I will start off by stating that even though I "forcefully" removed myself from Kentucky Indian Affairs I will still from time to time write about the subject. After all you never stop being Native American.
The hypocrisy of folks who participate in Indian affairs was one of the main reasons I completely quit and I will never go back. One of the first issues a politically active Native American, recognized federally or by a state entity or not, will raise is the countless number of treaties the United States of American violated. Now we have a clear cut treaty issue in the Cherokee Nation and what are the Cherokee doing mind you? Violating a treaty, even though that treaty may be around 150 years old, it is still a treaty violation.
The issue stems from the Cherokee Freedmen, descendants from Cherokee slaves who were granted full Cherokee citizenship rights after the Civil War. The treaty says what it says, it guarantees the descendantsof these freed slaves "full" citizenship rights. Recently the Cherokee Supreme Court stripped the Cherokee Freedmen of their citizenship rights. The war over Freedmen rights has been waging for near 3 decades but this may be THE end game to the fight.
The first thing someone finds out when they deal with Indian genealogy is that 90% of the people who "claim" to have Native American blood will "claim" Cherokee blood. I always tried to tell them the truth that your "Full Blooded" Cherokee Great Grandmother was not a full blood and likely not a Cherokee. Most of the time people listened and wanted to know the truth but they always held those family storiesclose to their hearts and never stopped believing that Full Blooded Cherokee Grandmother story. Well I call on all those people, and others with Native American blood, to publicly denounce the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma for their actions with regard to the Freedmen issue. Stop buying their merchandise, stop supporting them in every way.
If you want to scream "Treaty, Treaty, Treaty" you cannot operate under the conditions of "do as I say not as I do", it's hypocritical and likely criminal. I expect a huge fight over this and this issue will likely lead to other more dangerous issues like national sovereignty for the Cherokee Nation. Which they do not have in the least. Like a person always told me; if the FBI has jurisdiction on your reservation then you do not have national sovereignty, its a bad joke...
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