Cherokee descent

Last updated

Cherokee descent, "being of Cherokee descent", or "being a Cherokee descendant" are all terms for individuals with some degree of documented Cherokee ancestry but do not meet the criteria for tribal citizenship. [1] The terms are also used by non-Native individuals who self-identify as Cherokee despite lacking documentation or community recognition.

Contents

As Gregory D. Smithers has discussed, a large number of Americans believe they belong in this category: "In 2000, the federal census reported that 729,533 Americans self-identified as Cherokee. By 2010, that number increased, with the Census Bureau reporting that 819,105 Americans claimed at least one Cherokee ancestor." [2] By contrast, as of 2012 there were only 330,716 enrolled Cherokee citizens (Cherokee Nation: 288,749; United Keetoowah Band: 14,300; [3] Eastern Band: 14,667 [4] ).

The Cherokee Scholars, an organization of Cherokee academics, created a public Cherokee Scholars’ Statement on Sovereignty and Identity which states:

"Any person who publicly identifies as Cherokee has initiated a public discussion about their identity. It is appropriate to ask such persons to explain the verifiable basis upon which they are claiming a Cherokee identity. If they cannot substantiate that they are a Cherokee citizen, they should be clearly and directly asked to cease identifying as Cherokee." [5]

Citizenship

There are three federally recognized Cherokee tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (ECBI) in North Carolina, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB) in Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation (CN) in Oklahoma. [6] Enrollment criteria are different for each nation.

"1. A direct lineal ancestor must appear on the 1924 Baker Roll of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. [7]
"2. You must possess at least 1/16 degree of Eastern Cherokee blood. Please note: Blood quantum is calculated from your ancestor listed on the 1924 Baker Roll." [7]
"To be eligible for UKB membership, Cherokees must be able to provide documentation that they are a descendant of an individual listed on the 1949 United Keetoowah Band Base Roll or of an individual listed on the final Dawes Roll."
"The UKB has a minimum blood quantum requirement of one quarter (1/4) degree Keetoowah Cherokee blood." [8]
The applicant must "provide documents that connect you to an enrolled lineal ancestor, who is listed on the 'DAWES ROLL' FINAL ROLLS OF CITIZENS AND FREEDMEN OF THE FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES, Cherokee Nation with a blood degree." [9]

Social recognition

Kim TallBear (Dakota), author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, [10] has written extensively that Indigenous identity is not about one distant (and possibly nonexistent) ancestor, but rather political citizenship, culture, kinship, and daily, lived experience as part of an Indigenous community. [11] [12]

There are very specific tribal enrollment rules from tribe to tribe, it's pretty complicated. Those rules sit within a broader idea though, that one needs to have relatively close or lived social relations with other tribal kin that you are claiming. Being able to produce the genealogical documentation to access tribal citizenship is one way of showing that a tribe claims you. They can claim you through official legal means. But you can also have your tribal community claim you through social means that are not official legal means. [12]

Reasons for self-identification without citizenship or social recognition

"Self-identification" is when a person claims Indigenous identity or descent with no confirmation or acceptance from the tribe they claim. [13] [14] There are many reasons people have given for self-identifying as Cherokee or as descendants, despite not meeting enrollment criteria and without being part of the Cherokee community:

Issues with descent-based identity claims

Individuals who claim Cherokee descent do not meet the criteria necessary to claim Native American identity under the provisions of the American Indian Arts and Crafts Act, [23] except for those enrolled in one of the seven state-recognized tribes who identify as Cherokee.

The academic Joel W. Martin noted that "an astonishing number of southerners assert they have a grandmother or great-grandmother who was some kind of Cherokee, often a princess", and that such myths serve settler purposes in aligning American frontier romance with southern regionalism and pride. [24]

