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Column: Cherokee voters say ‘yes’ to self-righteous racism

By Tommy Felts
COFFEYVILLE JOURNAL (COFFEYVILLE, Kan.)

COFFEYVILLE, Kan. —

A victim of one the worst chapters in American history, the Cherokee Nation
has lost its moral high ground.

On Saturday, Cherokee voters revoked the tribal citizenship of descendents
of black slaves — people whose lineage and history have been interwoven
with the American Indian tribe since the earliest days of the United
States.

By a vote of more than 3 to 1, members of the Cherokee Nation —
headquartered in Tahlequah, Okla. — adopted an amendment to their
constitution that excludes “Freedmen” (referring to those descended from
slaves once owned by the Cherokee, as well as blacks who were married to
Cherokees and children of mixed-race families) from the tribe’s rolls.

In a dangerous and grotesque turn of events, it seems the Freedmen’s blood
isn’t pure enough for the Cherokee.

Why, after so many years, does it matter? The answer is one part greed, one
part racism.

The rapidly growing Cherokee Nation, said to be the second-largest tribe
behind the Navajo (1,000 new citizens are enrolled every month), is
dependent on a number of special benefits provided by the U.S. government
and tribal gaming revenues — including medical and housing aid, as well as
scholarships. The more members, the fewer resources available to the
tribe’s members. Cherokee leaders were faced with a dilemma: How could they
maintain or better the quality of life for their people?

The answer they came up with was to redefine exactly who their people are.
Cutting loose the Freedmen — who, some estimate, number in the thousands —
was apparently an easy choice for those that voted, judging by the
landslide results (77 percent in favor of expulsion) of the special
election this weekend. Chad Smith, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation,
actually bragged that voter turnout for the controversial constitutional
amendment (the sole issue on the ballot) was unusually high — a fact that
merely compounds the sad tragedy that has befallen the Freedmen.

But perhaps the bigger tragedy is the disgusting hypocrisy of today’s
Cherokee Nation.

These are people whose ancestors were forced from their land, denied civil
rights and treated as worthless dregs, unfit for life within the new
society. With their stunning vote last weekend, the Cherokee have put their
black and “mixed-race” brethren on a path toward the same fate. While the
Freedmen are appealing the election’s results, they will soon be a people
without a cultural identity, shunned by their fellow Cherokee — members of
a group once proudly known as one of the Five Civilized Tribes.

“This is a sad chapter in Cherokee history,” Taylor Keen, a Cherokee tribal
council member who opposed the amendment, told The New York Times. “But
this is not my Cherokee Nation. My Cherokee Nation is one that honors all
parts of her past.”

In a news release, the tribe’s principal chief extolled the virtues of the
election’s outcome.

“The Cherokee people exercised the most basic democratic right, the right
to vote,” Smith said. “Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of
the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to make that determination.
It was a right of self-government, affirmed in 23 treaties with Great
Britain and the United States and paid dearly with 4,000 lives on the Trail
of Tears.’’

So, by Smith’s logic, could one suppose that the United States government
would have been morally right in victimizing America’s native population if
they had put the issue to a vote first? That’s about as ridiculous a notion
as saying the government has earned the right to revoke the citizenship of
all blacks because of the price we paid in the attack at Pearl Harbor. As
cliched as it might be, two wrongs still don’t make a right.

American Indians have long presented their pre-European-influenced
civilizations as simple, nearly-utopian communities — societies built on
cooperation, sharing and peace. When we shake off the yoke of political
correctness, we will recall that such recollections are not exactly
accurate. Indian tribes were like all other groups of humans — they
brutally battled among themselves and with their neighbors. The idea that
they, along with their modern counterparts, were — and are still today —
somehow inherently more enlightened and spiritually-superior to the rest of
us is a fallacy perpetuated by white guilt and opportunists seeking to
re-write history.

Remember that the majority of today’s Freedmen are descendents of slaves
held by the Cherokee — one of several tribes that sided with the
Confederates during the Civil War. After the war, the Freedmen were only
freed and later admitted to the tribe because the federal government made
it mandatory.

History, as well as the recent election, shows that the Cherokee are as
fallible and susceptible to greed and prejudice as the rest of us. All
civilizations are prone to monumental mistakes, but such self-righteous
racism and greed disguised as self-determination are traits that should be
met with our disgust.

Tommy Felts writes for the Coffeyville (Kan.) Journal.

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