Freedmen Controversy

In one of my earlier blog posts, I touched on the Freedmen Controversy and gave my very rough analysis of the situation. After meeting with the Freedmen, I feel that I need to add a bit to my previous ideas.

First of all, any question about the Freedmen's sincerity about tribal membership was cleared up, at least in my opinion. Those Freedmen descendents I spoke to--and I had a pretty lengthy conversation over dinner with Marilyn Vann and one of her colleagues--seemed to want acceptance in the Cherokee Nation as a sort of validation or recognition of their own heritage. The accusation that they simply want tribal benefits, or that they don't have any sense of belonging to the Cherokee Nation strikes me as patently ridiculous after my conversation with them. Several of those who spoke with us became visibly emotional when speaking about their heritage--one woman's voice got shaky when she told me that all she wanted was to understand where she had come from and to have some sense of belonging to the Nation. I've never known that kind of emotion to be motivated by anything other than sincerity.

Also, Marilyn Vann made me much more aware of the other side of the tribal sovereignty argument. Though the official CN government position is that the federal government should not be in the business of determining tribal membership, the flip side is that revoking Freedmen citizenship is a pretty flagrant violation of the 1866 treaty with the United States. The Coates course left me with the distinct impression that the Cherokee Nation bases its legal claim to sovereignty on its treaties with the US, so for the modern CN government to violate a US treaty could potentially jeopardize the CN's legal status, or even threaten tribal sovereignty in general. That seems like a pretty dangerous game to be playing for so little benefit.

Some of Vann's other arguments were a bit more colorful. She has made allegations of significant voter fraud in the Cherokee Nation electoral process. She told me that while circulating the petition to launch the referendum, CN officials misled signers about the document they were signing, etc. She also claimed that the CN does not purge its voter rolls and that votes in the referendum were cast by people who have been dead for decades. Now, I try to view things with a healthy dose of cynicism, but these sorts of allegations seem a bit over the top. Without any documentary evidence--or even stronger eyewitness/word-of-mouth evidence--it probably would be irresponsible to believe that. However, the amendment referendum is of significant interest to me, and I would be interested in sorting out the different versions of events. The motivation behind the referendum and the circumstances surrounding the vote are still a little hazy for me, and I have no doubt that there's more to it than what I know and have heard.