#The law is very very clear about Native tribal sovereignty | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

specialagentartemis · 2 years ago

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”He's literally fighting for indigenous children to be ripped from their tribes and culture so there's less indigenous people to protest big oil destroying their sacred land.”

I’m sure they’d love that, but what he really wants is bigger and more immediate. The oil and gas industries don’t overly care about the ICWA itself; it’s a means to an end, using a cute little baby’s face to garner sympathy, for a much more sweeping destruction of Native American rights.

The Indian Child Welfare Act is based on the idea, enshrined in law since the 1700s, that Native nations are political nations and tribal members are citizens of their tribal nation. The right for a Native American child to be placed with family, then with someone else from their tribe, then with someone from a different tribe, and only if all of those fail with a non-tribal family, is based on this concept of national sovereignty. They are tribal citizens and should not be taken out of their home nation for the same reason a baby from, say, Canada should be placed with a Canadian family before a US one. It’s about tribal sovereignty and the right to make their own laws about their own citizens.

The ICWA case is arguing that Native nations do not have this right to determine what happens to their own citizens, because Native Americans are just a racial category and not a collection of political nations.

If Native tribes are just social clubs based on race and not politically organized sovereign nations, then they have no legal standing to govern themselves or their land. If they are sovereign nations, however, they have legal independence to determine where their citizens can be adopted—and where oil and gas pipelines can be barred from.

This lawyer wants the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the white family based on the argument that Native Americans having rights is just racial bias, and they don’t actually have the legal right to political sovereignty. And if Native nations don’t have the legal right to political sovereignty, then a hell of a lot of rights abuses that oil and gas companies (as well as casino companies, and police, and, of course, white couples who want to adopt/steal Native children) want to do get a hell of a lot easier.

I know I already made a post about this. But ICWA is LITERALLY being challenged by a white couple that wants to adopt indigenous children to erase their culture and Christianize them. The tribe, whom has a say in who can take their children, is like "Nah, we don't want our youth Christianized like you tride last time"

And the lawyer that's helping the white couple try to overturn ICWA (so that they can erase the cultures of indigenous children) is doing it pro-bono (which means he's not charging the couple anything).

AND that lawyer is a big time lawyer whose clients are usually oil and gas industries. He's literally fighting for indigenous children to be ripped from their tribes and culture so there's less indigenous people to protest big oil destroying their sacred land.

-fae

#current events #US politics #ICWA #The really infuriating thing is that this is unconstitutional. Like. Blatantly.#The law is very very clear about Native tribal sovereignty #But; of course; that does not stop anybody #Native American #racism

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mostly-mundane-atla · 2 years ago

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@dawn101

Amazing how a wikipedia article on the topic was the first google result.

The short version is this: the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 exists to keep Native children with Native families from their tribe. This law was brought about by an ugly, racist history as a means to protect the Indigenous Peoples of the United States. You see, from almost day one of the colonization of the North American continent, the plan was to get rid of us. The official reason was always because we were on land the colonizers wanted, but they came up with a lot of ways to justify it. Early on they said we were godless, without society, basically animals, and so it didn't need to weigh on their conscious when they cleared us out with the deer, bears, and trees. Later on you get some condescending pity. We were people after all, so how could they let us live like that? What did they decide to do about that?

They decided to take the kids away.

And they put them in schools where they were expected to do labor and beaten when they spoke their languages. All in the name of saving the children. This didn't end when the schools were shut down. Native children were still being taken from their homes at a disproportionate rate.

So the ICWA was passed, giving Tribal government a say in whose care a Native child should be placed in. Did you know genocide doesn't need to involve literal killing? Severing children from their culture at a massive scale is an act of genocide. The ICWA is in a very literal sense a protective measure against the genocide of the Indigenous peoples.

The ICWA is going to be reviewed for constitutionality by the Supreme Court of the United States because a wealthy white evangelical Christian couple represented by the same lawyers as the oil industries (whose profits are threatened by Indigenous sovereignty) want to raise a Native foster boy and his sister. The claim is that, by protecting children against literal genocide attempts, the law is racist against white people.

And remember what I said about tribal government? The Supreme Court is going to decide for the entire country whether tribes have the right to have any say on what happens to their most vulnerable members.

That is why we should all be upset about the ICWA being questioned. That is why we should all be pushing back against it.

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fantastic-nonsense · 5 years ago

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@writer-of-words replied to your post “also like…just so y’all know…this nonsense and my response isn’t...”

I wish we had a (truly) leftist candidate who didn’t compromise their ideals to appeal to “centrists” by throwing the most marginalized under the bus. All I know about JR is his transphobia and that’s all I need to know. I’d be more keen to wholeheartedly back Warren (as opposed to casually support for pushing Dems more left) if she’d do the work to make up to Indigenous folk

Oh but she is! I’m actually really excited that I get to talk about this, because I think it’s one of the biggest misconceptions of Warren and her campaign.

First of all, I think it’s important to note that she has formally apologized on more than one occasion and has been actively meeting with leaders from various Native American tribes and communities to discuss policies that are important to them. So in that respect, she is actively making the effort and doing the work by meeting, listening, and absorbing.

Second, Warren was the first candidate to come out with a policy agenda specifically aimed at lifting up and empowering indigenous communities; she remains the only candidate still in the race to do so (Castro also rolled out a detailed plan; Castro has since endorsed Warren and is actively campaigning for her). Sanders has two bullet-pointed paragraphs on the subject, but Warren is the only one that has clearly done the homework (with the input of indigenous leaders!) on what actually needs to be done with respect to those communities. She is actively listening, learning, and bettering herself on the subject, and that’s something that is very rare in politicians (especially these days, unfortunately).

Finally, she also tapped Deb Haaland (one of two of the first Native American women in Congress, elected just two years ago in the 2018 midterms) to be one of her three national campaign co-chairs (a position of enormous power, influence, and voice); the other two are Katie Porter (a progressive that won a traditionally Republican House District in California and a former student of Warren’s) and Ayanna Pressley (current House Rep from Massachusetts and the fourth member of “The Squad”).

I note Haaland specifically not just because it shows Warren is genuinely making the effort by elevating Native voices to positions of power within her campaign, but also because Warren has been collaborating with her for quite some time, such as introducing legislation to address chronic underfunding and tribal sovereignty issues in Indian Country back in August.

