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Published September 23, 2007 11:54 pm - Oklahoma: Freedmen issue on detour to Capitol Hill
The Associated Press TULSA, Okla. — A dispute involving race and tribal identity that was supposed to play out in the courts now seems headed for Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers want the country’s second-largest Indian tribe stripped of $300 million in federal money. U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, a California Democrat who claims Indian blood and ties to Oklahoma, is demanding the Cherokee Nation reinstate 2,800 descendants of the tribe’s former black slaves, known as freedmen. She calls a March election that booted the freedmen descendants from the tribe “ethnic cleansing” and doesn’t want to wait on the courts to decide the matter, a process that could take years. The tribe is digging in to fight the legislation, and its chief, Chad Smith, has called Watson’s bill a “scorched-earth” policy aimed at hurting the poorest and sickest of the nation’s 270,000 members. Neither side shows signs of giving up ground as lawmakers are expected to have a hearing on the matter next week in Washington. At stake are millions of federal dollars for health clinics, Head Start programs, elderly care and housing assistance for the Tahlequah-based tribe. More than 6,000 nation employees could lose their jobs, touching off a ripple effect that would economically devastate northeastern Oklahoma. Health care to 126,000 patients would be axed. “If the Cherokee Nation were to fold, I’d be with it,” said David Rabon Comingdeer, a 15-year employee of the nation. “It would be like our whole world just fell out from under us.” But to Watson, those are consequences the nation should have thought of before the election was called. “We can’t even fund education properly or health care properly,” said Watson, whose bill has 23 co-sponsors, including support from Congressional Black Caucus lawmakers. “Why should we fund this kind of disenfranchisement?” Watson wants Chief Smith and his supporters “to come to their senses and see this is throwing out the blacks, and using federal dollars to do it.” “I stand on the law, I stand on what’s right, and I’m not going to massage it for phony reasons,” she said. For decades, descendants of freed Cherokee slaves fought to reclaim their citizenship, even though they were adopted into the tribe in 1866 under a treaty with the U.S. government. A ruling last year by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court held that the Cherokee constitution assured freedmen descendants of tribal citizenship. That led to a petition drive for a ballot measure to determine who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. 
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