“It’s about color, and when it comes down to it, they don’t want the black people to have anything” – Opal Jackson, Freedmen descendant
A little discussed past
Every summer at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the Cherokee Indians sponsor their Trail of Tears pageant. The story of how the US government robbed the five tribes of their homelands in the south and moved them by force to Oklaholma. They don’t tell of the thousands of black slaves the tribes brought with them.
A history of slave ownership and African-Natives
Most of the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ were slave holding nations.
Slavery was introduced by white slave owners into the upper echelons of Native nations. Most full-blooded Natives weren’t slave owners, rather the ‘mixed-bloods’, the people who lived like white planters, were. Masters frequently raped their female slaves. Those slaves had children who would go on to be known as the Freedmen.
After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, a treaty was signed with the federal government in 1866. In this agreement, four of five tribes guaranteed full tribal citizenship for former slaves.
The treaty clearly says that former slaves ‘shall have all the rights of Natives’.
Despite this, the Freedmen are still fighting for their rights to this day.
Current struggles of the Freedmen
“We are still being treated the way that they was treating us back then. This is something that needs to come to an end” – Sylvia Davis, Seminole Freedmen.
Sylvia is proud of her Native heritage and sits on the Seminole tribal council. Despite this, she has encountered constant racism and hostility.
In tribal meeting, Sylvia says “I had a tribal member sit across from me using the word ‘nigger’ and then the Chief of the Seminole Nation, standing at the podium, with a smile on his face. I do have a name. My momma didn’t name me no ‘nigger’. My name is Sylvia and you can address me by that name”.
Theola Jones is a “proud member of the Seminole Nation”. Her two sons were recruited and accepted by the Haskell Indian Nations University because of their talents in football and basketball and their Seminole heritage but were denied access to the library and infirmary because they have black ancestry.
Despite being awarded “all the rights of Natives” in 1866, Freedmen continue to struggle for their rights and recognition.
Many are now being denied tribal citizenship, especially by the Cherokee Nation, and are purposefully excluded from any of the benefits, opportunities and revenue that are extended to all other recognised tribal citizens.
There are roughly 30,000 Cherokee Freedmen descendants today.
“When you know what you really are and you haven’t been embraced or acknowledged, it’s horrible’ – Kenneth Payton, Freedmen descendent
The removal of rights after 117 years of citizenship
From 1866 Freedmen were generally considered to be full tribal citizens. In the late 1970s federal services and benefits such as free health care were awarded to federally recognized tribes.
As members of the Cherokee Nation, federal benefits and services were also provided to the Cherokee Freedmen.
Efforts to block the Freedmen descendants from the tribe began in 1983, after over a century of recognition. The Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation issued an executive order stating that all Cherokee Nation citizens must have a “Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood” card in order to vote and be recognised.
The One-Drop Rule
The CDIB cards were made to be based on a specific federal census taken between 1902 and 1906. The problem is, this census was conducted under the ‘one drop’ rule.
They would simply look at the people being registered, and if they seemed like they had any black blood whatsoever they were classified as being strictly of African descent, even though they were socially, culturally and genetically Native.
Everyone else was put on a ‘blood roll’ where their quantum, or amount of native blood compared to white blood, was recorded.
It should be noted that like many people, the Cherokee Chief at the time was one-eight native and seven-eights white, yet on this treaty he would be regarded as a full Native with all the rights that the status brings with it.
This meant that no Freedman could possibly be allowed citizenship, even if they could document their heritage, and led to the completed the disfranchisement of the Cherokee Freedmen descendants, which was the intention.
This is all lies. Native americans saved the black slaves, especially the Seminole tribe. Afterwards they helped fight against europeans.
It’s not lies. Please watch this documentary when it comes around. It’s one of the few on this little discussed topic. All of the interviews and quotes are from there. Yes the Seminole tribe absorbed escaped slaves. But all of the other tribes held slaves.
anti-blackness is something we as a people need to stop in our native communities and I know we can do better. to acknowledge the truth of slavery in the tribes that had it (mine included) is the first step, so please fellow ndns, do not lie just to make yourself feel better.
I’ve known this for the longest, since I’ve been told theres blood on both sides but I haven’t really investigated it because…well thats because lol. The Five Civilized Tribes:
Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole . There’s also a whole ass documentary on this from 1990 called Black Slaves, Red Masters
*looks at my Blackfoot native ancestry sideways*
So everyone was with the shits hmm. Disgusting.
