Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:33:15.314Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cherokee Political Thought and the Development of Tribal Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

Aaron Kushner Open the ORCID record for Aaron Kushner [Opens in a new window]
Aaron Kushner*
Affiliation:
The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University
*
E-mail: arkushne@asu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Citizenship, a fundamental political idea, exists in many forms in the United States. In this study, I apply the analytical strategies of American political development to examine the evolution of Cherokee constitutional citizenship law since 1827. The lack of political development studies on Cherokee governance presents a unique opportunity to identify foundational and second-story ideas underpinning Cherokee political thought. I contribute to the ongoing discussion of indigenous political development by creating a new theoretical framework for interpreting and analyzing durable shifts in Cherokee citizenship law. As America expands and diversifies, alternate, nonliberal views of citizenship increase in political relevance. Understanding why certain laws exist and where they came from is crucial for cultivating political engagement, engaging in productive discourse, and creating humanizing policies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , April 2021 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Mankiller, Wilma and Wallis, Michael, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 217–18Google Scholar. In this study, “the Cherokee” and “Cherokee Nation” refer to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma or the Cherokee as they existed in the East, before their violent removal westward in the 1830s.

2. Ibid., 218–19.

3. Ibid., 219.

4. Gregory D. Smithers, “Why Do So Many Americans Think They Have Cherokee Blood?” Slate, October 1, 2015, accessed June 4, 2019, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/10/cherokee-blood-why-do-so-many-americans-believe-they-have-cherokee-ancestry.html; Fiza Pirani, “Native Americans, Cherokee Nation React to Elizabeth Warren's DNA Test,” Springfield News-Sun, October 16, 2018, accessed June 4, 2019, https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/national/native-americans-cherokee-nation-react-elizabeth-warren-dna-test/xy3YskJcU4Ox1ygxaWfM6J/.

5. Ferguson, Kennan, “Why Does Political Science Hate American Indians?” Perspectives on Politics 14 (2016): 1029–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1029.

6. Rob Capriccioso, “Cherokee Women Try to Meet with Elizabeth Warren; Campaign Offends Them,” Indian Country Today, June 21, 2012, accessed June 4, 2019, https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/cherokee-women-try-to-meet-with-elizabeth-warren-campaign-offends-them-4ADmHzb3iEiYH8EWFx92kQ/; Grant D. Crawford, “Cherokee Citizenship Determined by Dawes Rolls, not DNA,” Tahlequah Daily Press, November 2, 2018, accessed June 4, 2019, https://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/local_news/cherokee-citizenship-determined-by-dawes-rolls-not-dna/article_4a41fca2-3b65-5413-837c-9fcdf99efa7a.html.

7. Jacob T. Levy, “Indigenous Self-Government,” Nomos 45: 119–35; Tallbear, Kim, Native American DNA (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sturm, Circe, Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smithers, Gregory D., The Cherokee Diaspora (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. McLoughlin, William G., Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Littlefield, Daniel F. Jr., The Cherokee Freedmen: From Emancipation to American Citizenship (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Halliburton, R. Jr., Red Over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

9. See Ceaser, James W., ed., Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar and Rosenblum, Nancy L., “Replacing Foundations with Staging: Second Story Concepts and American Political Development,” in Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate, ed. Ceaser, James W. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar for more on the analytical strategy of constructing idea pyramids in political development studies.

10. Wilkins, David E., Documents of Native American Political Development: 1500s to 1933 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 2Google Scholar.

11. Ibid.

12. Ceaser, Nature and History, 5.

13. Rosenblum, “Replacing Foundations with Staging,” 116.

14. Orren, Karen and Skowronek, Stephen, The Search for American Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Ibid., 123.

16. Ceaser, Nature and History, 13.

17. Deloria, Vine Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Temin, David Myer, “Custer's Sins: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Settler-Colonial Politics of Civic Inclusion,” Political Theory 46 (2018): 357–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Linda Tuhwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2012).

18. Temin, “Custer's Sins”; Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies; Tallbear, Native American DNA; Dahl, Adam, “Nullifying Settler Democracy: William Apess and the Paradox of Settler Sovereignty,” Polity 48 (2016): 279–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. Temin, “Custer's Sins,” 359.

20. Ibid., 364.

21. Paul Frymer, Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 10; Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies; Ferguson, “Why Does Political Science Hate American Indians?”

22. Tallbear, Native American DNA; Sturm, Blood Politics.

23. Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 8.

24. Grant Foreman, Indian Removal (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), 20.

25. Wilkins, Documents, 39–45; Theda Perdue, The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, 3rd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016), 49, 58–59.

26. St. Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), 29.

27. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence; Patrick N. Minges, Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855–1867 (Abingdon, UK: Rutledge, 2003).

28. Perdue, Cherokee Removal, 58.

29. Ibid.

30. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 450.

31. Gary E. Moulton, “Editor's Introduction,” in The Papers of Chief John Ross: Vol 1, 1807–1839 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 3–11; Smithers, Cherokee Diaspora, 22–23.

32. Elias Boudinot, “Constitution of the Cherokee Nation,” The Cherokee Phoenix 1 no. 1, February 21, 1828.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. James Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).

