Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as an independent nation-state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865),the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
Claremore is a city and the county seat of Rogers County in Green Country,northeastern Oklahoma,United States. The population was 19,580 at the 2020 census,a 5.4 percent increase over the figure of 18,581 recorded in 2010. Located in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It is home of Rogers State University and is part of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area.
Tribal sovereignty in the United States is the concept of the inherent authority of Indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States.
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was a Native American activist,social worker,community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Born in Tahlequah,Oklahoma,she lived on her family's allotment in Adair County,Oklahoma,until the age of 11,when her family relocated to San Francisco as part of a federal government program to urbanize Indigenous Americans. After high school,she married a well-to-do Ecuadorian and raised two daughters. Inspired by the social and political movements of the 1960s,Mankiller became involved in the Occupation of Alcatraz and later participated in the land and compensation struggles with the Pit River Tribe. For five years in the early 1970s,she was employed as a social worker,focusing mainly on children's issues.
Brad Rogers Carson is the 21st President of the University of Tulsa.
Kalyn Free is an American attorney,former political candidate,and a tribal citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Non-voting members of the United States House of Representatives are representatives of their territory in the House of Representatives,who do not have a right to vote on legislation in the full House but nevertheless have floor privileges and are able to participate in certain other House functions. Non-voting members may vote in a House committee of which they are a member and introduce legislation.
The Treaty of New Echota was a treaty signed on December 29,1835,in New Echota,Georgia,by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction,the Treaty Party.
Alice Mary Robertson was an American educator,social worker,Native Americans' rights activist,government official,and politician who became the second woman to serve in the United States Congress,and the first from the state of Oklahoma. Robertson was the first woman to defeat an incumbent congressman. She was known for her strong personality,commitment to Native American issues,and anti-feminist stance.
Three agreements,each known as a Treaty of Hopewell,were signed between representatives of the Congress of the United States and the Cherokee,Choctaw,and Chickasaw peoples. They were negotiated and signed at the Hopewell plantation in South Carolina over 45 days during the winter of 1785–86.
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.
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.
Samuel Houston Mayes of Scots/English-Cherokee descent,was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory,serving from 1895 to 1899. His maternal grandfather belonged to the Deer clan,and his father was allied with members of the Cherokee Treaty Party in the 1830s,such as the Adair men,Elias Boudinot,and Major Ridge. In the late nineteenth century,his older brother Joel B. Mayes was elected to two terms as Chief of the Cherokee.
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861,a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory,west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory,the Five Civilized Tribes,were suzerain nations with established tribal governments,well established cultures,and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies,with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets,residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
Markwayne Mullin is an American businessman and politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Oklahoma since 2023. A member of the Republican Party,he was elected in a special election in 2022 to serve the remainder of Jim Inhofe's term. Mullin is the first Native American U.S. senator since Ben Nighthorse Campbell retired in 2005. He is also the second Cherokee Nation citizen elected to the Senate;the first,Robert Latham Owen,retired in 1925. Before being elected to the Senate,Mullin served as the U.S. representative for Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2023.
Cierra Fields is an anti-rape activist,Native American community health activist,and member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Fields worked as a freelance journalist for Indian Country Today Media Network.
Chuck Hoskin Jr. is a Cherokee Nation politician and attorney currently serving as the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation since 2019. He was re-elected to a second term in the 2023 Cherokee Nation principal chief election.
John Wesley "Wes" Nofire is a Cherokee Nation and American politician and a former heavyweight professional boxer who has served as the Oklahoma Native American Affairs Liaison since 2023. During his boxing career Nofire fought under the name "The Cherokee Warrior". Nofire served on the Cherokee Nation tribal council between 2019 and 2023. He was a Republican candidate in the 2022 primary election for Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district and candidate in the 2023 Cherokee Nation principal chief election.
The Cherokee delegate to the United States House of Representatives is an office established via the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. The office was intended to represent the Cherokee people and was instrumental in negotiations of land transfer and sovereignty in the Treaty. The office went vacant until 2019,with the appointment of Kimberly Teehee of the Cherokee Nation. Teehee and tribal leadership attempted to get her seated in the 116th and 117th United States Congresses. In 2021,the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians designated their own delegate,lawyer Victoria Holland.
Sara Elizabeth Hill is a Cherokee and American attorney who has served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma since 2024. She previously served as the attorney general of the Cherokee Nation from August 2019 to August 2023 and as the tribe's secretary of natural resources between October 2015 and August 2019.
