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 ...
Where I grew up, in northwestern NC, nearly all people, black or white, had documented or legendary Cherokee ancestry. It's a shame that it sounds so much like old-school segregationist talk, but I suspect there's an attempted money-grab going on behind the scenes. They're within their rights to determine who belongs to their tribe and nation, regardless of how it sounds to us, or what we think, imho.
"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."
Bondage was legal and largely accepted, in most of the world, prior to the early 1800's. We fought a lethal, bloody war, that left half the country at that time in shreds, with the ultimate end result being the end of legal human bondage in this country, regardless of the precise whys and hows at the start of the war. However, it's still legal and practiced in fairly large areas of the planet to this day. In North America, whites enslaved blacks and Indians, Indians enslaved blacks and whites, blacks enslaved blacks and Indians. I can't speak to Mexicans, because I am not as familiar with the history of the southwest, but they are human, too, so I'm sure they practiced slavery, just as everybody else did. It happened. Sanitizing history doesn't do anybody any good, in the long run.
The Brazilians had black and Indian slaves, too. In Sao Paolo there's a statue commemorating the settlers who opened the Brazilian "West." Some of the figures are clearly Black or Indian. I was surprised that they were so open about the history of their country.
Brazil didn't abolish slavery until sometime in the 1880's
I'm part Cherokee, although through marriage and not slavery. I had been under the impression that one need only have a certain percentage of heritage to be considered a tribal member...this seems to imply 100% pure blood is required...or am I misreading this?
There needs to be outrage against somebody for this! Who do we rage against?
Suddenly they don't have a problem with a broken treaty?
How long did those treaties usually last in the 1800's?
Sounds like the Cherokee nation owes money in reparations. Better dontate every other slot machine to repay the debt.
You must know by now that factual information is no longer appreciated or even heeded on Free Republic.
Unless you are on the MSM bandwagon one way or another, FR seems a very strange place to be.
Why do you say "heehee?"
There are no tribes among American Indians. They each call themselves a Nation, hence Cherokee Nation, Iroquoi Nation, Crow Nation, etcetera. Or, they are simply the People, such as the Lakota People. The Navajo word that translates to People is Dine. They call themselves simply Dine (Dinay).
The Navajo and the Hopi have clans within their nations. I don't know how each of the other Nations are organized, but this is the little bit that I know.
More WayPo poopoo, huh? FReepers can't seem to get enough of it these days.
I guess this article would fall under the "divide and conquer" section of the leftist agenda.
Private joke between my friend and me. :)
Yup, I also could care less what the Cherokee Nation decides to do. It's their business. But ferreting out this little tidbit and broadcasting it as a "story" suits the WayPoo agenda.
That's pretty sad. Is it correct to assume that reservations are not subject to Federal laws regarding equal rights etc?
Potawatomi....of which I am one.
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