Letter to the Editor - issue of Cherokee rolls is Cherokee business My name is Gayle Ross and I am an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. I want to respond to the remarks made by Marilyn Vann, but first I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak and to thank those who take the time to listen. You may know that Ms Vann has conducted extensive campaigns of both legal and public relations attacks on the Cherokee Nation. She represents herself as a victim of "racism" and to do that, she finds it necessary to distort our history and the facts. I can no longer listen to her shrill, strident invective smearing the Cherokee Nation in the name of "her rights". There is too much at stake to stand silently by as she continues her attacks. Ms Vann says Cherokee people were slaveowners and signed a Treaty with the Confederacy. What she hasn't told you is the majority of Cherokee wished to be neutral or remain loyal to the Union . The treaty with the Confederacy was signed under duress while Southern troops occupied our country. It was repudiated in less than a year and many more Cherokees fought and died to end slavery than practiced it. President Lincoln assured Principal Chief John Ross that he understood the Cherokee situation and that the Cherokees would not be treated harshly, but our hopes of fair treatment died with him. The Treaty of 1866 was a "reconstruction" treaty demanding many concessions Cherokees felt were unfair. The United States responded by threatening to sign a Treaty with the very Confederate Cherokees who actually had taken up arms against them. The Cherokees had been willing to offer land and certain rights to their freed slaves. The United States included the article calling for the "rights of native Cherokees." Ms. Vann did not tell you that freed slaves did not want tribal citizenship either. Congress, in 1865, sent Gen. John Sanborn to report of the status of the freed slaves of the Five Tribes and he reported that they wanted and expected the United States to procure a separate tract of Indian Territory for them. They wanted to own their own land rather than in common. They wanted autonomy under territorial law rather than tribal jurisdiction. The United States declined. Federal officials put Cherokees and Freedmen on the same path, knowing they wanted to go in different directions. It was a rocky road. The majority of Freedmen advocated allotment and the dissolution of the Cherokee government. Cherokees struggled to hold on to their land and their nation. Forty years later overwhelmed by forces from both within and without, our borders were obliterated and our government all but paralyzed. Freedmen interests were served. The United States ' interests were served. The Cherokee Nation was devastated. Throughout the coming decades, African-Americans fought a long and noble fight for their civil rights as Americans. Indian people fought to remain Indian. Our battles were against the policies of "forced assimilation"; boarding schools, termination of our governments, allotment of our lands, the banning of our ceremonies and the destruction of our cultures and our languages. We fought not just for the rights of our people, but for our rights to exist as nations. The Cherokee Nation survives today because Cherokee people refused to let it die. The first Freedmen supported the dissolution of our government to relinquish Cherokee citizenship for American citizenship. This was right….for Freedmen. Our own people voted to accept allotment, but it proved to be wrong for Cherokees. Now Ms. Vann would wreak devastation on the Cherokees to demand citizenship. In order to make this about race, Ms Vann has shrieked to the press about our citizens with low quantums of Cherokee blood, saying we accept "white" Cherokees but not "black" Cherokees. This is a lie. Our paperwork is color-blind. The citizens Ms. Vann sneers at may very well be part Cherokee, part white, part some other tribe, part Hispanic and part Black! We do not tell our children whom they may marry. Our enrollment is determined by a direct connection to a specific list of Cherokee citizens on the Dawes Rolls. Ms. Vann arrogantly says the Cherokee Nation "misapplies" the Dawes. That was what the vote was about, Ms. Vann. How to apply the Dawes. There are literally hundreds of thousands of "Cherokees" some with blood who cannot meet enrollment criteria. Different tribes use different rolls. It is our right to establish what we require for citizenship. Ms. Vann has asked Indian people to imagine how it would feel if this happened to your family. She doesn't know that most Indian people don't have to "imagine" this. I know many Indian people from many tribes who either have relatives or know a family with relatives who can no longer meet their tribe's legal requirements for enrollment. But mostly, when Indian relatives drop below a quantum requirement or a residence restriction, they go on being proud of their heritage, being active in their community and culture, honoring their ancestors. They know these things are not defined by enrollment, citizenship is. They know that the rights of their sovereign nations are more important than their individual rights. They do not seek to hurt their nations and their people by attacking them in federal courts or the press. Ms.Vann doesn't seem to understand this. I guess it's an Indian thing. In order to divert attention from our majority vote, Ms Vann tries to make this about Principal Chief Chad Smith . What an insult to Cherokee people. We see further ahead than the next election. And I am truly outraged at her suggestion that Chief Smith was "using" the Trail of Tears as a play for sympathy. Cherokee people don't play "victim", Ms. Vann. We remember our history to remember what our ancestors sacrificed so that OUR NATION might live. And your suggestion that the disenrollment of people who have had their cards for less than a year is a greater injustice than the loss of our original homeland and the deaths of 4,000 Cherokee people is truly beyond belief. Over the last thirty years since the Cherokee Nation revitalized its government, members of the Freedmen Association have taken their case to the court. They have screamed to the press. But, for the most part, they are so far removed from Cherokee communities that most Cherokees don't know any more about them than what they read in the newspapers. And there we read that we are "racist" or that we are too stupid to decide for ourselves but have listened to "lies" from the current administration. Can Ms. Vann not see how despicable this behavior is? Especially against the members of our traditional communities who spoke for the "by blood roll" with votes of 9 to 1 or 10 to 1. Ms. Vann doesn't seem to understand that traditional Cherokees can't hear you when you scream. I guess it's an Indian thing. Ms. Vann contends that the Cherokee Nation is endangering the sovereignty of all tribes by refusing to "honor the treaties". She apparently does not know or care how many articles of how many treaties the United States has failed to honor. She does not see or care that the threat to Indian sovereignty is in her continued demands that the federal government once again infringe on our rights as a nation. Cherokee people did not "ignore" the Treaty of 1866. They simply expressed their belief that the obligations inherent in the Treaty were fulfilled long ago. To the mixed Black/Cherokees on the Freedmen Roll who feel hurt that we limit our citizenship to a specific blood roll, I would ask them to understand that their heritage is theirs. Nothing can take that away. Heritage, culture, pride in your ancestors are all good things. But heritage and citizenship are not the same. Ms. Vann has refused to respect the jurisdiction of the Cherokee Supreme Court. They ruled that citizenship is for Cherokee people to determine. Ms. Vann has refused to accept the vote of the Cherokee people. She calls for the BIA to cut off our funding unless we accept her demands. She has brought down the wrath of the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Congress of Black Women on our heads. With these same misrepresentations of fact and distortions of truth. She has screamed about "her rights" as opposed to what Cherokee people believe IS right. She has screamed about "her rights" and said not a word about her responsibilities. She has demonstrated with her words and her actions that she does not respect Cherokee people, Cherokee culture, Cherokee law and interestingly enough, Cherokee treaties. Apparently Ms Vann has not read the entire Treaty of 1866. Only the article that applies to her. There is an article in the treaty that states that all disagreements among Cherokees arising in the Cherokee Nation are the sole province of the Cherokee courts. By demanding federal intervention, Ms. Vann is herself in violation of the Treaty of 1866. That is if she considers herself Cherokee. By making this a federal case, Ms. Vann is stating that she is NOT Cherokee. Which means she has no case. Sound like a Catch 22, Ms. Vann? Welcome to Indian Country. Gayle Ross Cherokee Citizen