Knew this but reblogging for those who dont know
One book I would recommend: Claudio Saunt’s Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. That looks specifically at how some of this stuff played out in the Creek Nation, but a lot of it applies too well elsewhere under the divide-and-conquer “Civilizing” policies.
Plenty of ugly history there, and it makes me mad to see it continuing to hurt people after all this time.
Obviously the real criminals here are those dastardly liberals for passing laws making it illegal to allow petrochemicals to leech into ground water. It’s obvious overreach by a bloated bureaucracy, it should be up to the company to choose to clean up the spills or just leave the debris to rust away. Defund the EPA! Defund the IRS! No more toxic waste cleanup! I thought liberals were pro-choice!
You may remember my good friend Vincent who I have spoken about many times because of their overwhelming generosity in trying to help me move somewhere better for my declining health. They are an absolutely incredible person who saw my story about being terminally ill and immediately reached out to help a stranger. Whether or not this is possible anymore, their kindness has changed my life and they have helped me through some extremely difficult times. And I desperately want to help them because they deserve better than this.
Vincent recently graduated with a master’s degree in an extremely promising field, and came home to discover that their mother stole their identity, racked up 40k in debt under their name, destroyed their credit score, and is now trying to prevent them from escaping by stealing and hiding their passport and legal documents from them. The police are involved. Vincent worked to the bone trying to escape from an extremely abusive mother only to discover that she was actively trying to destroy all of their hard work and prevent them from finding freedom.
I cannot emphasize how illegal this is and how involved the police are, but now Vincent has no money, and needs a lot of it to fix their future and escape. Right now, there are a lot of documents that need to be collected from the credit card companies, but Vincent’s volatile mother actively searches through and reads their mail. Vincent needs to raise $102 dollars IMMEDIATELY to get a P.O. box to safely receive those documents and forward them to law enforcement, and as much money as possible for the upcoming cost of hiring a lawyer. There is no way forward without a lawyer.
In short, an amazing person had their identity and legal documents stolen by their abusive mother who racked up 40k in debt under their name and is trying to ruin their life for her own benefit and prevent them from escaping. Please help. Vincent worked so hard and is so amazing. They got a Master’s. They are looking into getting a PHD. They are wonderful and do not deserve any of this please help and signal boost
Fun statistical fact: Cows are about 300 times more likely to kill you than coyotes.
Minor sidenote to statistical fact: If it was common for people to keep several hundred coyotes on their property and routinely chase them into a corral and handle them, this statistic would be different.
this is a great summary of ‘conditional probability’, a statistical property many people grapple with
…I feel like this post just made me realize that both coconut trees and vending machines, items often quoted in wacky death statistics, are both things that people shake vigorously often.
this is my favorite addition to this post
I will always take this post as an opportunity to talk about that time a guy died when a cow landed on him even though i said it a few times now
second favorite addition
I thought the OP said “crows” not cows and I just rolled with it
I am going to go ahead and assume you are referring to this post where I say:
“Feminism has a terrible history not being inclusive of queer identities. And feminist groups need to face that history and learn from it instead of just repeating the same patterns over and over. They need to be active in their inclusion of queer identities in their politics, and no, having a “gay best friend” does not count.”
And none of what I said in any way disputes what you said here. There were and are queer feminists. But feminism as a movement has a history of exclusion.
These are just a couple that come to mind, but let’s talk more recent. TERFs, the acronym does not stand from Transgender Exclusionary Radical Friends, those people are self proclaimed feminists.
So yes, feminism has included queer people in certain pockets of the movement, but that does not absolve them of their history of exclusion. Just because some were good, does not mean the movement as a whole can pretend that there have never been problems.
For feminism to be inclusive it cannot deny its history of exclusion. It must face it and learn from it.
And if hearing about the history of feminism angered you so much, then maybe you need to examine yourself. Because denial of the negatives of any movement is dangerous, and if you promote that denial then you are actively damaging the people who are trying to improve.
You can’t hide feminism’s problems behind the queer people who tried to fix them, and I doubt that those people would have wanted you to in the first place.
“For feminism to be inclusive it cannot deny its history of exclusion. It must face it and learn from it.”
Oh look, it’s why I eventually got fed up with organized feminism.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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