36. Boudinot, “Constitution of the Cherokee.”

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. John Ridge, “Letter to Albert Gallatin,” in The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, 3rd ed., ed. Theda Perdue (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016), 34–41, at 41.

40. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 400. Boudinot was ultimately forced to resign from editorship of the Phoenix due to his changing sympathies for removal west, which he thought would save the Nation from destruction. See Elias Boudinot, Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinot, ed. Theda Perdue (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983).

41. John Ross, “Annual Message,” in The Papers of Chief John Ross, ed. Gary E. Moulton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 140–44, at 141.

42. Elias Boudinot, “To the Public,” in Elias Boudinot, Cherokee Editor, 91–95, at 92.

43. Perdue, The Cherokee Removal, 20.

44. Ibid.; Foreman, Indian Removal, 15.

45. Rose Stremlau, Sustaining the Cherokee Family: Kinship and the Allotment of an Indigenous Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 24, 29.

46. Ridge, “Letter to Albert Gallatin,” 40.

47. Wax, Murray L. and Wax, Rosalie H., “Religion among the American Indians,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 436 (March 1978): 27–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 28–30.

48. Sturm, Blood Politics, 28.

49. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 14–15.

50. Sturm, Blood Politics, 35.

51. Sarah H. Hill, Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 77.

52. Ibid.

53. James Mooney, “Myths of the Cherokee,” Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin? (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Government Printing Office, 1900), 244–45.

54. Mankiller and Wallis, Mankiller, 16.

55. Stremlau, Sustaining the Cherokee, 95.

56. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 14.

57. Ibid., 15.

58. Julie L. Reed, Serving the Nation: Cherokee Sovereignty and Social Welfare, 1800–1907 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 7.

59. Ibid., 12.

60. Laurence Armand French, Policing American Indians: A Unique Chapter in American Jurisprudence (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016), 8.

61. Gilbert, William H., “The Eastern Cherokees,” Smithsonian, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 133 (1943): 169–413Google Scholar.

62. Sturm, Blood Politics, 31.

63. Ibid., 28.

64. Sturm, Blood Politics.

65. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 388–89. “The most offensive laws [to Cherokee dissidents] may have been those undermining old customs (clan revenge, matrilineal inheritance, witchcraft, polygamy, infanticide) and imposing Christian morality (opposing gambling, promoting Sabbath observance, prohibiting ardent spirits).”

66. Elias Boudinot, “An Address to Whites,” in Elias Boudinot, Cherokee Editor, 68–79, at 77.

67. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 394.

68. John Ridge, “Letter to Stand Watie,” in Cherokee Cavaliers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939), ed. Edward Everett Dale and Gaston Litton, 7–10, at 8.

69. Perdue, Cherokee Removal, 137–38.

70. Major Ridge, James Foster, Long Shere, and others, “To Messrs. John Ross and others, Cherokee Delegation, now in Washington City” in Elias Boudinot, Cherokee Editor, 196–99, at 197.

71. John Brown, John Looney, and John Rodgers, “Letter to Ross and George Lowrey” in The Papers of Chief John Ross: Vol 1: 1807–1839, ed. Gary E. Moulton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 714–15, at 714.

72. The Eastern and Western Cherokees, “An Act of Union,” in The Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation (Gales and Seaton, 1840), https://www.loc.gov/law/help/american-indian-consts/PDF/28014180.pdf.

73. Patrick Minges, Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855–1867, Studies in African American History and Culture (New York: Rutledge, 2003).

74. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 11.

75. Edward Everett Dale and Gaston Litton, eds. Cherokee Cavaliers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939), 229–31.

76. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 28.

77. Elias Cornelius Boudinot, “To Stand Watie,” in Dale and Litton, Cherokee Cavaliers, 247.

78. Halliburton, Red Over Black.

79. Cherokee Nation, “Letter from Lewis Downing, Principles Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Inclosing Petitions of Numbers of Various Tribes against a Proposed Territorial Government over Them,” 41st Congress, 2nd Sess., 1870, H. Mis. Doc. 76.

80. Bailey, Reconstruction.

81. Ibid., 178–79.

82. Ibid., 180.

83. Ibid., 181.

84. Halliburton, Red Over Black, 134.

85. Sturm, Blood Politics, 75.

86. Dennis W. Bushyhead, “First Annual Message (Second Term) of Hon. Dennis W. Bushyhead: Principal Chief Cherokee Nation: Delivered at Tahlequah: C. N. Nov. 7th: 1883,” North American Thought and Culture, accessed February 1, 2020, https://asp6new-alexanderstreet-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/ibio/ibio.result.sources.aspx?sourcecode=S10018955&sortorder=title.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid.

89. Bailey, Reconstruction, 182.

90. Sturm, Circe, “Blood Politics, Racial Classification, and Cherokee National Identity: The Trials and Tribulations of the Cherokee Freedmen,” American Indian Quarterly 22 (1998): 230–58Google Scholar, at 235.

91. Ibid., 235–36.

92. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 238.

