Cherokees vote on tribal membership of their freed slaves' descendants

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -- Cherokee Nation citizenship was at stake Saturday in an election to determine whether descendants of people the Cherokee once owned as slaves should be counted as members of the tribe.

An estimated 45,000 Cherokee were registered to vote in the election, with 30 polling places opened across northeastern Oklahoma.

The election resulted from a petition drive aimed at limiting citizenship to descendants of "by blood" tribe members as listed on the federal Dawes Commission's rolls from more than 100 years ago.

That commission, set up by a Congress bent on breaking up Indians' collective lands and parceling them out to tribal citizens, drew up two rolls, one listing Cherokees by blood and the other listing freedmen, a roll of blacks regardless of whether they had Indian blood.

A "yes" vote on the amendment would remove descendants of freed slaves -- estimated to be about 2,800 -- from the tribe's membership. A "no" vote would allow them to remain tribal citizens.

Some opponents of the ballot question argued that attempts to remove freedmen from the tribe were motivated by racism.

"I think there are some people associated with this [ballot measure] who continue with the falsehood that freedmen were forced upon the tribe and do not have Indian ancestry," said Marilyn Vann, president of the Oklahoma City-based Descendants of Freedmen of Five Civilized Tribes. "They make it sound like the tribe will be doomed if these people aren't cast out. They're taking away the rights of people."

Tribal officials said the vote was a matter of self-determination.

"The importance of the vote today is that it gives the Cherokee people the opportunity to decide the citizenship of their nation," tribal spokesman Mike Miller said. "There's rhetoric on both sides of the issue, but it's important that the Cherokee people themselves decide."

The petition drive followed a March 2006 ruling by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court that said an 1866 treaty assured freedmen descendants of tribal citizenship. Since then, more than 2,000 freedmen descendants have enrolled as citizens of the tribe.

Court challenges by freedmen descendants seeking to stop the election were denied, but a federal judge left open the possibility that the case could be refiled if Cherokees voted to lift their membership rights.