Freedmen tribal citizenship debate at heart of US Senate hearing

Two leading U.S. senators on Wednesday called for a review to determine whether the federal government should provide health care, housing support and other services to the descendants of Black people once enslaved by Oklahoma’s Five Tribes.

The suggestion from Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, came during a historic Senate oversight hearing on the status of Freedmen and their descendants within the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole nations.

The two lawmakers lead the Senate Indian affairs committee, which held the hearing. The session placed a national spotlight on the complex debates over Freedmen citizenship, which vary from tribal nation to tribal nation. Several tribal leaders and their attorneys cautioned against any blanket actions from any branch of the federal government, because every nation’s history and treaty responsibilities are different.

While Schatz acknowledged there were no easy solutions, he described a report by the Government Accountability Office as a “reasonable place” for the Senate to start toward reconciliation.

“We want to make sure that sovereignty is respected, but we also want to understand that African American enslaved people and Native Americans were mistreated,” Schatz said. “We are all in this situation because of the actions of the federal government of the United States, the official policy of the federal government.”

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The hearing was the first time the Senate focused on Freedman descendants, who have pressed for decades to be treated the same as other tribal members. They point to provisions in four 1866 treaties signed between tribal leaders and federal officials. But many Freedmen and their descendants were never enrolled or cut out of tribal rolls in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, only the Cherokee Nation extends full citizenship and benefits to Freedmen descendants, prompted by a 2017 court ruling.

Marilyn Vann, the lone Freedmen descendant invited to speak, told the 12 lawmakers on the Indian affairs committee that they should incorporate the rights of Freedmen descendants into laws to ensure they receive equal services and benefits, because tribal leaders so far have not.

“Many descendants today need services, the same as their (Indian) by-blood relatives,” said Vann, a longtime advocate for Freedmen descendants. She is also now a Cherokee citizen and sits on the nation’s environmental protection commission.

Cherokee Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. testified in support of Vann and the steps Cherokee leaders have taken in recent years to try to make amends. “I think it’s made me a better chief,” he said. “It exposed me to some of the needs in that community that we need to work to meet.”

Representatives of the four other tribes were more direct in speaking out against potential federal action.

“Colonialist history does not bode well in terms of efforts by the United States to impose its values on these sovereign nations, and we need to learn from history,” Muscogee Nation Ambassador Jonodev Chaudhuri said.

“One way to turn sympathetic folks in this issue against a federal action is to impose solutions, rather than have a true healing process within the nation that’s fostered by information. And that’s what we’re engaged in right now.”

While Schatz and Murkowski suggested a federal review, U.S. Rep Maxine Waters has proposed more drastic steps in the House that she testified about during Wednesday’s hearing. Waters, a California Democrat who leads the House financial services committee, wants to tie tribal housing funds to the recognition of Freedmen descendants.

“I do not believe that the documented history of the descendants of Freedmen can be ignored, forgotten or dismissed any longer,” she said.

Wednesday's hearing came exactly one year after Waters' committee held its own hearing focused on the rights of Freedmen descendants.

She also asked the committee to seek out the opinions of more descendants. Vann, who leads a group of Freedmen descendants of all tribes, encouraged lawmakers to hold hearings in Oklahoma. Republican Sen. James Lankford sits on the Indian affairs committee.

While testimony from tribal representatives and their attorneys varied widely, they came together around the responsibility of Congress to uphold the rights of tribal governments. That includes the right to establish their own membership requirements, said Michael Burrage, an attorney who has represented his Choctaw Nation for decades.

“If there is a problem, the federal government needs to find another solution that does not infringe upon the rights of the Choctaw people or the integrity of our self-governance,” said Burrage, a former federal judge.

He noted that Interior Department officials approved the Choctaw constitution and its enrollment requirements in 1983. People must prove they are direct descendants of a Choctaw, he said.

“Our constitution has existed and worked well for almost four decades,” he said. “But now another part of the federal government that approved that constitution wants to unilaterally walk it back without the consent of the Indians and without consent of the tribe. Does that sound familiar to you?”

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Vann said she understood that federal officials signed off on tribal constitutions and enrollment rules. “But freedmen people weren’t allowed to vote on them,” she said.

Bryan Newland, who leads the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said that if Congress wanted to extend federal benefits to Freedman descendants regardless of whether they are enrolled in a tribe, his agency isn’t set up to figure out who would be eligible or not. Its programs typically use tribal enrollment as the baseline requirement, he said.

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Seminole Nation Assistant Chief Brian Palmer said any discussion about treaties also needs to acknowledge the failures of the federal government to uphold its responsibilities to tribal nations.

“This short testimony to discuss select provisions is a disservice to the Seminole and warrants a deeper conversation,” he said. “Grossly negligent oversights of the treaty agreements still occur, beyond the McGirt case.”

The Supreme Court’s McGirt ruling, which led to the recognition of the Five Tribes’ reservation, came up often during the hearing. So did the court’s follow-up decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Heurta, which many tribal leaders view as an affront to tribal sovereignty. The court said in June that states can assert jurisdiction in Indian country over crimes that involve a non-Native American defendant and a Native American victim.

Newland confirmed that officials at his agency had been asked to help out on wording for a legislative response to the ruling.

Molly Young covers Indigenous affairs for the USA Today Network's Sunbelt Region. Reach her at mollyyoung@gannett.com or 405-347-3534.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Senators want federal review into Freedmen descendants' treaty rights