93. Joel B. Mayes, “Third Annual Message of Hon. J. B. Mayes: Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation,” North American Thought and Culture, accessed February 6, 2020, https://asp6new-alexanderstreet-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/ibio/ibio.result.sources.aspx?sourcecode=S10018700&sortorder=title.

94. Ibid.

95. Sturm, “Blood Politics.”

96. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 238.

97. Theodore Roosevelt, “First Annual Message to Congress,” December 3, 1901, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-3-1901-first-annual-message.

98. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen.

99. Bruce N. Duthu, American Indians and the Law (New York: Penguin, 2008), xvi.

100. Ibid.

101. Congressional Record, 68th Congress, 1st Sess., 9674 (May 27, 1924).

102. Graham D. Taylor, The New Deal and American Indian Tribalism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 6–7.

103. Deloria Jr., Custer Died, 48.

104. Taylor, The New Deal, 15.

105. Ibid., 17.

106. Ibid., 19.

107. Donald L. Fixico, Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945–1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), ix.

108. Ibid.

109. Mankiller and Wallace, Mankiller, xx; Duthu, American Indians, xvii.

110. Duthu, American Indians, xvi.

111. Laurence Armand French, Policing American Indians (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016), 66.

112. Principal Chiefs Act of 1970, Public Law 91-495, 91st Congress, 2nd Sess. (October 22, 1970).

113. Ross Swimmer, “Firsthand Accounts,” in American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations, ed. Eric D. Lemont (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 180–82, at 181.

114. R. Perry Wheeler, “Minutes of Regular Meeting, December 4, 1976,” Tahlequah: Cherokee Nation Council, https://cherokee.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=331023&GUID=4189822A-81F4-448F-A0D7-1D3A6E14BC7B&Options=ID|Text|&Search=.

115. Ross Swimmer quoted in Lemont, “Overcoming the Politics of Reform,” in American Indian Constitutional Reform, 287–322, at 292.

116. Ibid., 300.

117. Ibid.

118. Lois Romano, “A Nation Divided,” Washington Post, July 17, 1997, accessed February 12, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/07/17/a-nation-divided/209aae32-9fc5-459f-8897-00328a9e7b64/.

119. Lemont, “Overcoming the Politics of Reform,” 288.

120. Ibid., 293–94.

121. Cherokee Nation Director of Communications, “Cherokee Nation Election Results,” 2003, https://election.cherokee.org/election-results/?pageSize=7&page=3.

122. Cherokee Nation Registrar v. Raymond Nash et al., SC-2011-02 [Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation, 2011].

123. Teddye Snell, “BIA Disputes Tribe's Removal of Feds from Constitutional Process.” Tahlequah Daily Press, May 23, 2007, accessed November 26, 2018, http://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/local_news/bia-disputes-tribe-s-removal-of-feds-from-constitutional-process/article_11eed474-a578-5364-a999-0a429331fe9e.html.

124. A Bill to Sever United States’ Government Relations with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, HR 2824, 110th Congress, 1st Sess., Congressional Record 153, no. 147, daily ed. (October 1, 2007): H 11053.

125. Ibid., 8.

126. The Cherokee Nation v. Raymond Nash et al. and Marilyn Vann et al. and Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, and the U.S. Department of the Interior, 13-01313 (TFH) (United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 2017).

127. An Act Relating to the Process of Enrolling as a Member of the Cherokee Nation, Legislative Act 6-92.

128. Lemont, “Overcoming the Politics of Reform,” 288.

129. Temin, “Custer's Sins,” 359.

130. Opal, J. M., “General Jackson's Passports: Natural Rights and Sovereign Citizens in the Political Thought of Andrew Jackson, 1780s–1820s,” Studies in American Political Development 27 (October 2013): 69–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferguson, “Why Does Political Science Hate American Indians?”

131. Ferguson, “Why Does Political Science Hate American Indians?” 1031.

132. Frymer, Paul, “Why Aren't Political Scientists Interested in Native American Politics?” Perspectives on Politics 14 (December 2016): 1042–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1042.

133. Schroedel, Jean and Hart, Ryan, “Vote Dilution and Suppression in Indian Country,” Studies in American Political Development 29 (April 2015): 40–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chin, Jeremiah, Bustamante, Nicholas, Solyom, Jessica Ann, and Brayboy, Bryan McKinley Jones, “Terminus Amnesia: Cherokee Freedmen, Citizenship, and Education,” Theory Into Practice 55 (2016): 28–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilkins, David E., “Absence Does Not Make the Indigenous Political Heart Grow Fonder,” Perspectives on Politics 14 (December 2016): 1048–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

134. Rebecca Nagle, “How ‘Pretendians’ Undermine the Rights of Indigenous People,” High Country News, April 2, 2019, accessed February 13, 2020, https://www.hcn.org/articles/tribal-affairs-how-pretendians-undermine-the-rights-of-indigenous-people; Adam Elmahrek and Paul Pringle, “Claiming to be Cherokee, Contractors with White Ancestry Got $300 Million,” Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2019, accessed February 13, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-na-cherokee-minority-contracts-20190626-story.html.