Word: freedmen
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...course the most surprising and disappointing aspect of the situation is that few groups of people have suffered through more racism, scorn, and exclusion than the Cherokee themselves. To marginalize the freedmen, much less vote them out, reveals deep hypocrisy in a nation that prides itself on cultural memory...
...Darren Buzzard, a Cherokee proponent of the law change, warned his tribe in a public e-mail, “Don’t get taken advantage of by these people [freedmen]. They will suck...
...also a matter of money: The Cherokee benefit from a $350 million yearly grant from the federal government and, with no freedmen around, there is more left for “pure blood” Indians...
...Cherokee repeatedly assert their hard-earned right to self-determination, and in this instance, the right to determine their citizenry. But their position is contradictory; self-determination is not just the right of the majority to exclude, but the right of a people to self-identify. If the freedmen identify as Cherokees and can stake a legitimate historical claim to that heritage, they should be allowed membership in the Cherokee Nation...
...excluding members because of race, the Cherokee are engaging in the very practices they object to in the U.S. They are acting as an overbearing authority determined to tell you the freedmen who they are, who their ancestors were, and with whom they identify. If that’s self-determination, then maybe the Cherokee Nation and their sovereignty need to be reevaluated...