tribes such as the Lumbee and MOWA Choctaw, amongst others, told the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma clearly that their days of running around the country acting like Indian Identity Police are over.

In an article entitled, “Reconciling moral outrage with self-determination” in Indian Country Today on March 9, 2007, Keweenaw Bay Ojibwe Sheryl Lightfoot (Chair of the American Indian Policy Center, St. Paul, Minnesota) went directly at the moral injustice being perpetrated by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She expressed a way that we all can deal with this. “

Another tactic which can be employed by other indigenous nations or the private citizens of other nations is the art of moral persuasion, or ‘moral suasion,’ as it has also been termed. This involves a campaign of exposure and embarrassment. This tactic has most often been employed in international human rights campaigns, with the purpose being to expose the immoral government action in the media and open up international discussion in order to embarrass the target government into changing its policy to better conform to international norms. This was done in the early days of the campaign against apartheid in South Africa and has been used often by groups like Amnesty International to urge governments to stop human rights abuses. Finally, follow the money. Those of us who find the actions of the sovereign Cherokee Nation disturbing or morally questionable also have some economic options…”

Certain members of the leadership of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma have made it their duty to play God to the identity of others with the belief that they will never be “found out” themselves. But now they are crumbling, falling back on their heels, and looking to once again change their words to sound good to a new audience who have not encountered them in the near past. There is nothing worse than people who create monsters and then attempt to walk away or act like they were never present when things go bad. A few years back the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma developed a “Task Force” to combat the validity of anyone or any tribe which is not federally-recognized. They simply went too far when instead of producing civil dialogue, they attempted to belittle and make fun of “non-federal” or “unrecognized” tribal people and communities. In an article entitled, “Indian identity remains in question”, which addressed issues at the 2008 State of Sequoyah Commission’s annual conference, members of the Task Farce’s actions (as I more appropriately renamed them; read on and find out why) where relayed, “Poteete and other panelists jokingly adopted such ‘wannabe’ names as ‘Chief flies High and Eats Pie’, ‘Chief Talks Trash’, ‘Princess Dream Catcher’, and ‘Princess Buffalo Wings”. One of the Cherokee council members Cara Cowan-Watts stated, “We would like to make impersonation of a tribe, or a tribal citizen, a felony”.

Cherokee Tribe Get Ruling to Keep Screwing Cherokee Freedmen, the Descendents of Cherokee Slaves

Tribal citizenship applications from Cherokee freedmen descendants will not be processed yet, a tribal district court judge ruled Friday.

Judge John Cripps, who ruled last month that the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma had to accept applications from freedmen descendants disenfranchised by a March 2007 citizenship referendum, ruled in favor of the tribe’s request to extend a temporary injunction against processing new applications from the affected group.

The approximately 2,800 freedmen descendants who were tribal citizens before the referendum’s passage will still retain all rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
To date, the Cherokee Nation has received about 3,500 applications from freedmen descendants. The tribe is still accepting applications but will not begin to process them until after the tribe’s Supreme Court rules on the matter.

The temporary injunction was issued in 2007 after the referendum’s passage. With Friday’s ruling, it is extended through the end of the appeals process

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20110218_11_0_TAHLEQ629568

Cherokee Officials Ask Supreme Court to Again Strip Cherokee Freedmen's Citizenship

Cherokee Nation officials on Jan. 25 filed an appeal in the tribe’s Supreme Court asking it to reverse a lower court decision that reaffirmed Cherokee Freedmen rights to CN citizenship. They obviously believe that stripping thousands of descendents of their slave, they brought as property on the Trail of Tears, from their citizenships is a good thing.

Judge John Cripps’ ruling affirmed the citizenship status of approximately 2,800 Cherokee Freedmen descendants who regained citizenship based on a CN Supreme Court ruling in 2006.

In his ruling, Cripps wrote that the CN has entered into agreements or treaties with other nations and that in some instances those nations failed to honor their agreements and treaties, which resulted in loss and harm to Cherokee people.

“Various courts, including the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court, thereafter affirmed the Freedmen’s admission in the same manner as Cherokee citizens of Cherokee blood. As a result of the above actions and rulings, the Freedmen were included on the Dawes Commission Rolls,” Cripps wrote. “The Cherokee Constitutional Amendment of March 3, 2007, by virtue of the provisions of the Treaty of 1866 and subsequent actions taken in furtherance thereof are hereby determined to be void as a matter of law.”

Related Stories    NAACP  Cherokee Chief Chad Smith in  Hall of Shame     More NAACP Support

Cherokees Donate $50,000 to Barack Obama's Inauguration. Council UNINFORMED of the Donation

It LOOKS like the Cherokee Nation is trying to curry favor from the new President. Could it be a ploy to get special consideration in their case against their Cherokee Freedmen brothers and sisters? The issue will be brought up before the new Congress.

The Cherokee Nation has made the maximum donation allowed to President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration committee. Spokesman Mike Miller says the tribe hopes the $50,000 donation sends a message to Obama's administration that the tribe wants to be involved with any possible policy development. OP: Yeah, buying involvement....

The Cherokees were the only entity in Oklahoma to make the maximum donation. The next largest donation from the state was a $25,000 gift from Oklahoma Democratic Party finance chief Reggie Whitten of Edmond. No one else in the state donated more than $500 to the inauguration. Miller says such donations are determined by Chief Chad Smith and the tribal council.

CURIOUS UPDATE: The Council DID NOT Authorize it?

A $50,000 donation made by the business arm of the Cherokee Nation to the inauguration fund of President-elect Barack Obama did not receive authorization by the tribe’s council and many council members were unaware of the donation until seeing news accounts of it or after receiving phone calls from constituents, the TULSA WORLD has learned.