MuskogeePhoenix.com, Muskogee, OK

Editorials

Discussion

June 4, 2007

Nation must follow BIA

The Cherokee Nation’s dispute with the Bureau of Indian Affairs over constitutional amendments is not a simple disagreement.

We also don’t want to minimize the complicated relations and history between the Cherokee Nation and the U.S. government, nor detract from the nation’s right to sovereignty and self-determination.

But Cherokees, like all other Native American tribes in the United States, do have limitations in their right of self-government, and the Cherokees in its 1866 Treaty and 1975 Constitution granted the BIA authority to approve Cherokee constitutional amendments.

Cherokees may have approved an amendment in 2003 to remove the federal government from the responsibility to approve constitutional amendments, but the BIA was correct to reject that amendment.

Those who have been following this controversy know it arose because of a recent Cherokee Nation vote to divest freedmen, the descendants of African Americans who had been made citizens of the tribe, of their membership in the tribe.

So the issue of Cherokee citizenship complicates the issue of constitutional independence. But simply put, it was wrong for Cherokees to remove freedmen from the tribe, and the move to void the BIA’s approval authority is a move to legitimize that wrong.

The federal government has the responsibility to see that U.S. citizens are treated fairly and equally within all entities in its jurisdiction.

The Cherokee freedmen issue is a race issue, despite what some will say, and so the BIA has a responsibility to intervene.

Text Only
Editorials