All of this is to say that Warren is actively working to “walk the walk” and not just talk the talk, both in elevating indigenous people to positions of power and influence and actively working with them to understand what is going on in their communities and how they need help. Which goes back to one of the many reasons I support her: she is someone both humble enough to recognize that someone else's plan might be better and more informed than hers and someone who is proactive enough to listen to her constituents, use them to identify pitfalls in current legislation and law, and write plans and legislation to address those gaps.

Hope that helps clear up at least a few of your concerns, and let me know if you’d like to talk about anything else!

#writer-of-words #elizabeth warren #us politics #politics #2020 election #2020 democratic primary #also a big plus in that her focus is turning out the actual Dem base and pulling in fiscal conservatives/anti-corruption folk #instead of....you know......joe rogan types

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iowaprelawland · 2 years ago

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A Break From Tradition

By Emily Harkin, University of Iowa, Class of 2023

July 7, 2022

On June 29th, 2022, the Supreme Court overruled, in part, a precendent and a lawful ideology towards indigenous people that had been held for nearly 200 years. In this landmark decision, they diminished the effects of the ruling of McGirt v. Oklahoma with the 5-4 decision to uphold Oklahoma in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huetra.

In 1831, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia was an established decision from the Supreme Court. It remained a continuance of the judicial view of Native American tribes being as John Marshall quotes in Cherokee v. Georgia (year) not foregin states, but as “domestic dependent nation(s).” This was an interpretation of the Article III of the Constitution about Court Jurisdiction in response to the Georgia State Legislative creating legal framework that would allow the Cherokee nation to be “divided up, and distributed to the white citizens in the state of Georgia.” [4]

Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States [6]

More recently, McGirt v. Oklahoma originated from a lower court, the Oklahoma Court of Appeals. In this 2020 case, a tribal member of the Muscogee (Creek Nation) was found guilty of crimes against a minor citzen of the United States within tribal lands. In the court of law, Jimcy McGirt argued that he could not be guilty under Oklahoma legal jurisdiction due to the Indian Major Crimes Act. This ended as a 5-4 decision with the dissent of Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Alito, and Justice Kavanaugh in 2020. Their dissenting opinion was written by Chief Justice Roberts with Justice Alito and Justice Kavanaugh, and in part Justice Clarence, who had accepted the argument from Oklahoma about the boundary establishment of the Creek Reservation. Overall, the majority decided and accepted that there was a previous determination of Creek Nation boarders that was established by an 1866 treaty. With acceptance to those boarders, the majority decided that the case falls under the federal statute that decrees these understood boundaries are constituted as a reservation that can only be lessened or ‘disestablished’ by a “clear expression of congressional intent.” [3]

In the past week, Oklahoma v. Castro-Huetra came before the court when Victor Manuel-Castro Huerta was found guilty for neglect against his Native American step daughter within the confines of the Cherokee Reservation in the special court of Child Negect in the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. [2] This case challenged, in part, the Supreme Court ruling from the McGirt v. Oklahoma ruling. This 5-4 decision against Castro-Huetra allows states to now have “the power to prosecute non-Indian crimes within Native lands.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued the majority opinion, stating “Indian country is part of the State, not separate from the state.” [1] This statement directly contrasts and disregards John Marshall’s deeply influential declaration of their separation from statehood by calling indigenous tribes nations. Gorsuch, a republican-appointed judge, wrote the dissent for this case. He pointed out that their was an intentional avoidance of tribal sovereignty in Justice Kavanaugh’s written majority opinion. Gorsuch wrote that this had little to do with the crime and punishment of Castro-Huetra, but rather Oklahoma wanting “to gain a legal foothold for its wish to exercise jurisdiction over crimes involving tribal members on tribal lands.” [5] Gorsuch echoed his opinion in the McGirt v. Oklahoma 2020 case, when he wrote that the “Trail of Tears was a promise” where “the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever” and cited the 1832 Treaty, Art. XIV, 7 Stat. 368 that gave Native Americans sovereignty, self governance free from the states.

McGirt v. Oklahoma and Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta are very similar legal jurisdictional arguments regarding Native American reservations. Although the decisions are extremely different in two similar court cases with McGirt and Castro-Huetra, this decision does not necessarily overturn Castro-Huetra. However, this decision will effect more than Oklahoma, but rather all future indigenous jurisdictional disputes. [1]

______________________________________________________________

Ablavsky, Gregory, and Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese. “Opinion | The Supreme Court Strikes Again - This Time at Tribal Sovereignty.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 July 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/castro-huerta-oklahoma-supreme-court-tribal-sovereignty/.

“Oklahoma v. Castro-Huetra.” Oyez, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/21-429.

“McGirt v. Oklahoma.” Oyez, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/18-9526

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia - Oregon.gov. https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/equity/NativeAmericanEducation/Documents/SB13%20Curriculum/SC%20Summary%207_Cherokee%20Nation%20v%20Georgia.pdf.

Francis-Smith, Janice. “Gorsuch Dissent Accuses Oklahoma of 'Unlawful Power Grab'.” The Journal Record, 2 July 2022, https://journalrecord.com/2022/07/01/gorsuch-dissent-accuses-oklahoma-of-unlawful-power-grab/.

Constitution of the United States §177–§178 [Article III, Sections 1–2]. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/HMAN-112/pdf/HMAN-112-pg78.pdf.

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carefullymonday · 7 years ago

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SAVE THE MONUMENTS

Trump announced (1,2,3) that he will make massive cuts to two national monuments - Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments in Utah, but many are fighting back. (1,2,3,4,5)

WHAT DO THE CUTS MEAN!?

"The Bears Ears National Monument will go from roughly 1.3 million acres to roughly 228,000 — only about 15 percent of its original size. And Grand Staircase will be diminished by roughly half, from its nearly 1.9 million acres to about 1 million. The specific numbers were provided to reporters by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke prior to Trump's announcement in Salt Lake City." - NPR, Dec 4, 2017

Okay, so?

Native Sovereignty

"It is a place essential to the physical, spiritual and cultural identity of the Hopi, Zuni, Ute and Navajo Nations. Before the advent of European settlers in the West, these peoples were here. They lived and flourished in the curvilinear canyons of red and orange labyrinthine rock in what is now Utah. People made their homes and offered their prayers around the green areas of the high elevations near the twin buttes that lend the area its name...

