Posted on 03/03/2007 9:06:01 AM PST by rabidralph
VINITA, Okla. -- J.D. Baldridge, 73, has official government documents showing him to be a descendant of a full-blood Cherokee. He has memories of a youth spent among Cherokee neighbors and kin, at tribal stomp dances and hog fries. He holds on to a fair amount of Cherokee vocabulary. " Salali," Baldridge says, his face creasing into a smile at the word. "Squirrel stew. Oh, that was good."
What Baldridge, a retired Oklahoma county sheriff, also has is at least one black ancestor, a former slave of a Cherokee family. That could get Baldridge cast out of the tribe, along with thousands of others.
The 250,000-member Cherokee Nation will vote in a special election today whether to override a 141-year-old treaty and change the tribal constitution to bar "freedmen," the descendants of former tribal slaves, from being members of the sovereign nation.
"It's a basic, inherent right to determine our own citizenry. We paid very dearly for those rights," Cherokee Principal Chief Chad Smith said in an interview last month in Oklahoma City.
But the Cherokee freedmen see the vote as less about self-determination than about discrimination and historical blinders. They see in the referendum hints of racism and a desire by some Cherokees to deny the tribe's slave-owning past.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
SNIP...Advocates of expelling the freedmen call it a matter of safeguarding tribal resources, which include a $350 million annual budget from federal and tribal revenue, and Cherokees' share of a gambling industry that, for U.S. tribes overall, takes in $22 billion a year. The grass-roots campaign for expulsion has given heavy play to warnings that keeping freedmen in the Cherokee Nation could encourage thousands more to sign up for a slice of the tribal pie.
"Don't get taken advantage of by these people. They will suck you dry," Darren Buzzard, an advocate of expelling the freedmen, wrote last summer in a widely circulated e-mail denounced by freedmen. "Don't let black freedmen back you into a corner. PROTECT CHEROKEE CULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN. FOR OUR DAUGHTER[S] . . . FIGHT AGAINST THE INFILTRATION."
End of SNIP
Read the rest of the story here
Cherokee Nation huh?!! heehee
Chad Smith?
Chief Chad Smith?
"It's a basic, inherent right to determine our own citizenry. "
It would be nice if the USA would adopt that principle, and start expelling people whose ideology includes killing us.
I had no idea about all this. I'd really like to know what they do with the $22B and the all our tax money, while Indians are dirt poor and have so many social problems.
Yes, it's funny that all other nations are proud to be pure but only America is concerned with multiculturalism.
Nice, I guess that this is the way of increasing their profit share huh?
Agreed! Lefties will go into full meltdown mode over this, wondering who to support. Pass the popcorn.....;)
I know where Jesse Jackson will fall, but what about Ward Churchill?
Yup... gonna' be a lot of lib hand-wringing and brow-furrowing goin' on over this.
"I know where Jesse Jackson will fall, but what about Ward Churchill?"
***
What about the ghost of Will Rogers?
Sounds like they're taking lessons from Mr Farrakhan and La Raza.
Follow the money...
Just so you know the whole story, many many Indians were slaves also to white men and Mexican families. I have documentation to this but of course all of you already know it but just don't mention it.
I say, Son, there's too much infiltratin' goin' on round 'chere!
Some of those people are... freaks. They even got in the Bush-Bash.
Lefties will just bury the story and refuse to didcuss it
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