Marilyn Vann | |
|---|---|
 Vann in 2022 | |
| Born | Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Citizenship | Cherokee Nation United States |
| Education | University of Oklahoma |
Marilyn Vann is a Cherokee Nation engineer and activist who is the first citizen of Freedmen descent to be appointed to a government commission within the Cherokee Nation. She has served on the Cherokee Nation Environmental Protection Commission since 2021.
Vann was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Ponca City, Oklahoma in a poor family. [1] [2] Her father was a Baptist deacon who emphasized the importance of hard work. [2] From a young age, Vann knew she was of mixed African and Cherokee ancestry. [2] Her father had received land as a member of the Cherokee Nation. [2] She attended the University of Oklahoma, where she graduated with distinction, earning a degree in engineering. [1]
Vann worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in Oklahoma for 32 years [1] Her time at the Treasury Department included 8 years as a team leader with short-term management assignments. [3] Her responsibilities involved team building, training new employees, revising government regulations and training materials, and negotiating on behalf of the government. [3] She also made hiring recommendations, conducted real estate and oil and gas appraisals, and wrote expert reports. [3] Upon retirement, she received the Albert Gallatin Award, the Treasury Department's highest career service honor. [3]
In 2001, she applied for citizenship in the Cherokee Nation but was denied because her ancestor was listed as a Freedman on the Dawes Rolls without a "degree of Indian blood" designation. [2] In 2003, Vann filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, asking them to enforce the 1866 Treaty that granted citizenship rights to Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants. Her case made its way through federal courts for years. [2] Vann became a tribal citizen in 2006 following a ruling by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court. [1] Vann organized meetings of Freedmen descendants to discuss strategies for securing their citizenship rights. [2] She is the founding president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association, which has worked for over twenty years to address issues of racial discrimination and secure rights for Freedmen descendants in the Cherokee Nation and other tribal nations. [1] She worked genealogist David Cornsilk and others to advance the cause through both federal and tribal courts. [2] In 2017, Vann's federal lawsuit, Cherokee Nation v. Nash, was successful, with the court ruling in favor of citizenship rights for Freedmen descendants. [2] [1] The Cherokee Nation did not appeal the decision. [2]
In the 2021 Cherokee Nation tribal council elections, Vann ran for an at-large tribal council seat, placing third among eight candidates. [1] During her campaign, her eligibility was challenged on the grounds that she was not "Cherokee by blood," a requirement under the Cherokee Nation Constitution at the time. [1] The Cherokee Nation supreme court, however, ruled that such language should be removed, affirming the full citizenship rights of Freedmen descendants based on the Treaty of 1866. [1] This decision upheld the outcome of the 2017 federal case which ensured Freedmen descendants' right to run for office and other privileges of tribal citizenship. [1]
In 2021, Vann was appointed by principal chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. to serve on the Cherokee Nation Environmental Protection Commission. [1] The tribal council confirmed her appointment on September 13, 2021. [1] The five-member commission is responsible for overseeing the tribe's environmental programs and recommending changes to environmental regulations. [1] Vann’s appointment was seen as a historic first for a Freedmen descendant within the Cherokee Nation government. [1] She has emphasized the importance of understanding the extent of tribal sovereignty in environmental matters, particularly in the context of the 2020 McGirt v. Oklahoma decision, which reaffirmed the legal standing of the Muscogee Nation and has implications for other tribes. [4]
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.
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.
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.
Chadwick "Corntassel" Smith is a Cherokee Nation politician and attorney who served as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. He was first elected in 1999. Smith was re-elected to a second term as Chief in 2003 and a third term in June 2007 with 59% of the vote. He was defeated in his attempt to get elected to a fourth term in office by Bill John Baker 54% to 46% in the 2011 election and he lost again to Baker in 2015, receiving 28% of the vote. Prior to being elected Principal Chief, he worked as a lawyer for the tribe and in private practice.
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 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936 is a United States federal law that extended the 1934 Wheeler-Howard or Indian Reorganization Act to include those tribes within the boundaries of the state of Oklahoma. The purpose of these acts were to rebuild Indian tribal societies, return land to the tribes, enable tribes to rebuild their governments, and emphasize Native culture. These Acts were developed by John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, who wanted to change federal Indian policy from the "twin evils" of allotment and assimilation, and support Indian self-government.
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.
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 and Natchez Nation. As of 2024, over 466,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.
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.
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.
A freedman or freedwoman is a person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission, emancipation, or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing.
The Muscogee Nation, or Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is a federally recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The nation descends from the historic Muscogee Confederacy, a large group of indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. They commonly refer to themselves as Este Mvskokvlke. Historically, they were often referred to by European Americans as one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the American Southeast.
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.
Creek Freedmen is a term for emancipated Creeks of African descent who were slaves of Muscogee Creek tribal members before 1866. They were emancipated under the tribe's 1866 treaty with the United States following the American Civil War, during which the Creek Nation had allied with the Confederate States of America. Freedmen who wished to stay in the Creek Nation in Indian Territory, with whom they often had blood relatives, were to be granted full citizenship in the Creek Nation. Many of the African Americans had removed with the Creek from the American Southeast in the 1830s, and lived and worked the land since then in Indian Territory.
The Cherokee Nation was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America recognized from 1794 to 1907. It was often referred to simply as "The Nation" by its inhabitants. The government was effectively disbanded in 1907, after its land rights had been extinguished, prior to the admission of Oklahoma as a state. During the late 20th century, the Cherokee people reorganized, instituting a government with sovereign jurisdiction known as the Cherokee Nation. On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had never been disestablished in the years before allotment and Oklahoma Statehood.
In the United States, tribal disenrollment is a process by which a Native American individual loses citizenship or the right to belong within a Native American tribe.
Cara Cowan Watts is a Cherokee Nation politician. She served on the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council from 2003 to 2015 and was a candidate for Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in the 2023 Cherokee Nation principal chief election.
Shawna S. Baker, a Native American lawyer, citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is the third woman and the first out, two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer person (LGBTQ+) to be appointed a justice on the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court. Baker is also on the Chuck Hoskin Jr., Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Domestic Violence Task Force which was launched in 2021, and on the Cherokee Nation Health Services’ Ending the HIV Epidemic Committee. She is an advisor to Indian Health Services and on the Ending the HIV Epidemic Committee in Northwest Portland, Oregon, USA. Other roles include being a distinguished alumna in residence at the University of Tulsa College of Law, managing attorney of Family Legacy and Wealth Counsel, PLLC, and a trustee of Oklahomans for Equality in Tulsa, Oklahoma.