Contents

Thanksgiving, Cherokee Style

The Cherokees were raising corn as early as 1,000 BC. Before European contact the Cherokees already participated in a ceremony giving thanks for crops and it was a form of worship in what is known as the "Green Corn Dance". This traditional dance was a very important ceremony for the Cherokees. This ceremony was the beginning of the New Year. Our ancestors gave thanks for the corn crop that they saw as a continued life for them. It was a time for forgiveness and grudges to be left behind - starting anew. A part of their celebration was fasting, then gathering at the ceremonial grounds to play stickball, dance and have a big feast.

Other traditions for the Cherokee included participating in sports mainly the stickball game and marble game; eating bean bread, wild game, and wild plants to mention a few; and for communication they used the wampum belts.

As settlers moved inland, Native Americans they encountered, including the Cherokee assisted the early settlers and traders with food and supplies. This was a continual process not just a single meal. The Cherokees also taught the early settlers how to hunt, fish, and farm in their new environment. They also taught them how to use herbal medicine when they became ill.

Sadly, as more English people came to America, they didn't need the Native Americans help anymore and the newcomers had forgotten how the natives helped the earlier Pilgrims. Mistrust began to grow and the friendship weakened. The Pilgrims started telling their Native neighbors that their native religion and native customs were wrong. The relationships deteriorated and within a few years the children of the people who ate together at the first Thanksgiving were killing one another in what led to the King Phillip's War.

In 1736, Christian Priber, a Frenchman, established himself among the Cherokees, learned their language, and taught them the European Christianity until he was arrested by the English and put in prison at Charleston, South Carolina. Even though the Cherokees worshipped in their own religion, the work of the missionaries converted some Cherokees to the European Christianity. The first known Cherokee converted to European Christianity was 1773. In 1801, the first permanent Christian Mission in the Cherokee Nation was called Moravian Mission. It was located at Springplace, which is in present-day Georgia. As more Cherokees became Christians the custom of observing the English National Thanksgiving Holiday became common.

D. W. Bushyhead, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, signed a proclamation on Thursday, November 26th, A. D. 1885 for Thanksgiving to be practiced by the Cherokees. The Proclamation reads, "The Cherokees have abundant reason to rejoice. They are favored in all things that should make a Nation prosperous and a people happy. They have an indisputable right to an area of land sufficient for the needs of generations of Cherokees to come. They have a perfect form of Government, wise laws, unsurpassed educational facilities for their children and money enough of their own invested to make these blessings permanent. It is true this Nation is neither numerous wealthy nor powerful compared with many others, but it stands and relies upon the plighted faith of a Nation that has become the strongest on earth by reason of its respect for human rights.

Today the major population of the Cherokee members celebrates the National Thanksgiving Holiday. There are a few Cherokees and other Native Americans who still celebrate the Green Corn Ceremony in July and the National Thanksgiving Holiday in November.

Information by Peoples Path