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After the recent historic change in the Cherokee constitution opening the door to Black Cherokee citizenship, the Choctaw Nation is now facing a fight pitting sovereignty against formal recognition for Choctaw Freedmen. The chief of the Choctaw Nation opposes proposed language in congressional legislation that would require the tribe to allow Freedmen enrollment. The bill is in response to Freedmen—descendants of slaves who also claim Choctaw heritage—who say they are denied citizenship because of their race. But Choctaw Chief Gary Batton says the tribe, not Congress, determines enrollment. We’ll get an update on the status of the ongoing Choctaw Freedmen issue.
Guests:
Marilyn Vann (Cherokee Nation) – president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association
Shelby Ward (Choctaw Freedman) – co-founder of the Oklahoma Freedmen Collective and Tennessee Representative for the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association
Break 1 music: Red Man Groove Thing (song) Anthony Wakeman & Aaron White (artist) Handprints Of Our People (album)
Break 2 music: The Unforgotten (Stars Mix) (song) Iskwé (artist) The Stars (album)
The Choctaw treaty of 1866 determined the citizenship status of their enslaved people of African descent. Just as congress never ended the reservation status of the Choctaw Nation established in the 1866 treaty, congress never has told the Choctaw chief he can put the Blacks out. He can’t have it both ways. He should be ashamed of his racist beliefs especially in 2021.
Enrollment in my tribe, the Oglala Lakota, is simple, just produce basic documentation to shown you are the descendant of an enrolled tribal member, it doesn’t matter your blood degree or any other heritage. In his June 2020 letter to Nancy Pelosi, Batton laid out enrollment criteria in no uncertain terms. What Waters wants is for the tribe to enroll people that don’t meet that simple criteria. Tribes decide who their members are and that you would call upon Congress to bully tribes into doing what you want proves you really care more about Blackness than the tribe. Black or not, if applicants meet criteria, they are enrolled. The enslavement of blacks was a legal reality when tribes first established treaty based relationships with Washington. The slaves of these tribal members have no more claim on the tribes than the slaves of the whites have on European culture. Tribes are sovereign nations and they determine their policies, not Washington. And if you advocate otherwise you are no friend of tribes and have a knife aimed at their collective backs.
I’m still amazed that the black admixture is so defined.BUT the white admixture is just Indian.
Why does the darker Indian have to clean as black Indians BUT nothing noting the WHITE Indian.
The Black admixture is defined across all social strata. Tribes did not create this nor do they perpetuate this. Much of the present mistrust of Black attempts to be tribally validated lies in the brazen culture theives that direct the Washitaw movement and spread the vile pseudoscience of Ivan Van Sertima.
It’s about by blood and no blood that’s the difference
Congress has no say and our people should have say in blood lines black or white everyone thinks is a black and white country but it’s not technically its a red country and everyone else is a immigrant so people say go back home to Latinos and others maybe they should take their advice and to to Europe, Ireland Asia or wherever their family came from but thats not feasible now is as a citizen of my nation I’m so sick of hearing this to be a issue my grandmother use to say it’s not the blood that makes u native it’s ur heart