See also

Notes

  1. Circe Sturm, Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the 21st Century. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2011, p. 5
  2. 1 2 Smithers, Gregory D. (October 2015). "Why do So Many Americans Think They Have Cherokee Blood?". Slate.
  3. "Pocket Pictorial". Archived April 6, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission. 2010: 6 and 37. (retrieved June 11, 2010).[ failed verification ][ full citation needed ]
  4. EBCI Enrollment Office (10 July 2012). "EBCI Enrollment facts". Cherokee One Feather. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  5. "ᏗᎦᏓᏤᎵᎢ: Cherokee Scholars' Statement on Sovereignty and Identity". Think Tsalagi ᎢᏓᏓᏅᏛᎵ ᏣᎳᎩ. Cherokee Scholars. 13 February 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  6. "Tribal Directory: Southeast". National Congress of American Indians. Retrieved June 9, 2017.
  7. 1 2 "Enrollment".
  8. "Enrollment - United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma".
  9. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-12-30. Retrieved 2018-12-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. 1 2 Geddes, Linda (5 February 2014). "'There is no DNA test to prove you're Native American'". New Scientist . Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  11. 1 2 TallBear, Kim (2013). Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. pp. 132–136.
  12. 1 2 Gupta, Prachi (16 October 2018). "'Our Vote Matters Very Little': Kim TallBear on Elizabeth Warren's Attempt to Claim Native American Heritage". Jezebel . Retrieved 29 March 2019.
  13. Cornsilk, David. "Cherokee by law in response to wannabeism". Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 2019-06-14. Retrieved 21 December 2020. Being Cherokee has nothing to do with what an individual thinks of themselves or their own personal claims of heritage and blood. Cherokee law says that you must be recognized by the Cherokees in order to be a Cherokee. There is no other legitimate law that can or does make someone a Cherokee; certainly not the individual claims of lost descendants of long ago Cherokees or their equally non-Cherokee counterparts, the infamous wannabe.
  14. 1 2 3 Crawford, Grant D. (4 October 2019). "'Fake tribes' can threaten federally recognized ones, genealogist says". Talequah Daily Press. Retrieved 29 March 2021. Usually the way those form, there's already existing groups within the state and the state then grandfathers those groups in, requiring no proof whatsoever that they're even of Indian descent - let alone a tribe - and then allows them to grant recognition to other groups," said Cornsilk. "Alabama is probably the most notorious for doing that.
  15. "Going 'Native': Why Are Americans Hijacking Cherokee Identity?". 23 July 2018.
  16. "The Cherokee Syndrome - Daily Yonder". 10 February 2011.
  17. "Elizabeth Warren and the myth of the Cherokee princess". 25 May 2012.
  18. R.L. Allen, "Creating Identity at Indian Expense: Public Ignorance, Private Gain." Paper presented at Native Stories and Their Keepers: Telling the Public, Sequoyah Research Center Symposium, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, November 15–17, 2001.
  19. "How I came to understand I am not Cherokee". Women AdvaNCe. 2 December 2020. Retrieved 2023-08-05.
  20. "Warren explains minority listing, talks of grandfather's "high cheekbones"". CBS News. 3 May 2012. Retrieved 2023-08-05.
  21. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (29 Dec 2014). "High Cheekbones and Straight Black Hair?". The Root . Retrieved 5 August 2023.
  22. Browder, Laura (2003-06-20). Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN   9780807860601.
  23. "Buying". US Federal Trade Commission. June 2012. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  24. Martin, Joel W. (1996). Bird, Elizabeth (ed.). 'My Grandmother Was a Cherokee Princess': Representations of Indians in Southern History. London: Routledge.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cherokee</span> Indigenous American people of the southeastern United States

The Cherokee people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama consisting of around 40,000 square miles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Five Civilized Tribes</span> Native American grouping

The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.

The Dawes Rolls were created by the United States Dawes Commission. The commission was authorized by United States Congress in 1893 to execute the General Allotment Act of 1887.

The American Dawes Commission, named for its first chairman Henry L. Dawes, was authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893. Its purpose was to convince the Five Civilized Tribes to agree to cede tribal title of Indian lands, and adopt the policy of dividing tribal lands into individual allotments that was enacted for other tribes as the Dawes Act of 1887. In November 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed Dawes as chairman, and Meridith H. Kidd and Archibald S. McKennon as members.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), is a federally recognized Indian tribe based in western North Carolina in the United States. They are descended from the small group of 800–1,000 Cherokees who remained in the Eastern United States after the U.S. military, under the Indian Removal Act, moved the other 15,000 Cherokees to west of the Mississippi River in the late 1830s, to Indian Territory. Those Cherokees remaining in the east were to give up tribal Cherokee citizenship and to assimilate. They became U.S. citizens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blood quantum laws</span> American laws of race

Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws in the United States that define Native American status by fractions of Native American ancestry. These laws were enacted by the federal government and state governments as a way to establish legally defined racial population groups. By contrast, many tribes do not include blood quantum as part of their own enrollment criteria. Blood quantum laws were first imposed by white settlers in the 18th century. Blood Quantum (BQ) is a very controversial topic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians</span> Federally recognized tribe based in Oklahoma

The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe of Cherokee Native Americans headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. According to the UKB website, its members are mostly descendants of "Old Settlers" or "Western Cherokees," those Cherokees who migrated from the Southeast to present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma around 1817. Some reports estimate that Old Settlers began migrating west by 1800, before the forced relocation of Cherokees by the United States in the late 1830s under the Indian Removal Act.

