"the People's Paths!" Cherokee News Path - Blood Requirement Common for Citizenship

TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma – The Cherokee Nation is under fire for its March 3 vote requiring that tribal citizens have Indian blood, yet most tribes require citizens to have Indian blood, a survey by the Cherokee Phoenix shows.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, a neighbor tribe of the CN, requires that those applying for citizenship must be Creek by blood and be able to trace back to a direct ancestor on the 1906 Dawes Roll.

The Dawes Commission was organized in 1893, and it accepted applications for tribal enrollment from American Indians of the “Five Civilized Tribes” between 1899 and 1907. The five tribes are the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole and Chickasaw Nations.

The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians requires citizens to have one-fourth Keetoowah Cherokee blood to be a citizen of the tribe.

The tribe’s chief, George Wickliffe, said the blood quantum is a direct link to the tribe’s culture.

“We are really traditional people and we do preserve our culture – we’re talking about making baskets, we’re talking about making fish gigs, we’re talking about bows and arrows, we’re talking about dart guns and preserving our language,” Wickliffe said.

Nearly 65 percent of the tribe’s membership can either speak or understand Cherokee, Wickliffe said.

“This (the blood quantum) is our way then of preserving our culture and traditions because that is a part of our philosophy and the way that we first organized,” Wickliffe said. “Tribes do have the right to determine their own method in the way that they accept membership.”

Two other Oklahoma tribes, the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, both require people to first apply for a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood then once they have their CDIB they are able to apply for citizenship within the tribe.

The Choctaw Nation application for a CDIB must show the applicant’s direct lineage to an original enrollee of the Final Choctaw Dawes Rolls, by blood.

The largest tribe in the United States, the Navajo Nation, has a requirement that a person “MUST be at least one-fourth Navajo to be enrolled” as a citizen of the Navajo Nation, according to its web site.

Florinda Wagner Tom, vital statistics technician at the Navajo Nation, said those wanting to apply to be a citizen of the Navajo Nation must have “been born to an enrolled member and be at least one-quarter Navajo” to be eligible for enrollment.

Charlene Anderson has been an enrollment specialist with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe for 17 years.

The tribe, which has more than 16,000 citizens, uses a blood quantum that requires at least one of the parents of the applicant to be enrolled in the tribe.

But Anderson said she wishes the tribe used a different method to determine citizenship.

“I wish they’d go back to the lineal descendency requirement and they wouldn’t have to use the blood quantum,” Anderson said.

When blood quantum is used it breaks down the tribe and amount of Indian blood each generation has, Anderson said.

“But I know the majority of tribes do require a blood quantum,” Anderson said.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida, requires those wanting to apply for citizenship to meet three requirements: they must have a minimum of one-quarter Florida Seminole blood; they must be able to prove with written documentation that they are directly related to a Florida Seminole who was listed on the 1957 Tribal Roll, which is the base roll of the tribe; and they must be sponsored for enrollment by a current tribal citizen.

According to the Seminole Tribe’s web site, the tribe maintains its blood quantum requirement so that the applicant is “no more than a single generation removed from the cultural heritage.”

Despite the other tribes’ requirement that citizens have Indian blood, it is the Cherokee Nation that has come under fire by black members of Congress for amending its constitution to require that tribal citizens have Indian blood.

The March 3 vote changed the tribe’s constitution to restrict tribal citizenship to descendants of Indians by blood listed on the Dawes Rolls. The vote excluded about 2,800 Freedmen descendents and about 10 intermarried whites.

A temporary order and injunction approved by the CN’s District Court on May 14 reinstated Freedmen citizenship and their voting rights while their appeals work their way through the tribal court system.

Since then the tribe has come under intensive media and public scrutiny, and most significantly, congressional scrutiny.

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., introduced a bill, HR 2824, that would cut federal funding to the Cherokee Nation unless it reinstated the Freedmen with full citizenship rights. That bill is pending in two House committees – judicial and natural resources – and the next step will be for each committee to hold hearings on the issue.

The CN does have the support of other Indian organizations though.

The National Congress of American Indians released a statement in June regarding the legislation introduced by Watson.

“The status of non-Indians within the Cherokee Nation is a complex legal issue with a very long history. It is currently in litigation and the status of the impacted individuals is preserved while the litigation proceeds,” the release stated.

NCAI’s president, Joe Garcia, echoed those sentiments.

“A decision by the courts will shed a lot of light on the legal and historical questions,” Garcia said. “We urge Congress to allow the parties their opportunity to have the issues considered in an orderly fashion.

“This is not a simple race issue. The Cherokee membership issues are complex, and it does a disservice to both of our communities to oversimplify them.”