After a long legal fight, the Cherokee nation ousted thousands of descendants of black slaves who had long been official members of the tribe. The Cherokee Supreme Court (the tribe is a sovereign nation) ruled this week a 2007 constitutional amendment that required Cherokee blood in order to belong to the tribe could stand. "This is racism and apartheid in the 21st century," Marilyn Vann, the lead plaintiff in the case and a freedman leader, told Reuters. The controversy over the freedmen's status is at least in part about money. The Cherokee nation, the second-largest Native American tribe in the country, receives money from the federal government and earns money from its stake in the lucrative gambling industry, which totaled $26.4 billion for all tribes in 2009. In the run-up to the 2007 amendment vote, some proponents of expelling the freedmen suggested that more blacks might apply for membership to receive tribal money. In the 1800s, the U.S. government passed a law forcing members of the Cherokee nation from their ancestral lands in the Deep South to make room for white settlers. The Cherokee -- as well as their black slaves -- were forcibly marched west of the Mississippi River to the Oklahoma territory during the "Trail of Tears," resulting in the deaths of thousands of Native Americans. After the Civil War, the Cherokee formally admitted by treaty their slaves' descendants into the nation. Before the 2007 passage of the amendment, some descendants of the freedmen said the vote on their status within the nation expressed a desire by many tribe members to paper over their slave-owning past. But the tribeââ¬â¢s leadership disagreed. "It's a basic, inherent right to determine our own citizenry," a Cherokee leader told the Washington Post. "We paid very dearly for those rights." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/25/cherokee-nations-expels-d_n_936930.html
news.yahoo.com/libyan-rebels-round-black-africans-â 'Libyan rebels round up black Africans' . Rebel forces and armed civilians are rounding up thousands of black Libyans ... Got to feel bad for Blacks all over the world. What they need to learn is to stop counting on Government to protect them, support them and help them. Just like in the USA, the blacks are redlined into urban ghettos with no hope for education and are cut out of the greater economy. Part of the Liberal Democrat policies of vicious segregation. To all Blacks, Get the Government out of your lives.....
Black freeloaders applying for free money? No way! Largely because of gold being discovered in north Georgia I believe. If I'm not mistaken there was at least one other Native American Indian tribe who also owned African slaves. Treaties can be changed and or broken of course, but at the moment I'm inclined to sympathize with the slave descendants. Were the Cherokee forced to accept the former slaves into their nation?
This thread reminds me of an exchange I and others had with RCG Trader not too long ago. I've recently learned that even if you're licensed to carry a weapon a business owner can still ask you to leave the premises and you are obligated to do so or be guilty of criminal trespass. The question is this: how is a business owner, whose business is open to the public, legally allowed to discriminate against a patron guilty of nothing but exorcising his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. While that same owner is not allowed by law to discriminate against anyone else for any other reason I'm aware of? Better yet, if a white business owner asks a black guy legally carrying a weapon to leave the premises. Is it racial discrimination or armed citizen discrimination?
Well, it's legal to discriminate against someone who exercises their constitutional rights, but it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, at least for white people. Although it's supposed to be illegal for others to do the same, those laws aren't enforced. Most any university campus will have many ethnic advocacy organizations, black students union, hispanic student advocacy group, etc. The supreme court in fact ruled that it was legal to practice racial discrimination against white people so long as it was done in the interest of "diversity" or "equality", or to meet racial quota/affirmative action policies. This is one of my biggest issues, is that virtually every other group except for whites is allowed to organize politically along racial/ethnic lines, and pursue group interests. It's perfectly legitimate for every other group to do so, yet white people (who created the nation) are required to remain politically impotent as a group, any notion of white interests is considered illegitimate, and any organized pursuit of them is considered depravity of the highest order. For example, is it in the interest of whites to overrun the nation with latin americans? Is it in the interest of whites to have policies which discriminate against them on the basis of race for jobs, education funding, university admissions, home loans, etc? Is it even in the interest of the nation to have such selections based not on qualifications or capability, but racial preference policies? It would certainly be considered a legitimate issue for blacks if blacks were being killed, raped, robbed, lynched, or whatever by white people, so why is it illegitimate for whites to be concerned with the disproportionate rates at which they are victimized by other groups in violent crime?
http://news.yahoo.com/cherokees-told-back-slaves-descendants-193054698.html Cherokees told to take back slaves' descendants TULSA, Okla. (AP) â A federal order for one of the nation's largest American Indian tribes to restore voting rights and benefits to about 2,800 descendants of members' former slaves threw plans for a special election for a new chief into turmoil Tuesday. The federal government sent the sternly-worded letter to the Cherokee Nation after it sent letters last week kicking the descendants out of the tribe and stripping them of benefits including medical care, food stipends and assistance for low-income homeowners. The tribe also barred the descendants from voting in a Sept. 24 special election for principal chief. The Cherokee Supreme Court ordered the special election after it said it could not determine with certainty the outcome of a close and hotly contested June election between incumbent Chad Smith and longtime tribal councilman Bill John Baker. The results had flip-flopped between the two during weeks of counts and recounts. Baker had twice been declared winner, but so had Smith. The federal government said that unless the descendants, known as freedmen, were allowed to vote, the upcoming election wouldn't be valid. "I urge you to consider carefully the nation's next steps in proceeding with an election that does not comply with federal law," Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk wrote in letter Friday to acting Chief S. Joe Crittenden. "The department will not recognize any action taken by the nation that is inconsistent with these principles and does not accord its freedmen members full rights of citizenship." Crittenden said the special election would take place as scheduled. "The Cherokee Nation will not be governed by the (Bureau of Indian Affairs)," he said. "We will hold our election and continue our long legacy of responsible self-governance." The election has drawn national interest because while the tribe is based in Tahlequah, many of its 300,000 members live outside Oklahoma. The freedmen have asked a federal judge to restore their voting rights before the special election, and a hearing is planned next week in federal court in Washington. The tribe never owned black slaves, but some individual members did. They were freed after the Civil War, in which the tribe allied with the Confederacy. An 1866 treaty between the tribe and the federal government gave the freedmen and their descendants "all the rights of native Cherokees." More than 76 percent of Cherokee voters approved a 2007 amendment removing the freedmen and other non-Indians from the tribal rolls, but no action was taken until the tribe's Supreme Court upheld the results of that special election last month. Cherokee leaders who backed the amendment, including Smith, said the vote was about the fundamental right of every government to determine its citizens, not about racial exclusion. But the Department of the Interior said Tuesday that it still believes the expulsion is unconstitutional because it violates the 1866 treaty. Marilyn Vann, president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, said she hopes the federal order will result in the election being delayed. "The freedmen people still have rights in the tribe such as voting," Vann said Tuesday. "We'll have our day in court."
Wow, have those feds no shame? After oppressing the red man for so many years, they are still oppressing them, and dominate their decision making process, even resorting to threats. The racist federal government is undermining the sovereignty treaties it made with those oppressed indians. What supremacist bastards.