Answers to 7 Freedmen Questions – High Country News – Knowing the West

The descendants of those enslaved by native tribes gain political momentum. Here is an introduction to the issues of freedoms and tribal recognition.

After more than a century of deprivation of the right to vote, the freed are gaining ground. Earlier this week, reporter Allison Herrera reported that the Indian Health Service has decided that Seminole Freedmen are eligible for health care, and Marilyn Vann started her revolutionary position as the first Cherokee citizen of Freedmen status to hold office in the Cherokee Nation government.

Why are these changes important? If you are new to history, now is a good time to catch up. Here are the answers to some questions you might ask yourself.

Who are the freedmen?

At the start of colonization, members of five southeastern tribes (the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muskogee and Seminole nations) began to enslave blacks to create wealth on the plantations, as did European American colonizers. This is in part why the colonizers nicknamed these nations the five “civilized” tribes.

When slavery ended in the five tribes after the Civil War, the former slaves became known as “freedmen”. They spoke the tribal languages, ate tribal food, and lived like the tribes of their former owners. By any cultural measure, they were Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muskogee, and Seminole. The ethnic identities of the descendants of the Freedmen are distinct from both African Americans and tribal members in general. But the five tribes resisted the official enlistment of the freedmen and their descendants as citizens and tribal members.

Didn’t the freed became citizens of the five tribes after the end of slavery?

No. The tribes promised to enlist freedmen, but did not. When slavery ended in the United States, it did not end for them. By fighting for Confederation during the American Civil War, the five tribes had lost the rights set forth in previous treaties with the United States. Thus, in 1866, after the end of the civil war, they signed new treaties with the US government. The new treaties called on them to end slavery and extend citizenship rights to freed people.

But the tribes delayed for years, leaving the Freedmen without a country – at the time, they weren’t recognized as tribal or American citizens. Eventually, some of the five tribes enlisted the freedmen, only to unsubscribe later.

Why aren’t the Five Tribes enlisting the Freedmen today?

Some of them do. As of 2017, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is registering and fully recognizing the rights of the descendants of the Freedmen. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma considers the descendants of the Freedmen to be status tribal citizens, but does not grant them all of their rights. The Choctaw, Chickasaw and Muskogee Nations do not officially enlist or recognize the descendants of the Freedmen.

Tribal sovereignty allows tribes to determine their own criteria for citizenship. The five tribes base enrollment on the lineage. Applicants who can prove that they are descended from a tribal member are eligible for membership. But to prove it, would-be tribal members must find an ancestor who was featured on the Dawes Rolls, a turn-of-the-century census of the Indian country that also served as a dispossession vehicle. The Dawes Roll divided the members of the tribe into two categories: “By blood” or “Free men”. The criteria used were extremely basic: when the colonizers carried out the census in the land of Choctaw, they listed all the brown people they considered to be Choctaw “by blood”. But blacks were listed as “freedmen” from Choctaw, although in reality the lines were not so clear, as many families had intermarried with each other over the years. This means that many people descended from both tribal ancestors and freedoms remain ineligible for tribal membership, simply because an ancestor was listed as a freedman on the Dawes Rolls.

The Cherokee Nation made history this year by by deleting the term “by blood” of all its legal documents, calling the expression “illegal, obsolete and contrary to the ideal of freedom. Choctaw Nation Chief Gary Batton also made rare recognition, describing the Dawes Roll as ”a poisoned legacy“which has“ caused a myriad of membership problems. ”However, Batton and the Choctaw government have yet to make institutional changes.

What is the difference between Freedmen status and Freedmen offspring?

Anyone who has a Freedmen ancestor is a Freedmen descendant; whether the ancestor appears on the scrolls “by blood” or “freed”, there remains an ethnic and ancestral identity. But the freed status is an official designation, which means that the tribe sees you as part of a designated class and limits or extends your rights accordingly. Not everyone of Freedmen descent has Freedmen status. It is the status of freedman, not necessarily ancestry, that is an obstacle to enlistment.

“There are people who were elected to positions of the tribal council (Cherokee) who were freed before the independence of Oklahoma”, explains Marilyn Vann. “No one has been elected to the board since then, and there may have been people who have served on boards or commissions who had both a ‘blood’ ancestor and a freedman. These people do not have the status of freedman.

Why is registration so important for the descendants of the Freedmen?

Imagine the federal government contacting you today to let you know that your citizenship has been revoked and that you are no longer eligible to be American. Not only will you have to surrender your passport and ID card, but you will no longer have the rights and protections of US citizenship. You could not, in good faith, identify yourself by the culture of this country. If you can imagine what that might feel like and what it might mean for your future and that of your children, you might get an idea of ​​what it does for the descendants of the Freedmen to be told that they are not. tribal citizens.

“This refusal of acceptance is not only symbolic”, Alaina Roberts, historian and descendant of Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen, written for HCN in March. “It can be a death sentence. The Seminole freedmen of Oklahoma, for example, were access denied to COVID-19 vaccines earlier this year due to their status. This is what makes this week’s Indian Health Service announcement so important.

Tribal citizens can vote for chiefs and council members, run for office, and organize and participate in tribal events. They have access to health care, childcare and other services reserved exclusively for members of the tribe. While descendants of unregistered freedoms are sometimes still able to participate in community events like language classes, their inability to formally enroll pushes them to the margins of tribal society. Beyond all of this, being a tribe member is a point of pride for most tribe members. It honors their place in tribal history and includes them in today’s society.

How was the blood quantum used against the Freedmen?

In opposing the inclusion of the Freedmen, some Indigenous people are relying on blood quantum, the notion that Indigenous identity is tied to the “purity” of blood. Any descendant of freedmen who does not have “native blood,” the argument goes, does not really belong to the tribe.

But the blood quantum is a colonial idea based on the racist pseudoscience of eugenics. Before colonization, there was no “half this, half that” measure of tribal affiliation. There was no such thing as being “partially Choctaw” or “pure-blooded Osage”, nor was anyone talking about being “half Oregonian and half Californian.” While most of the tribal members had family ties with the clans that formed the backbone of society, people also married or were adopted into tribal communities. It wasn’t until after European Americans created the idea of ​​the blood quantum – largely to erase Indigenous identity and thereby break Indigenous land claims – that words like “by blood” and “pure blood” began to appear. This notion of indigenous identity has been used, usually in bad faith, to compare freedoms to white “suitors” who attempt to claim indigenous identity without any legitimate reason.

If Freedmen can register, can’t everyone? Where do you draw the line?

The enlistment of freedmen would only move the limit of enlistment by a hair. Instead of having to document your ancestry in the Dawes Roll using the “by blood” columns, you would just have to trace your ancestry back to the Dawes Roll, period. This simplifies things, but still prevents suitors or other native aspirants from claiming citizenship. It would simply include the Freedmen as full tribal citizens.

Brian Oaster (they / them) is a writing intern at High Country News and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. They are an award-winning investigative journalist living in the Pacific Northwest. Email them at [email protected] Where send letter to editor. See our letters to the political editor.

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