Of Cherokees & Former Slaves: Other reactions

Here are some links to some interesting reactions in the blogosphere to the story that the Cherokee Nation may expel its former slaves.

clipped from africanamericanopinion.com

Cherokee voters may remove descendents of freed slaves off of their blue Cherokee citizenship cards

What we’re gonna do right here is go back…WAY back…back into time…

Cherokees, along with Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles, were long known as the “Five Civilized Tribes” because they adopted many of the ways of their white neighbors in the South, including the holding of black slaves.

clipped from www.brunchma.com

How Whites Shape Black-Indian Relations

What I found interesting about the Washington Post article on the vote was the way that it showed how the stage for the present situation was set in significant part by the actions of white people and their governments. And this stage-setting happened in complex ways that can't be reduced to seeing the wrong outcome of today's vote as a simple transferrence of white racism.

Cherokee Nation to Vote on Cherokeeness of their former slaves descendants

I didn't realize that any Native American's had slaves. Sad to see that racism is alive and well in the Cherokee nation.

From the Washington Post:

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."

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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.

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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.