The monument designation sends a clear message that damaging, disturbing and looting our heritage is unacceptable, unethical and illegal to those nonnative residents who have always believed it to be allowable. The thousands of ancient cultural sites in Bears Ears represent an anchor for tribes to understand and share with today’s generation who they are, and helps show us the way to a more hopeful future...

But Bears Ears, as a national monument, is also about respect. The designation is a long-overdue acknowledgment the need for tribal input on policies affecting this land, and of the fact that previous treaties should have ensured the right of indigenous communities to govern and maintain that which is theirs. It is not right to go back on these promises now." - Baca, Dec 8, 2017

"More than 100,000 Native American archaeological and cultural sites, some dating to 12,000 B.C., are protected in Bears Ears. Tribes continue to visit these lands to hold ceremonies and to connect with their ancestors. “What is sacred cannot be reversed,” said James Adaki, President of the Navajo’s Oljato Chapter and a member of the Bears Ears Commission. (See photos and videos of Bears Ears.)." - EarthJustice, June 16th, 2017

Environmental

"The work to establish Grand Staircase-Escalante in the late 1990's sparked lawsuits and proposals to curb presidential authority under the Antiquities Act. Monument opponents failed then, but the controversy continued—in part because of industries’ wish to exploit fossil fuels that lie beneath the monument. Without its protected status, Grand Staircase-Escalante would be vulnerable to coal mining and oil and gas development, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress." - EarthJustice, June 16, 2017

"This opens the door to a lot of potential harm on these lands – more oil and gas development? More mining, grazing and logging? More fences, shutting off hiking, climbing, fishing and hunting access? It’s all up for grabs." - Eberie, Dec 27, 2017

Scientific Research and Education

"Both monuments are known for exceptional sites holding the remains of ancient human settlements, unique ecosystems, and troves of fossils." - Underwood, Dec 6, 2017

"There were multiple reasons for making them monuments, but in both cases paleontology was one. When Grand Staircase-Escalante was set aside, there were very few areas anywhere in the world where we had a mammal fossil record right at the late Cretaceous period, when different mammal groups were diverging. Those fossils really filled a gap in mammal paleontology and put Grand Staircase on the map from a paleontological point of view. We now have the most extraordinary Late Cretaceous ecosystem documented anywhere. After the monument was established, a lot of the dinosaur material was discovered." - Polly, Dec 6, 2017

"Many conservation biologists, archaeologists, and paleontologists oppose the moves, saying it could open the way to damage of sensitive sites by mining, grazing, and recreational activities." - Underwood, Dec 6, 2017

Political

"The executive order threatens not only some of our nation’s youngest monuments, but also the public lands law that safeguards all national monuments, present and future: the Antiquities Act of 1906. Undermining monument designations and protections would establish a dangerous precedent...

The 120 years since the Arizona newspaper editorialized against saving the Grand Canyon have proven that protecting our public lands from extractive industries is a battle worth fighting." - EarthJustice, June 16, 2017

Though many are fighting, you can be a planeteer too.

WAIT WUT - HOW DO I HELP!?

Donate to EarthJustice (filed a lawsuit against these actions) - "Despite an unprecedented barrage of attacks on the things we hold dear, EarthJustice has been taking on critical environmental lawsuits against the most anti-environment administration in this country’s history." - EarthJustice

Use AmazonSmile to help Society of Vertebrate Paleontology at no cost to you! (SVP filed a lawsuit against these actions) - "SVP, in collaboration with several partner groups, will be taking legal action to block Trump’s cuts. Not only do we believe that key paleo resources will be endangered when they are removed from the monuments’ boundaries, but we believe that the President lacks the legal authority to reduce those boundaries." - P. David Polly, President of SVP

Buy Native American Rights Fund Merch (or donate. NARF representing the Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe filed a lawsuit to protect Bears Ears.)

Write to Your Senators and Representatives through National Parks Conservation Associations.

Share this post or any of the articles sited above to everyone you know.

#SIGNALBOOST

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knottedlaces · 7 years ago

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Modern Jurisdiction Helping to Sustain Sexual Violence Against Native Women on Indian Country

How often do you think about American Indians? Only when you watch the Redskins play, only when you see the Chief Wahoo logo, or maybe only when you hear of natives fighting for water rights on their own reservation? If you answer, “not very often” you're not alone. The spotlight Native Americans receive in the media is very slim and practically non-existent. This lack of awareness of Native populations has let injustices continue to rage on in the dark. This post will shed light upon a large problem that plagues Indian Country and specifically targets Native Women.

Prior to colonization of North America, indigenous tribes possessed inherent characteristics of sovereignty and functioned as independent entities. Since colonization tribal entities have been continually divested of independence and deprived of original innate sovereignty. Federal Indian policy, since the settlement of European colonists, has continually been used as an entity to strip native tribes of the unalienable sovereignty they originally embodied. Currently, the United States Federal Government distinguishes tribes as Sovereign Nations who possess the legal authority to govern themselves within the borders of the US. However, this ambiguous definition has created severe legal gaps that undermine prerequisites required for tribes to grant justice. Long standing colonialism that has continued to persist has proved to be a key underlying hindrance that exacerbates the grievances of native women. This contemporary colonialism thrives through current policy and has contributed to the jurisdictional discrepancies that continue to perpetuate sexual violence against Native women on Indian Country.

The use of Indian policy has routinely been used to deprive independence from native tribes. In 1823 Chief Justice John Marshall announced that Indians in America no longer had the power to dispose of the soil, at their own will, to whomsoever they pleased (1). This statement made by a US Supreme Court Justice declared that the discovery of North America granted supreme power to Europeans. The power of “discovering” professed that colonizers held complete sovereignty and the legal right to dismiss indigenous right of occupancy. Federal policy throughout history has embodied attributes that systematically marginalize American indigenous. Policy like this, which strips tribes of their innate independence, is still seen today. “From the earliest days of our nation's history, it has been clear that Indian tribes do not possess the inherent power to prosecute non- Indians for crimes committed in Indian country”(2). This legal decision made in the supreme court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe in 1978 is yet another example of policy used as a marginalization tool. More so, this supreme court decision has created other repercussions as well. This case has solidified a huge jurisdiction conflict which works to protect non-natives while simultaneously working to oppress and silence natives. This court case declared that tribal governments do not have jurisdiction over non-natives. This means crimes committed by non-natives on Indian Country cannot be pursued by tribal governments. This loophole has created a safe haven for many assailants to go unpunished for a magnitude of crimes, including those of sexual violence.

