Indian identity remains in question

By BETTY SMITH

More than five centuries after Europeans made their first recorded contact with Native Americans, who they mistakenly termed Indians, the debate continues over who can claim to be Indian.

Is it the fullblood, whose ranks continue to decline, or the person with a large percentage of Indian blood?

Is it the person who meets a blood quantum, such as the requirement by the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians that its members be at least one-quarter blood?

Is it the person who, although having a slight degree of Indian blood, can prove descent from a person allotted land by the Dawes Commission and thereby has a card?

Or is it the person who, by whatever claim of family descent, claims Indian blood and perhaps a membership in one of dozens of “tribes” that have filed claims but have not been federally recognized?

And what can bona fide tribes, and their members, do about those with fraudulent claims?

A panel discussed all these cases during the concluding session of the State of Sequoyah Commission’s annual conference Friday at Northeastern State University. And during the discussion, one man who objected to its conclusions was ejected from the University Center.

“There are a number of issues that need to be addressed with different people in different states who come together and claim to be tribes,” said Dr. Richard Allen, policy analyst for the Cherokee Nation “We would like to make impersonation of a tribe, or a tribal citizen, a felony,” said Cara Cowan Watts, Cherokee tribal councilor.

“You can’t just create one. You can’t just make up an Indian tribe, culture or people. You can’t split off from another Indian tribe.”

The afternoon began with a presentation by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma on the controversy over whether descendants of Cherokee Freedmen should be considered full Cherokee citizens.

Principal Chief Chad Smith then discussed the lengthy court battle over the freedmen issue, saying the federal courts should be allowed to determine the outcome of the pending case.

Dr. Jerry Bread presented a group of Native American studies majors from the University of Oklahoma who presented a debate on the freedmen issue.

As the students made their presentations, Murv Jacob, a longtime Tahlequah artist who portrays traditional Cherokee themes, went from table to table distributing copies of his letter to the editor published in Friday’s Daily Press. As he was doing so he exchanged words with Bread and Allen.

They and several other men escorted him from the hall outside the Herb Rozell Ballroom and down the steps of the University Center.

“I’m being dragged out of here!” Jacob exclaimed.

Although campus security was called, Jacob returned to his studio near NSU without further incident.

Jacob’s letter stated there were many more pressing issues facing the Cherokee Nation than the one he raised, specifically mentioning statements by Cowan Watts calling him a “wannabe” and a “fake Indian.”

Contacted at his studio later, Jacob wanted to make no further comment on what happened in the call.

“I was told 20 years ago that if they persisted in calling me a fraud I could take them to district court right now,” he said. “If they persist I will have them in district court and they will have to prove I am a fake.”

Jacob has said he has Kentucky Cherokee ancestry through his Ironically, several speakers during the afternoon discussed people who claimed Indian descent from a grandmother, sometimes a “Cherokee princess,” sometimes a woman of an uncertain tribe.

And there are many of those rather uncertain tribes, and certainly unrecognized by the federal government.

Dr. Carol Morrow of Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau became interested in who was, and wasn’t, Indian when she learned about various Missouri tribes claiming to be Cherokee, including the Northern Cherokee Nation of Old Louisiana Territory, based in her area. She spent a decade researching these tribes and their various claims of Cherokee heritage.

“There are lots and lots of Cherokee groups in Missouri and Arkansas,” she said.

“These are just self-identified groups. Many of them have split from parent groups, gone off and set up their own. Many of the groups from Missouri claim heritage of people who left the Trail of Tears and settled in the area.”

Demographics show there is no basis for those claims, she said.

Some Missouri Cherokee groups claim descent from a group of Cherokees who left North Carolina in 1721 and moved west; others from those who sided with the British, left their homelands in the 1780s, and settled in southeast Missouri.

Others claim to be part of the western Cherokees who settled in Arkansas between 1818 and 1828, before the Cherokee removal.

“But if you get into the historic documents they are invisible in Missouri,” she said.

Those documents from the early 1800s list a number of tribes living in Missouri, but no Cherokees.

She presented a list of 15 tribes claiming some form of Cherokee descent that have applied for federal recognition. Many also have achieved nonprofit, tax-exempt status. People can pay to become members of many of these groups.

Morrow discussed the case of “Chief Paul White Eagle” (Paul Manfred Smith), head of a Kansas-based group, and of Beverly Baker Northrup, chief of the Old Louisiana Territory group since 1982.

She said Northrup retained her title although she had been voted out more than once, and wrote a book called “We Are Not Yet Conquered,” about her genealogy.

She apparently determines who is eligible for tribal membership, Morrow said.

She said students have obtained cards from some of these groups and have come to her in vain seeking Indian scholarships or other assistance.

Northrup has obtained $120,000 in federal grants to help her tribe complete its application, but it has been pending since 1992 without further action, Morrow said.

Panelist Troy Wayne Poteete, a former Cherokee tribal councilor and justice of the Cherokee Supreme Court, noted the federal government could save millions by not awarding grants to such dubious claims for tribal recognition.

“You talk about stupidity, that’s stupidity gone to seed,” he said.

Poteete and other panelists jokingly adopted such “wannabe” names as “Chief Flies High and Eats Pie,” “Chief Talks Trash,” “Princess Dream Catcher” and “Princess Buffalo Wings.”

They brought up such real life “wannabes” as Ward Churchill, who has pretended to be a Cherokee and UKB member, and who “plays an academic Indian,” according to Cowan Watts.

“He has appropriated the Cherokee culture for too long.”

She also brought up Martin Webber, also known as “Grand Council Chief Thundercloud IV,” of Kansas, who has sold tribal memberships, including cards to illegal aliens, for as much as $1,500.

Cowan Watts said the federal papers filed by the so-called nonprofit tribes are interesting indeed.

One tribe showed collection of $109,670 in fees from tribal members over a four-year period, at $25 per card.

“They defrauded individuals thinking they were going to obtain Indian Health Services and other things,” Cowan Watts said.

She would like to see a federal ban on state recognition of tribes and federal funds withheld from the non-federally regulated tribes, plus examinations of them by the Internal Revenue Service and General Accounting Office.

Suzanne Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne-Creek who has a long career as a nationally known activist and writer, said she is glad to see the Cherokee Nation doing something about pseudo tribes and those with false Indian claims.

“Someone has to step up and talk about these people, even if they are your friends,” she said.

“A lot of these con artists are very talented.”

She said many claiming Indian descent are talented artists, talented in their presentations, “at making a buck on someone else’s identity.”

Harjo said among the dubious contenders for tribal recognition is a Cherokee Tribe of Idaho.

“I had no idea you guys traveled that far,” she told the mostly Cherokee audience.

“This is citizenship, this is nationhood, it’s about sovereignty,” she said.