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Lawmaker wants to eliminate funding for Cherokee Nation

 
By Chris Casteel | Published: June 22, 2007   

WASHINGTON — A California congresswoman introduced legislation Thursday that would sever U.S. relations with the Cherokee Nation unless the descendants of freed slaves are allowed to remain as members of the tribe.

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Rep. Diane Watson, who is black and a Democrat, wrote the bill three months after Cherokees voted to exclude the descendants of Freedmen, touching off a controversy and reviews by the tribe, the Bush administration and a federal court.

Watson said a treaty signed by the Cherokees with the United States in 1866 says unequivocally that the Freedmen — the descendants of slaves owned by Cherokees before the Civil War — were citizens with all the rights of Cherokees. The tribe has, until this year, treated the descendants of those slaves as full members.

She said Thursday, "It particularly pains me, over 40 years after the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act, that legislation has to be introduced to compel the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma to recognize the basic civil rights of the Cherokee Freedmen.

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Related Topics: Law, Politics, Social Issues, U.S. Politics, World Politics, Constitutional Law, Native American Issues, Civil Rights, Indigenous Issues, Crime and Law, Government and Politics

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