In today’s media, sexual violence has received an influx of awareness. Survivors among Hollywood have taken the forefront of movements such as Me Too and Times Up but awareness has not expanded to the silenced survivors. 4 out of 5 Native American women have experienced violence throughout her life. 1 out of 3 Native American women have experienced sexual violence and this number is likely to be an underestimate. Native American women endure the highest rates of sexual violence among any other demographic. These women experience full rape or attempted rape at rates more than 2.5 times the national average. It is important to note that these alarming numbers were not normalities seen prior to colonization. Prior to colonization of North America instances of sexual assault among indigenous populations was practically unheard of. Many Native American tribes function as matriarchal societies and many tribes held women in high regard. Violence against Native women is not tradition and never was, however; statics today are not representative of these facts. Incidences of sexual assault have grown exponentially. Today, sexual violence against Native American women has become an epidemic.

The US supreme court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe ruled that tribal courts and governments have no jurisdiction over non-natives. This ruling created a legal hole that limits the tribal legal system from prosecuting non-native for offensives such as sexual assault. National demographic polls reveal that Native women on reservations have the highest rate of victimization but the least likely of all demographics to have their sexual assaults investigated, see their perpetrators arrests, or to have their cases go to trial (3). Sexual violence against Native American women is an epidemic and of reported cases 86% of Native women defined their perpetrator as being non-native and 80% have described the attacker as white (3). These are very alarming statistics because prosecution of these non-natives is reliant on the federal government. However, 67% of cases reported to the federal government are refused and immediately dismissed. Jurisdictional conflicts have created a hunting ground for rapists and molesters to target native women and even children living on the reservation. “What seems like dry legislation can leave Native women at the mercy of their predators or provide a slim margin of hope for justice. As a Cheyenne proverb goes, a nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground”(4).

In the year 2013 the Federal Government reauthorized Violence Against Women Act or VAWA which went into effect in 2015. This partial fix to the jurisdictional problem grated tribes, “the authority to arrest and prosecute non-Indians who commit certain domestic violence crimes within their territory” (5). This small grant of legal jurisdiction leaves a narrow window for tribes to prosecute non-Indians for crimes of domestic violence. This act is significant however, tribal government must have sufficient evidence to claim jurisdiction over a non-native. To prosecute non-natives tribal governments must prove a significant connection between the non-native perpetrator and the native victim. While this act is a step in the right direction, it still leaves many holes that assailants can act upon. It is commonly said that instances of sexual violence peak during hunting seasons, during pipeline construction, or to be committed by truck drivers. Assaults committed under these instances would prove immunity to tribal governments. This policy does hand minuscule jurisdiction to tribal governments but in September of 2018 VAWA will expire. There is uncertainty if it will be reauthorized under the Trump administration considering Trump has not appointed anyone to the head Justice Department’s VAWA office.

It is an undeniable motif through the history of America that federal policy is used as a tool to disenfranchise Natives. Federal Indian policy is used to strip Native tribes of sovereignty and to reinforce racial inferiority. The supreme court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe reiterated both key factors. This court decision that is upheld speaks with authority that Native governments have inferior legal systems and cannot be granted full jurisdiction over their land nor all those who come on to Indian Country. Additionally, this ruling supports the theory that race can justify or excuse grotesque crimes. Jurisdictional laws have made prosecuting non-natives for crimes on Indian Country almost impossible. Factor such as race, relationship between attacker and victim, and extent of crime must all be considered when declaring whether the tribe, state, or federal government has legal jurisdiction. Many visitors can come onto reservations and sexually violate Native women and because of impunity can walk free without being touched. The federal policy currently in place is a large indicator that systematic marginalization has persevered. Colonialism originally violated and divested Native populations and to this day federal policy continues to do so. Federal policy has continued to endorse the rape of Native women and perpetuate the epidemic that has tremendous repercussions to the indigenous population. This issue is large and unfortunately there is no magic solution that will entirely solve this problem overnight. Awareness and pressure must be placed on government officials to consider passing legislation that grants justice, jurisdiction, and elements of independence back to tribal governments. The existence of Native Americans to this day represents the solidarity and strength of Native People. With unity and mass awareness, Natives will overcome these grievances and will continue to show the perseverance and resilience they have since creation.

References:

1. https://law.shu.edu/Students/academics/journals/law-review/Issues/archives/upload/watson.pdf

2. http://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/kjpp13&div=15&?&collection=journals

3. Injustice in Indian Country: Jurisdiction American Law, and Sexual Violence Against Native Women by Amy Casselman

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/opinion/native-americans-and-the-violence-against-women-act.html

5. https://www.voanews.com/a/advocates-seek-justice-abused-native-american-women/4261220.html

Books and Scholarly Journals:

2. http://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/kjpp13&div=15&?&collection=journals

3. Injustice in Indian Country: Jurisdiction American Law, and Sexual Violence Against Native Women by Amy Casselman

Pictures:

All pictures courtesy of Google

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opokubarimah · 8 years ago

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Kumasi; The Capital Of The Home of Asantes

