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Sovereignty as Savior: Cherokee Nation’s Delegate to Congress

Sovereignty as Savior: Cherokee Nation’s Delegate to Congress:


Colonization is not a tragedy of the past, but an ongoing process. Empowering Indigenous sovereignty is our best tool to prevent the continued degradation of Native American rights. In supporting the Cherokee Nation’s delegate to Congress, we all have the opportunity to uplift sovereign Native American treaty rights.


In 1835, the Cherokee Nation signed the Treaty of New Echota with the United States under the Jackson Administration. It is often known as the Removal treaty, since its first article demands that the Cherokee Nation “cede relinquish and convey to the United States all lands owned claimed or possessed by them east of the Mississippi river” for a meager sum of five million dollars (Treaty of New Echota). Signed by a minority group of the Cherokees rather than by their Principal Chief, the treaty was widely unpopular amongst the citizens of the Cherokee Nation. For years, in the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, the nation had been pleading, “We wish to live as we have lived, and to follow and abide by the customs of our forefathers” (Cherokee Phoenix, January 28, 1829). Principal Chief John Ross and the Cherokee council attempted to petition Congress to stop the treaty, however Congress never fulfilled their urgent request. After this treaty, the majority of the Cherokee Nation was forced by U.S. troops westwards to Indian Territory along the Trail of Tears. More than 4,000 people of an original population of 16,000 perished during the journey (Kung & Meraji). Seeing those who signed away their homeland as traitors, a group of Cherokees murdered the three leaders of the Treaty party on June 22, 1839 (Kung & Meraji). Some Cherokees escaped Removal in the mountains of North Carolina and today still live as the sovereign Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on a reservation in the western end of the state


The Treaty of New Echota was a violent grasp for Cherokee lands in the South, where plantation owners, gold miners, and yeoman farmers all hoped to achieve economic success - to the detriment of the Native Americans. Forced to concede to the treaty despite its questionable origins, the western Cherokee Nation today is utilizing it to emphasize their right to sovereignty. Article Seven of the Treaty of New Echota reads, the Cherokee “shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same” (Treaty of New Echota). Over the course of two centuries of paternalistic policy which sought to reduce and even terminate tribal governments, the United States has failed to honor this treaty-guaranteed right. Although treaties are considered the “supreme law of the land” under the sixth article of the Constitution, the United States has a long history of breaking treaties with Native American tribes and nations (see the Trail of Broken Treaties, 1972). The 1785 Treaty of Hopewell states, for example, “The hatchet shall be forever buried, and the peace given by the United States, and friendship re-established between the said states on the one part, and all the Cherokees on the other, shall be universal”(Cherokee Phoenix, May 22, 2008). However, the state of Georgia regularly enacted violence against the Cherokee leading up to and during Removal, terrorizing some Cherokees into fleeing westwards even before Removal was enforced. Evidently, the hatchet was only buried when convenient to the United States’ interests.


The Cherokee Nation is calling upon the United States government to stop this pattern of broken promises by honoring the Treaty of New Echota’s seventh article and seating a Cherokee delegate in Congress. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin reminds us that “The obligation to seat a Cherokee Nation delegate is as binding today as it was in 1835” (Hernandez). The elected delegate, Kim Teehee, is currently the Cherokee Nation’s Director of Government Relations, and is well-respected in tribal politics (Cherokee Nation). If Teehee is seated in Congress, she and her successors will be unable to cast votes on the House floor or preside over floor sessions, but will be entitled to make speeches, introduce legislation, and vote in committees (Hernandez). It is important to remember that the campaign for the Cherokee delegate rests on established precedent - nonvoting members such as those representing the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have long been seated in Congress.


Representing over 400,000 Cherokee citizens, the Cherokee delegate would give a crucial voice to the Cherokee Nation in the national body whose policies directly impact their people (Hernandez). Congress has spent centuries enacting policies that affect Native American communities, such as the Indian Child Welfare Act (1978) and the American Rescue Plan (2021). Seating a Cherokee delegate will honor the homeland sacrificed in the Treaty of New Echota, the thousands of lives lost on the Trail of Tears, and the United States’ unique government-to-government relationship with the Cherokee Nation. It will acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty and engage Congress, if not the nation at large, in a conversation about the treaty rights of Indigenous nations across the country. By seating a Cherokee delegate, the United States can encourage a new era of American Indian policy that emphasizes self-determination and empowerment of tribal governments.


Please visit this page to tell your representatives that it is time to seat the Cherokee delegate in Congress.


Wado!


Do your part: Seat the Cherokee Nation’s Delegate in the U.S. House


Join: Students for Indigenous and Native American Rights

Sources:

  • Cherokee Nation. (n.d.). Delegate to Congress. Cherokee Nation . Retrieved February 20, 2023, from https://www.cherokee.org/our-government/delegate-to-congress/

  • Cherokee Phoenix, Vol. 1, No. 46, Jan. 28, 1829, https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn83020866/1829-01-28/ed-1/seq- 2/

  • Cherokee Treaty, New Echota (1835). Washington, D.C. https://americanindian.si.edu/static/nationtonation/pdf/Treaty-of-New-Echota-1835.pdf

  • Hernandez, J. (2022, September 24). The Cherokee Nation is renewing its push for a nonvoting delegate in Congress. NPR. Retrieved February 20, 2023, from https://www.npr.org/2022/09/24/1124945834/cherokee-nation-delegate-congress


This article is a feature post written by Allee Herron, Co-President of Students for Indigenous and Native American Rights.


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