Cherokee Nation leaders said they look forward to finally adjudicating a lawsuit the tribe filed to determine citizenship status of freedmen descendants.

Their comments Tuesday came on the heels of a counterclaim filed Monday by the U.S. Department of the Interior in a federal lawsuit pending in Tulsa. The agency was named as a defendant along with five descendants of former slaves held by Cherokee citizens.

The counterclaim seeks a declaratory judgment regarding the citizenship status of freedmen descendants. The Interior Department’s “position is, and has been, that the 1866 treaty ... vested Cherokee freedmen with rights of citizenship in the nation, including the right of suffrage.”

The tribe contends the treaty “did not guarantee to freedmen and their descendants eternal unimpeachable rights” to Cherokee citizenship. Tribal lawyers argue a 2007 amendment to the tribe’s constitution effectively denies citizenship to freedmen descendants who can prove no blood lineage.

In court documents filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Northern Oklahoma, government lawyers argue no laws exist — either federal or tribal — that void the terms of the 1866 treaty. That document, federal officials say, grants citizenship to freedmen descendants.

Cherokee Nation officials described the counterclaim filed Monday as a request by the federal government for a decision that allows freedmen descendants to retain tribal citizenship rights and prohibit the tribe from denying them the privileges of citizenship.

“Now we can move forward on this issue,” Principal Chief Bill John Baker said in a media release. “We will have everyone at the table, and all issues will be presented so we can get a definitive ruling.”

Baker may have benefited from a federal court order allowing eligible freedmen voters to take part in the 2011 principal chief election. The court order memorialized a last-minute agreement hammered out by lawyers representing freedmen descendants, the tribe’s interim chief and the federal government.

The order came after tribe’s highest court effectively barred freedmen descendants from taking part in the tribe’s second principal chief election. The second round of balloting came after the same court invalidated the results of the first election after finding it was unable to determine a winner with mathematical certainty.

Marilyn Vann, Descendants of Freedmen Association president, lauded the Interior Department’s decision to file its counterclaim in support of the freedmen’s pursuit of permanent citizenship rights.

“Who better to have on your side than the Department of Interior and Department of Justice people,” Vann said. “They’ve laid the positions out, and the U.S. government has never said the 1866 treaty or freedmen’s rights have been changed in any way.”

The federal court order that allowed freedmen the right to vote in the 2011 principal chief election has kept their citizenship rights intact pending the outcome of the present lawsuit.

Vann, who anticipates a favorable ruling from the federal court, said freedmen and their supporters will meet July 14 at the First Missionary Baptist Church in Muskogee to discuss the pending litigation and other issues.

Reach D.E. Smoot at (918) 684-2901 or dsmoot@muskogeephoenix.com.