Jokes about "Kumasi people" not being exactly civillized have become fashionable on social media these days. Here and there, someone makes a cursory joke about how funny it would be for Kumasi people to use the escalator at their new mall. This brand of jest is born not from good old fair-natured humour but from a faulty ideological education passed on from one generation to the next among "non-Kumasi people" in Ghana. Since the phrase "Kumasi people" is used wholesale and the usual Ghanaian safety valve "some" does not precede it in such "jokes," I shall take the liberty of saying "non-Kumasi people" with the same careless abandon. Please do indulge me. Mocking of "Kumasi people" is usually done by "Accra people" because the capital city of Ghana is a rainbow metropolis perceived as "the city." Accra doesn't belong in urban or demographic terms to any one tribe. Having lived in Accra for 21 years after our family moved from Kumasi, I can say that jokes about "Kumasi people" are quite popular here. "Accra people" do not usually think "Kumasi people" are as civillized as them, for the simple reason that most people born and bred in Kumasi, especially on traditional lines do not have a good command of the English language. So good spoken English and its attendant manners form the basis of civilization to "Accra people." I regret that Kumasi is not a rainbow city like Accra and therefore we cannot refer to "Kumasi people" without meaning Asantes, and herein lies the challenge. Kumasi is a four century old imperial city of a traditional Kingdom, the crown city of the Asantes. To be fair to everyone, when you visit Kumasi, it is immediately clear in every facet of social and economic life that you are in the land of the Asantes. It is on this premise that I proceed. This is not a tribal jousting contest; I am addressing the idea of "Kumasi people" and civilization. Civilization is not "English." In fact, it is an insult to the Japanese and the Chinese to say that they have to speak English to be civilized. These races have very advanced age-old philosophies and sociologies. The Japanese were drinking tea and had fine education in their arcane Tea Ceremony hundreds of years before the British knew how to spell "tea." They had architecture, literature and very far reaching philosophy. The traditional Japanese do not need to speak English, French or Spanish for that matter to be civilized. When the imperial enterprise of the British advanced in The Gold Coast, they annexed all lands until they met these dark-faced, cloth-clad "Kumasi people." R.S. Rattray, a British historian observed in his work, Ashanti Law and Constitution, that the Asante were among the most civilized peoples of Africa. The British who own the English language thought so 200 years. "Accra people" don't think so today. The Asante do not mix their philosophy with foreign ideas. They will not speak your English, as a colonial master no matter what you do. If you say Seychelles, they intentionally pronounce it "Soshay" and it becomes a neo-Asante lexicon; essentially, a pretense at and a mockery of syncretism. When the British finally captured Kumasi and discontinued the office of the Otumfuo, Asante become a British protectorate until 1935 when the British allowed "the Kumasi people" sovereignty. With their King in chains, exiled on an island a world away, they still governed themselves and ignored the British. They rallied their national soul around the golden stool. The "Kumasi people" got independence from the British in 1935. This is why British historians always treat Asante as different from Ghana in a sense. The rest of Ghana got independence 22 years later. The British found a very intricate matrix of national constitution and civilization among the Asantes that no other people in Africa had. They observed a Commonwealth similar to theirs practiced by a people who say "prane" instead of "plane" today. The Asante concept of cosmology, government and traditional federalism shocked the British. The British were deeply impressed with the defence structure of the Asante empire, the "Kumasi people," and wrote that they were a highly organized war machine whose kings "can bring 200,000 men to the field, and whose warriors are evidently not cowed by Sniper rifles and 7-pounder guns." (Rattray) The Anglo- Ashanti wars are very well recorded in history; a black faced "uncivilized" people worthy to be matched up with the British in war and military organization almost two hundred years ago? Till today, the English Monarchy and the House of Windsor, the royal family of Great Britain respect the Asante monarchy as much as they do the Japanese or the Monagesques. (Monaco) As for the system of monarchy that the "Kumasi people" have kept for over 400 years, the less said about it, the better. A complex order of chiefs, head chiefs, vanguard chiefs, dukedoms and earlhoods that no one can deny is one of the most remarkable in the whole world. The Asantehene was giving State of the Union addresses before America became a nation. How have these "Kumasi people" kept the majesty and power of the Asante monarchy till today, in the mystical puzzle of king-making and dignified accessions to the throne, without losing one statute of their royal constitution? Did you know the Asante are the only people in Ghana whose paramount royal court has room for chiefs of other tribes? They are also the most welcoming of foreign tribes. There are lands given specially to foreign chiefs on Asante land and no Asante has the right to take it from them. Justice and fairness is a foundational ethic of the tradition of these "Kumasi people." This is also why they possess the most vast collection of treaties and covenants with kings from Cote D'Ivoire, Southern and Northern Nigeria and many other places. Hmmm, talk of civilization. As you can see, the uniqueness of the Asante is a simple fact and stands by itself even if you do not compare it to any other group in Africa. No comparison here. No tribalism. The test of civilization is not "spoken English." If it was, then the Spanish,Portuguese and Chinese are not civilized. It is rather the native philosophy of nationhood and identity of a people and how they foster a social economy, cultural ethics, manners and ideology that stand the test of time. The English, Japanese and the Chinese pass this test easily. So do the Asante. If you bring the same test to Africa (not Ghana,) the Asante philosophy and nation stands tall as the one of the shining models of civilization in the whole world. The "Kumasi people" have a national flag. The "Kumasi people" adopted the church of England as the royal church of Asante. The Anglican church is the imperial church of the "Kumasi people." Without "good command" of English and "how to blend colours" (I laugh), these Kumasi people are the doyens of big business in Ghana. How come an "uncivilized Kumasi person" once a "shoe shine boy" or a peddler on the streets employs people with good command of English just by his native education and disposition? Billionaires!!!!! This is the same way there are Spanish speaking non-English mannered men from South America who are billionaires. So "Accra people, "next time you want to jab "Kumasi people," about Rs and Ls and about their New Mall, remember that they are one of the few peoples in Africa who do not need a word of English, any IT education or technology to be civilized. Their civilization is a centuries-old cemented conclusion. And just maybe, it's good they "don't speak much English." What if they were very educated and "Englishy" people? What would they do with Ghana? I am an Asante but I have often been accused of not acting or speaking like one. I can take any joke aimed at "Kumasi people" and i often have. What I can't take is ignorance. Ignorance of what civilization is. Credit: Princess Akyiaa Credit: Okatakyie Isaac

#Asante #kumasi #OseiKrom #LandOfKings

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cabreraarchive · 3 years ago

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If you're Native American, there's a good chance that you've thought a lot about blood quantum — a highly controversial measurement of the amount of "Indian blood" you have. It can affect your identity, your relationships and whether or not you — or your children — may become a citizen of your tribe.

Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. Many Native nations, including the Navajo Nation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, still use it as part of their citizenship requirements.

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Love And Blood Quantum: Buy In Or Die Out?

And how tribes use blood quantum varies from tribe to tribe. The Navajo Nation requires a minimum of 25 percent "Navajo blood," and Turtle Mountain requires a minimum of 25 percent of any Indian blood, as long as its in combination with some Turtle Mountain.