Black Indians are Native American people – defined as Native American due to being affiliated with Native American communities and being culturally Native American – who also have significant African American heritage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cherokee Nation</span> Native American tribe in Oklahoma, United States

The Cherokee Nation, formerly known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Cherokees in the United States. It includes people descended from members of the Old Cherokee Nation who relocated, due to increasing pressure, from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes descendants of Cherokee Freedmen, Absentee Shawnee, and Natchez Nation. As of 2023, over 450,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood</span> U.S. Document

A Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood or Certificate of Degree of Alaska Native Blood is an official U.S. document that certifies an individual possesses a specific fraction of Native American ancestry of a federally recognized Indian tribe, band, nation, pueblo, village, or community. They are issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs after the applicant supplies a completed genealogy with supporting legal documents such as birth certificates, showing their descent, through one or both birth parents, from an enrolled Indian or an Indian listed in a base roll such as the Dawes Rolls. Blood degree cannot be obtained through adoptive parents. The blood degree on previously issued CDIBs or on the base rolls in the filer's ancestry are used to determine the filer's blood degree. Information collected for the filing is held confidential by privacy laws, except if the CDIB is related to assigned duties.

The Original Keetoowah Society is a 21st-century Keetoowah religious organization dedicated to preserving the culture and teachings of the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society in Oklahoma. It has been described as the surviving core of the Cherokee movement of religious nationalism originally led by Redbird Smith in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Cherokee were forced to move to Indian Territory, various groups associated with the Keetoowah Society worked to preserve traditional culture and its teachings.

The Cherokee Freedmen controversy was a political and tribal dispute between the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen regarding the issue of tribal membership. The controversy had resulted in several legal proceedings between the two parties from the late 20th century to August 2017.

David Cornsilk is a professional genealogist and served as the managing editor of the Cherokee Observer, an online news website founded in 1992. He founded of the grassroots Cherokee National Party in the 1990s, seeking to create a movement to promote the Nation as a political entity. While working as a full-time store clerk at Petsmart, he "took on America’s second-largest Indian tribe, the Cherokee Nation, in what led to a landmark tribal decision. Cornsilk served as a lay advocate, which permits non-lawyers to try cases before the Cherokee Nation’s highest court." Cornsilk had worked for the nation as a tribal enrollment research analyst and for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a genealogical researcher. He also has his own genealogical firm. He ran in the 2023 Cherokee Nation principal chief election. He lost the election to incumbent principal chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.

Cherokee heritage groups are associations, societies and other organizations located primarily in the United States. Such groups consist of persons who do not qualify for enrollment in any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. As the Cherokee Nation enrolls all people who can prove descent from a Cherokee ancestor, many of these groups consist of those who claim Cherokee ancestry but have no documentation to prove this alleged heritage. Some have had their claims of ancestry checked and proven to be false. A total of 819,105 Americans claimed Cherokee heritage in the 2010 Census, more than any other named tribe in the Census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Native American identity in the United States</span>

Native American identity in the United States is a community identity, determined by the tribal nation the individual or group belongs to. While it is common for non-Natives to consider it a racial or ethnic identity, for Native Americans in the United States it is considered to be a political identity, based on citizenship and immediate family relationships. As culture can vary widely between the 574 extant federally recognized tribes in the United States, the idea of a single unified "Native American" racial identity is a European construct that does not have an equivalent in tribal thought.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Native American recognition in the United States</span>

Native American recognition in the United States, for tribes, usually means being recognized by the United States federal government as a community of Indigenous people that has been in continual existence since prior to European contact, and which has a sovereign, government-to-government relationship with the Federal government of the United States. In the United States, the Native American tribe is a fundamental unit of sovereign tribal government. This recognition comes with various rights and responsibilities. The United States recognizes the right of these tribes to self-government and supports their tribal sovereignty and self-determination. These tribes possess the right to establish the legal requirements for membership. They may form their own government, enforce laws, tax, license and regulate activities, zone, and exclude people from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Smith (academic)</span> American academic, womens rights and anti-violence activist

Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist. Smith's work has primarily focused on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is also a co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Choctaw freedmen</span> Native American tribal membership dispute

The Choctaw Freedmen are former enslaved Africans, Afro-Indigenous, and African Americans who were emancipated and granted citizenship in the Choctaw Nation after the Civil War, according to the tribe's new peace treaty of 1866 with the United States. The term also applies to their contemporary descendants.

Pretendian is a pejorative colloquialism describing a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by professing to be a citizen of a Native American or Indigenous Canadian tribal nation, or to be descended from Native American or Indigenous Canadian ancestors. As a practice, being a pretendian is considered an extreme form of cultural appropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities from which they do not originate. It is sometimes also referred to as a form of fraud, ethnic fraud or race shifting.

The Baker Roll of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was created by the Eastern Cherokee Enrolling Commission after it was commissioned by the United States Congress on June 4, 1924. The purpose of the Baker Roll was to collect and compile data from older Eastern Cherokee censuses and determine tribal affiliation. The roll is named after Special Agent Fred A. Baker.