![]() ![]() But in practice they were segregated and their citizenship rights later denied by a requirement that they be descended from non-Black tribal citizens who were on census lists more than a century ago, a situation that prompted increasing protests in recent years. Post-Civil War treaties in 1866 gave the formerly enslaved people all the rights of tribal citizenship. ![]() Those tribes and others, which had originally inhabited the Southeast, purchased enslaved Black people as laborers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and had brought them along when they were forcibly relocated by the federal government in a deadly ordeal known as the “Trail of Tears.” ![]() In February, the Cherokee Nation eliminated from its constitution language that based citizenship on being descended from “by blood” tribal members listed on a federal census, the biggest step by a tribe so far to resolve the issue. The tribes, the Choctaw Nation and Muscogee (Creek) Nation, said they would take initial steps to address the long-running demands of the descendants that they be granted equal rights as tribal citizens, an issue that has split their communities and highlighted clashes over identity and racism among Native Americans.īut the two tribes stopped short of a commitment to grant citizenship to the Black descendants, who are known as Freedmen, instead saying they would open discussions about the issue. With pressure growing from the Biden administration, two Native American tribes in Oklahoma have agreed to consider reversing their policies of denying citizenship to descendants of Black people who were enslaved by them before the Civil War. ![]()
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