Blood quantum minimums really restrict who can be a citizen of a tribe. If you've got 25 percent of Navajo blood — according to that tribe's blood quantum standards — and you have children with someone who has a lower blood quantum, those kids won't be able to enroll.

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So why keep a system that's decreasing your tribe's rolls and could lead to its demise?

"I use the term 'Colonial Catch 22' to say that there is no clear answer, and that one way or another, people are hurt," says Elizabeth Rule. She's a doctoral candidate at Brown University who specializes in Native American studies, and also a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.

"The systems are so complicated," she explains, "but it's all part of tribes deciding on their own terms, in their own ways, utilizing their own sovereignty [to decide] what approach is best for them."

As we explored blood quantum in this week's episode, we thought a primer of what, exactly, this system is and how it works — or doesn't — might be useful. Here's my interview with Elizabeth Rule, edited and condensed for clarity.

First of all, what's blood quantum?

Blood quantum simply is the amount of "Indian blood" that an individual possesses. The federal government, and specifically the Department of the Interior, issues what is called a "Certified Degree of Indian Blood," and that is a card similar to an ID card. So the way that blood quantum is calculated is by using tribal documents, and usually it's a tribal official or a government official that calculates it.

But really it's a mathematical equation. So the quantum is a fraction of blood that is derived going back to the original enrollees of a tribe who were counted on Census rolls, and then their blood quantum was documented, and usually those original enrollees had a full blood quantum. Typically.

How did people know that those original enrollees had "full blood quantum"?

Well, they didn't. And that's that's one of the major problems with blood quantum today is that a lot of times, the people taking the rolls were federal government officials who were unfamiliar with Native ways of establishing and defining their own communities.

And so, for example, these officials would mark someone potentially as "full blood" when potentially that person was not. And that assumption was based on their appearance, on their level of cultural involvement with their community.

But a great example for how to understand this problem in real life is that there is a history of freedmen who are black individuals who were living as fully incorporated members of Indian tribes. And when these original roles were taken, oftentimes these freedmen were not included, even though those individuals may be of mixed heritage: black and Indian. Because of their black appearance, they were listed on a separate roll. And today, the ramification is that they do not have that original enrollee [in their past]. They do not have enough blood quantum, and therefore oftentimes cannot be extended tribal membership.

Can you talk to me about how the concept of blood quantum came to be used for Native tribes?

Certainly, American Indians have been racialized. But our primary identity continues to be a political one. Blood quantum really emerges as a way to trace race between generations of Native people starting at the turn of the 20th century. And again, I think it's helpful to understand the way that blood quantum works through another example that people may be more familiar with — and that's the "one drop rule."

Blood quantum emerged as a way to measure "Indian-ness" through a construct of race. So that over time, Indians would literally breed themselves out and rid the federal government of their legal duties to uphold treaty obligations.

The one drop rule measured the amount of "black blood" that black people had in society. And that ensured that every person who had at least one drop would be considered black and would be covered under these discriminatory laws and, even in the earlier days, enslaved.

One of the questions that kept coming up is: OK, so why don't tribes just ditch these blood quantum requirements and switch to an enrollment requirement that uses lineal descent? (Lineal descent basically means that, if your ancestors were enrolled in a tribe, you can be, too.)

That is the question of the century. And first, I want to be clear that I don't intend to speak on behalf of any specific tribes or even on behalf of my own, but I'm happy to walk you through some of those arguments that exist in support of maintaining blood quantum requirements for tribal membership. ...

The thing that I've found to be most interesting about both arguments — in support and against blood quantum requirements — is the language of survival. So, lineal descendant supporters think about high memberships through the lens of existence as a resistance right. And so there's a desire to build up tribes' numbers and capacity in order to survive and perpetuate the tribe.

On the other side, those who defend blood quantum requirements also evoke this language of survival, and they look upon those blood quantum minimums as a way to preserve an already existing closed community that's very close and ... usually very culturally connected.

Even though they're using what a lot of people say is a "Colonialist construct"?

Yes. And I don't think that anyone would argue that it isn't that. That history is very clear. But, tribes today of course have to adapt, and blood quantum for some tribes in their view has been a way to preserve their community.

I also want to emphasize that it is the tribe's sovereign right to determine their own membership and whether that involves a blood quantum minimum or lineal descent system.

Ultimately their decision has to be respected in order to uphold tribal sovereignty.

You've used the phrase "personal gains" before to refer to some people who might've claimed Indian heritage. Can you walk me through what specifically those personal gains look like?

You hear every time a tribe changes over to lineal descent, or that there is a newly recognized tribe, for example, that usually there's a mass group that's interested in joining. And potentially, some of those incentives would be financial gain if the tribe, for example, has gaming revenue or other industries. Of course, there is a desire on some individuals' part to claim an identity for affirmative-action purposes. But again, I would say that is certainly the minority of this side of the cases. But it does happen and I just want to point it out again to show that there are difficulties on both sides and that there's not a clear-cut answer yet.

If each tribe is able to determine their own their own enrollment requirements, are there any tribes out there that you've heard of that are deciding to forego lineal descent and blood quantum — and deciding to use another completely different method?

I have heard of one example in Canada, where a First Nation has decided to open enrollment to people who have no Indian ancestry at all. Meaning that those individuals don't meet the federal Canadian requirements of being a "status Indian," and they also don't have that blood quantum or descendancy from an original enrollee. It's an extremely progressive and interesting move, and they're really changing the game.

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years ago

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Argument preview: Tribes, treaties and animals return to the Supreme Court

In January 2014, Clayvin Herrera, a member of the Apsáalooke Nation, also known as the Crow Tribe, went hunting on the nation’s reservation in Montana. He and his companions successfully bagged three elk, but their pursuit had taken them outside the reservation borders into the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming. Wyoming authorities subsequently charged Herrera with violating state hunting laws.

Wyoming’s prosecution has led the Supreme Court to venture yet again into the interpretation of tribal treaty rights to hunt and fish off-reservation. Last term, in Washington v. United States, the court deadlocked 4-4 over the scope of the fishing right promised the Native nations of the Pacific Northwest in their 19th-century treaties. In this case, the validity of Herrera’s state-law conviction turns on the continued force of the 1868 Second Treaty of Fort Laramie between the Crow Tribe and the United States, which guaranteed the tribe “the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found thereon.” Two questions are presented to the Supreme Court: whether this treaty hunting right survived Wyoming’s statehood and whether the Bighorn National Forest constitutes “unoccupied lands of the United States.”

