Saturday, March 03, 2007

Upcoming vote by Cherokee Nation...

This is a very interesting read, especially if you are into American History like I am, on the upcoming vote by the Cherokee Nation to determine if they will allow or remove the descendants of former tribal slaves from being considered Cherokee.

As most power struggles and disagreements, this one is also based on money...

Advocates of expelling the freedmen call it a matter of safeguarding tribal resources, which include a $350 million annual budget from federal and tribal revenue, and Cherokees' share of a gambling industry that, for U.S. tribes overall, takes in $22 billion a year. The grass-roots campaign for expulsion has given heavy play to warnings that keeping freedmen in the Cherokee Nation could encourage thousands more to sign up for a slice of the tribal pie.


Historically I've always thought it bizzare that so much attention and blame is placed soley on white plantation owners on the issue of slavery when many other cultures and races owned slaves, including some of the Indian Tribes who not only made slaves of blacks but whites thru the course of history. Indians have also been held as slaves too, which some studies have been done on.

3 comments:

debijeanm said...

The most interesting factoid I know about slavery is that in one of the antebellum censuses, over 4,000 free blacks were slaveholders.

I am a historian (my BA is in history with a focus on American Westward Expansion) and just finished a fabulous, 40-hour course on Cherokee history presented by the Cherokee Nation. The vote on freedmen descendants made more sense once I had a better understanding of traditional Cherokee clan structure.

I don't know how I would vote if I had the opportunity, but I would pass on that the Cherokee Nation does not pay out per caps to their members. This has been an issue in other tribes where gaming profits are sent to tribal members and now everyone is claiming native heritage to get some of the $$$.

Unknown said...

I don't have a college degree in History, just an avid fascination with it. However the course you just took sounds very interesting and I agree with you that blacks also owned blacks here in America and in other countries as well.

I don't know how I would vote either and I thank you for the information on the per caps, the WaPo article gives the impression that is part of this or could be a part of the issue.

Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

An offer of "free money" brings out "disadvantaged victims" like cockroaches feeding on table scraps.