#indian tribes

[krishdesgin]

[tani-b-art]

Muscogee court affirms citizenship for descendants of people enslaved by tribe

Muscogee (Creek) Nation had earlier argued that only lineal descendants of tribe qualified for citizenship

In a landmark decision, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation supreme court ruled that Rhonda Grayson and Jeffrey Kennedy, two descendants of people who were once enslaved by the tribe, are entitled to tribal citizenship.

The court ruled on Wednesday that the Muscogee Nation’s citizenship board violated a 1866 treaty in denying Grayson and Kennedy’s 2019 application for enrollment. At the time, the citizenship board argued that the descendants should be denied because they could not identify lineal descendants of the tribe.

Grayson, who is the founder and director of the Oklahoma Indian Territory Museum of Black Creek Freedmen History, and Kennedy are descendants of the Creek Freedmen, people who were enslaved by the Muscogee Nation. They can trace their lineage back to people who are on the Dawes Rolls, a list that identifies people from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole tribes. Grayson’s and Kennedy’s ancestors are also listed on the Freedmen Roll, but not the Muscogee Roll. This discrepancy is how the tribal citizenship board previously justified denying Grayson’s and Kennedy’s applications for enrollment.

However, the court ruled unanimously this week that such a decision was in violation of the Muscogee Nation’s laws. “Are we, as a Nation, bound to treaty promises made so many years ago?” the court wrote. “Today, we answer in the affirmative, because this is what Mvskoke law demands.” According to the ruling, any future applicant who can trace their ancestry to someone on either roll will be eligible for enrollment.

The decision comes after the Muscogee Nation attorney general, Geri Wisner, appealed a 2023 ruling by district judge Denette Mouser in favor of Grayson and Kennedy.

A sordid history

Until an 1866 treaty with the US government, which addressed the status of people of African descent who lived among the south-eastern Indigenous nations, the Muscogee Nation, along with the four other south-eastern tribes in Oklahoma, enslaved Black people. With the abolition of slavery, laid out in the treaty, the nation granted citizenship to the people it had once enslaved.

Many of those who were enslaved by Indigenous nations were also forced to participate in the Trail of Tears, named for the suffering and death that thousands of Indigenous people and the Black people among them experienced when the US removed them from their lands to facilitate the expansion of settlers. The Trail of Tears is considered to have been an act of genocide.

In Mouser’s decision, she acknowledged the shared history of Freedmen and the people who enslaved them, noting that the enslaved people often spoke the tribal language and participated in ceremonies.

“The families later known as Creek Freedmen likewise walked the Trail of Tears alongside the tribal clans and fought to protect the new homeland upon arrival in Indian Territory,” she wrote. “During that time, the Freedmen families played significant roles in tribal government including as tribal town leaders in the House of Kings and House of Warriors.”

But, almost a century later, the relationship became more fraught.

In 1979, the Muscogee Nation adopted a constitution that restricted membership to only those who could identify themselves as descendants of people listed as “Muscogee (Creek) Indians by blood” on the Dawes Rolls.

Today, the Cherokee Nation and the Seminole Nation grant citizenship to people who were enslaved by members of the tribe, though citizenship in the latter nation is not entirely equal. The Freedmen citizens in the Seminole Nation cannot run for higher office or access tribal housing or education assistance.

In the fight for enrollment and citizenship, Freedmen groups across the five nations have been created.

“While this victory honors our past, it also offers a meaningful opportunity for healing and reconciliation,” said Grayson in a statement to the Associated Press. “It’s time now to come together, rebuild trust, and move forward as one united Nation, ensuring future generations never again face exclusion or erasure.”

Let me say this — Beyoncé and her honoring the Buffalo Soldiers technically has nothing to do with this but the type of work she’s done this year with her cultural album, it’s a spiritual realignment that works in tandem! Her work along with so many other FBA artists…this is the result of years and years and years of OUR work! Reparative Justice!

Make no mistake, there is still more work to do but this start is a necessary.

Renaissance of a year and more to follow. Justice.

*Also, with the language of this article and if the ruling may have similar terminology, the terms used with Indigenous here makes it seem as though being Indigenous and Black are mutually exclusive and they are not. Black and Indigenous does describe many of our ancestors that were here before colonization and chattel slavery. And with the words African and people of color, the above applies to a certain degree as well. But that’s a deeper and separate topic.

[derekpadron]

I Support and Agree with the Native American Indian Communities and Tribes here in the Americas, including New Mexico. It is Horrifying that White Republican Conservative Christians such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Rick Scott, Donald Trump, and George W Bush are holding us All as Hostages to White Colonialism, stripping away the Rights and Liberties of the Native American People, and of my Zen Buddhist Rights and Liberties as well as those of our fellow Hindus, Taoists, Shintos, Confucianists, and other Minority Religious Groups in the World as the White European Christians have been invading and occupying now Buddha's Birthplace in Nepal near India and China, in China, in Vietnam, in Japan, and in the Philippines, while losing All of Our Tax Cuts for Foods Companies, Agribusinesses, Apartment Rents, Clothing Stores, Pharmacies, and other Healthcare Businesses and Manufacturers to Disintegration in which the Republicans threaten us Buddhists and other minorities in Exchange for losing Everyones' Tax Cuts! Focus on Tax Cuts for Important Things like Foods, Housing, Rents, Healthcares, and more and let People Be Respected and Allowed to Meditate with and Hug Trees in Public Parks, Public Libraries, and College and University Campuses we pay taxes for that block US from meditating and hugging our own Trees in our own Homes' Backyards! Lower Rents for Religious Freedoms! Remove the Spaniard Conquistador and Confederate Statues! 🌳🧘🏻‍♂️🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻🧘🏿‍♂️🧘🏽‍♂️🧘🏾‍♀️🧘🏼‍♀️🧘‍♂️🧘‍♀️🧘🏼‍♂️🌳🌏🌎🌤️🪐✨

[joineryjack]

This report places the Federal Indian boarding school system in its historical context, explaining that the United States established this system as part ofa broader objective to dispossess Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and the Native Hawaiian Community oftheir territories to support the expansion ofthe United States. The Federal Indian boarding school policy was intentionally targeted at American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children to assimilate them and, consequently, take their territories. I believe that this historical context is important to understanding the intent and scale o f the Federal Indian boarding school system, and why it persisted for 150 years.

[sourabha]

The London Jungle Book

What a brilliant piece of art published by the amazing Tara Books. Bhajju Shyam’s (of the Gond tribe) casual way of understanding the profundity of life’s little details revels in its innocence – an innocence bold in not knowing it itself exists so – new feeling I’m trying to understand because of him. And his paintings that stay so resolutely rooted in the Gond style and exploring freely…

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[ratleyland]

Howling at The Moon.

[callofthemacabre]

(Source)

[ebonetnoir]

The Indians of North America, Religious Tract Society, Illustrated, c1860