As in most Indian law cases, a complicated history lies behind this dispute. In the late 19th century, the Supreme Court issued several opinions suggesting that continued federal power over aspects of Indian affairs within former territories implicated the “equal footing doctrine” — the promise that newly admitted states would enjoy sovereignty equal to that of existing states. In Ward v. Race Horse, the court held that a hunting right in a Shoshone-Bannock treaty — a provision identical to the one at issue here — violated this principle. Because of this conflict, Wyoming’s admission to the union had impliedly abrogated the treaty right, which, the court reasoned, was “of limited duration” and therefore “temporary and precarious.”

Equal footing’s sway in Indian law was brief. Less than a decade after Race Horse, the Supreme Court began to consistently reject nearly identical equal-footing arguments. Yet Race Horse’s holding survived. In the early 1990s, after Wyoming charged a Crow member for illegal elk hunting within the Bighorn National Forest, the tribe brought suit, invoking its treaty hunting right. In Crow Tribe of Indians v. Repsis, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled against the tribe based on Race Horse, while also offering a very brief alternative holding suggesting that the national forest could not be considered “unoccupied lands.”

Soon after, in 1999, the Supreme Court decided Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians, which required construing an 1837 tribal treaty fishing right in Minnesota. The court rejected the application of Race Horse: The decision’s equal-footing holding rested on a “false premise,” while its language about “temporary and precarious” treaty rights was “too broad to be useful.” The court did not explicitly overrule Race Horse, although the dissent accused it of doing so “sub silentio.”

The relationship between Race Horse, Repsis and Mille Lacs is at the core of this dispute. Because the lower court ruled against Herrera on the ground that Repsis barred him from relitigating the question of whether the Crow Tribe retained off-reservation hunting rights under the treaty, much of the briefing focuses on issue preclusion, which bars parties from reopening an issue decided in a prior case. Both Herrera and the United States as amicus curiae forcefully argue that preclusion should not attach when there has been an intervening change in the law, such as the Supreme Court’s decision in Mille Lacs. Wyoming insists that Mille Lacs only overruled Race Horse’s equal-footing holding, leaving the rest of the decision intact, and that issue preclusion should still apply for what the state characterizes as a mixed issue of law and fact. The parties disagree, too, about whether preclusion attaches to the very brief discussion of the status of the Bighorn National Forest in Repsis.

Mille Lacs is also at the center of the parties’ dispute over treaty interpretation. Under well-settled law, only a clear congressional statement can abrogate tribal treaty rights, but, Herrera and the federal government argue, there is no such explicit text here. Race Horse suggests statehood as a form of implicit abrogation, yet, Herrera and his allies insist, Mille Lacs expressly repudiated that argument. Wyoming counters by arguing for the temporary nature of the treaty right in the context of late 19th-century federal Indian policy. The view at the time, the state asserts, was that “nomadic tribes like the Crow Indians [had] to adapt or vanish.” The tribe’s hunting right was supposed to ease the transition to “civilization,” and statehood, Wyoming claims, marked “the moment when civilization arrived.” Yet neither the plain text of the treaty nor the tribe’s contemporaneous understanding of the treaty (the touchstone for resolving treaty ambiguities under federal law) supports this interpretation of the right as temporary, Herrera and the solicitor general argue. Writing as amicus curiae, the Crow Tribe weighs in by citing multiple statements by federal officials during treaty negotiations promising the tribe the continued right to hunt.

The parties further dispute whether the Bighorn National Forest should be considered “unoccupied lands” for treaty purposes. Herrera and the federal government emphasize that the proclamation of a national forest meant the land could no longer be settled, which they argue was the historical standard for occupation. Yet Wyoming argues that physical presence should not be the test, especially given the West’s expansiveness. According to Wyoming, the federal government’s proprietary power over its own lands, including its decisions to exclude hunters, demonstrates that the land was effectively occupied when it became a national forest.

Ultimately, Herrera, similarly to November’s argument in Carpenter v. Murphy, demonstrates the challenge of translating late 19th-century history into clean present-day jurisprudential categories. At the time, many whites, including many federal policymakers, did expect the Crow and other Native nations either to become agriculturalists or disappear. Sometimes these views became statutes, as with the Dawes Act; in other instances, as here, they produced discussions but little explicit legal text. Yet these blinkered and self-interested assumptions proved wrong. Defying whites’ predictions and assaults, the Crow demonstrated that they could, in the words of one historian cited by both sides, “adapt and win as well as suffer and lose,” including by successfully maintaining their traditional hunting culture. Herrera presents the legal consequences of this persistence of the Apsáalooke Nation. Wyoming argues that the Supreme Court should enforce what the state casts as shared (if unfulfilled) 19th-century expectations at the time of the treaty’s signing; Herrera and the federal government point to the treaty’s plain text, as they construe it, and the absence of any abrogation. The court will have to decide which approach to translating the past into law will prevail.

The post Argument preview: Tribes, treaties and animals return to the Supreme Court appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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jerryadler-blog · 7 years ago

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Elizabeth Warren, Cherokees and 'Pocahontas': Why it matters

Pocahontas, 1595-1617, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (Photos: Getty Images, Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

By now, most Americans have heard that Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator, scourge of Wall St. and liberal hero, falsely claimed to have French ancestry, leading President Trump to mock her as “Joan of Arc.”

Wait, that’s not right.

It was Native American ancestry, specifically Cherokee, that Warren claimed, and the nickname Trump bestowed on her, in a dozen tweets and numerous speeches, was “Pocahontas.”

In principle, the situations should be equivalent. But they’re not. Being mistaken about a French great-grandmother would barely rise to the level of a presidential tweet, even from Trump. But laying claim to Indian blood is taken very seriously in the United States, which tells us not much about Warren, but a great deal about how Native and non-Native Americans view their shared history, four centuries after their first fateful encounters.

Let’s leave aside Trump’s boorishness in bullying Warren over this obscure peccadillo, his utter lack of decorum and decency in bringing it up at a ceremony honoring Native American veterans, and even the fact that Trump himself claimed Swedish descent on his father’s side, when in fact his grandfather was German. If he wants to call her Pocahontas, she should be able to call him Olaf.

We can stipulate — as Warren herself admits, although without quite retracting the original claim — that there is no evidence to support it. Her ancestry has been researched thoroughly, including by Twila Barnes, a freelance genealogist specializing in the Cherokee tribe. Since Warren’s first Senate run in 2012, Barnes has been debunking her claims in dozens of blog posts under headlines like “Indian or Pretendian?” The usual media fact-checking websites have weighed in, and concluded that Warren’s claim appears based on little, or nothing, more than family legend.

Warren has rejected calls to submit to a DNA test that could, in theory, shed light on her lineage. “I know who I am,” Warren said recently in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That’s the story that my brothers and I all learned from our mom and our dad, from our grandparents, from all of our aunts and uncles. It’s a part of me, and nobody’s going to take that part of me away.”

In fact, DNA is a blunt tool to determine Indian descent, especially going back more than four or five generations, by which time the genetic signature may be undetectable. Moreover, Indian ancestry is meaningful mostly insofar as it ties one to a specific tribe, but DNA tests don’t (yet) distinguish among tribes. The leading commercial DNA services generally treat “Native American” as a unitary category covering the entire Western Hemisphere. Indian tribes set their own criteria for membership, typically requiring a documented paper trail. DNA tests don’t qualify.

Warren never sought membership in the Cherokee tribe. Why would she? Politically, there wouldn’t have been much to gain even if she were a full-blood Cherokee; there are only around 350,000 enrolled Cherokees in the world, and not many of them live in Massachusetts. (Shiva Ayyadurai, the Mumbai-born tech entrepreneur who boasts of having invented email when he was in high school, is running against Warren for the Senate as the “real Indian” in the race.) Trump accused Warren of inventing an Indian background to gain an edge in her career. It’s true that in the 1990s, when she taught at Harvard Law School, the university cited her as a Native American to demonstrate the diversity of its faculty. This is information, or misinformation, that could only have come from Warren herself, who also, beginning in 1986, listed herself as a minority in a directory of law-school professors. But she was a recognized authority in her field when Harvard recruited her, and her heritage “simply played no role in the appointments process,” according to Charles Fried, who was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general and sat on the law school committee that selected her. “Let me be clear,” Warren said in a campaign ad during her first Senate run. “I never asked for, never got any benefit because of my heritage.”

By contrast, when Trump claimed Swedish ancestry he was perpetuating a lie invented by his father for a very specific purpose. Trump’s biographers claim that Fred Trump, a New York City real estate developer, sought to hide his German background during and after World War II so as not to complicate his business relationships, especially with Jews.

And contrary to what some people seem to believe, tribal citizenship is not a quick way to get rich. A few, mostly small, tribes distribute casino profits to their members in impressive amounts, but on the whole Indians are the poorest ethnic group in the country, according to the Native American Rights Fund. The Cherokee Nation, by far the largest of the three bands comprising the Cherokee tribe, has a territory that covers 14 counties in northeastern Oklahoma. (Warren was born in Oklahoma City, which is outside the territory.) The tribe provides certain housing, health and educational benefits to members within those 14 counties, but Warren would have had to move there to take advantage of them. For the majority of Cherokees who live elsewhere, says Barnes, “the benefit is the acknowledgment of your ancestry, the kinship, the link to your history, your ancestors’ sacrifice.”

Of course, those are the same motivations that drive people to research ancestors from anywhere, including those who never moved more than 20 miles from Ellis Island after getting off the boat. But you don’t often hear about people inventing, or imagining, or repeating false family legends about, say, Russian ancestry, except for those trying to get their hands on the Romanov family’s crown jewels.

It’s different with Indians. The No. 1 question among clients of AncestryDNA is “where is my Native American ancestry,” according to genealogist Crista Cowan, who guesses that if all the Americans who claim to have Indian forebears were right, they would make up half the population. She mentions some of the ways such legends get started, including ancestors who happened to look Indian, or who lived in what was called “Indian territory” before it became the State of Oklahoma. In Cowan’s own family, the myth began with a photograph of a long-ago aunt dressed like an Indian; on investigation, it turned out to have been taken at a novelty booth in a fair. Barnes notes that over the years there have been promises, or actual payments, to compensate Cherokees for the seizure of their lands. This created an obvious incentive to apply to join the tribe. “People see records of those applications, they say, oh, great-grandpa wouldn’t have lied. But maybe he did.”

And the legends persist, because almost every American, whether or not he saw “Dances With Wolves,” wants to feel a kinship with Indians. “One of the top five genealogical myths is ‘My great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess,’” Barnes says. “There is no such thing.” Being able to claim Indian blood is a way of being rooted in the very soil of America, the stuff that lies beneath the grass of Trump’s golf courses. “Let’s face it, being part Native American is cool,” “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah remarked last fall, apropos of the Pocahontas controversy — “but just part, enough that you’re interesting at a party, not so much that they build a pipeline through your house.” In progressive circles, to claim Indian blood is a form of one-upmanship, a way to show you’ve pre-checked your white privilege. It inoculates you against the charge of being a colonizer. When Europeans are accused of stealing the Indians’ land, you can say, not me.

But, of course, Europeans did steal the Indians’ land, which may help explain why Cherokees like Barnes are so outraged by what otherwise might be excused as a harmless retelling of a family legend. (“Yep, I’m full-blooded Russian. Want to see my Cossack dance?”) It adds the insult of cultural theft to the injury of ethnic cleansing under the Indian Removal Act, which displaced Cherokees and other tribes from their homes in Georgia and Alabama on a journey remembered as the Trail of Tears. Rebecca Nagle, a Cherokee writer and activist, wrote a harsh takedown of Warren recently that was especially notable for where it appeared, on the left-leaning website Think Progress. She wrote, imagining the apology she would like to see from Warren: “I am deeply sorry to the Native American people who have been greatly harmed by my misappropriation of Cherokee identity. … Native Nations are not relics of the past, but active, contemporary, and distinct political groups who are still fighting for recognition and sovereignty within the United States. Those of us who claim false Native identity undermine this fight.”

Warren has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2020, although she recently announced she was not running. If she did run, Cherokee voters might face a difficult choice between the woman Republicans have been calling “Fauxcahontas,” and Donald Trump, who has adopted as his role model Andrew Jackson — the president who signed the Indian Removal Act.