The Americas Cherokee Nation annouces nomination of Congressional Representative

[Deleted member]

The Cherokee Nation wants a representative in Congress, taking the US government up on a promise it made nearly 200 years ago

The largest tribe in the country has announced that it will appoint a delegate to the House of Representatives, asserting rights granted to it in an 1835 treaty.

www.cnn.com

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

...ok, cool, keeping treaty obligations is great...

but that last line is the first time I really read the delegates name and omg.

I'm sure it's a good name in the Cherokee language... but in English it's an onomatopoeia for giggling.

I'm not sure I'll be able to take anything she says seriously... I mean it's a me problem, but still, that name.

 

[Deleted member 1]

The upholding of treaty rights is a matter of the absolute probity of nations, both constitutional and moral. We agreed to the deal, we uphold it. It’s very straightforward and it makes us a better nation.

 

[FriedCFour]

Yeah I also support giving them a congressman. Thats fine to have. The problem is not every tribal nation can have one as that would be 573 representatives.

 

[Scottty]

Yeah I also support giving them a congressman. Thats fine to have. The problem is not every tribal nation can have one as that would be 573 representatives.

In my mind's eye, I see the smirking face of Sir Humphrey explaining why that would be a good thing.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Yeah I also support giving them a congressman. Thats fine to have. The problem is not every tribal nation can have one as that would be 573 representatives.

Congress only agreed to this term in treaty with the Cherokee and Choctaw to my knowledge.

 

[Cherico]

We made a treaty with them so yeah we got to up hold our side of the bargan.

 

[Comrade Clod]

I'm pretty sure this is a situation where the US is obliged to hold up its end of the treaty.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Morally it is important and much too late. To be honest, I think they should be full voting members. The treaty is more important than any double voting of the members of those two tribes, because it’s about a nation giving its word in a written treaty.

 

[Doomsought]

The upholding of treaty rights is a matter of the absolute probity of nations, both constitutional and moral. We agreed to the deal, we uphold it. It’s very straightforward and it makes us a better nation.

Moral obligation? Absolutely yes in this case.

Constitutional? No, Sovereign nations have the power to renege on their treaties, and the only consequences are those that their peers can enforce on them.

It is very important to remember that the legal and moral dimensions are separate.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Moral obligation? Absolutely yes in this case.

Constitutional? No, Sovereign nations have the power to renege on their treaties, and the only consequences are those that their peers can enforce on them.

It is very important to remember that the legal and moral dimensions are separate.

But we haven’t abrogated the treaty in law, so it is a constitutional requirement that we follow it. The fact that we could do so doesn’t change that (and that would call into question all kinds of land ownership issues in Northern Georgia).

 

[commanderkai]

Yeah I also support giving them a congressman. Thats fine to have. The problem is not every tribal nation can have one as that would be 573 representatives.

Technically, it's a delegate, not a voting member of the House of Representatives. They have the ability to vote in committees but their authority and influence can be changed rather easily, and has been changed a number of times since 1993.

I don't really see any issue with this.

 

[Es Arcanum]

The problem as I see it is the other tribal nations. You can't give all of them congressional observer status, let alone an actual House voting position which I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting.

So from what's been said here that means the Cherokee and Choctaw get observers and the others zilch. That could create issues. And just having some generic 'native' rep is generalising the tribal nations quite a bit.

Were the native tribe members actually able to vote in US elections when this treaty was signed? If not well they now are, they get representation like every other American.

Also the number of broken treaties that came about after this one was made... basically if you want to just say "oh we honour our treaties" well you'd be giving back half the land west of the Mississippi.

 

[Deleted member 1]

The problem as I see it is the other tribal nations. You can't give all of them congressional observer status, let alone an actual House voting position which I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting.

So from what's been said here that means the Cherokee and Choctaw get observers and the others zilch. That could create issues. And just having some generic 'native' rep is generalising the tribal nations quite a bit.

Were the native tribe members actually able to vote in US elections when this treaty was signed? If not well they now are, they get representation like every other American.

Also the number of broken treaties that came about after this one was made... basically if you want to just say "oh we honour our treaties" well you'd be giving back half the land west of the Mississippi.

Actually, it’s much less than that, and we should give it back. For the most part it’s been abandoned as part of urbanisation anyway, so current ownership isn’t so big of a deal. I would rather see the BLM lands transferred to the tribes then remain subject to federal jurisdiction. It’s better to negotiate with your neighbours than with a disinterested federal bureaucracy pandering to NYC liberals. There is no reason not to honour the treaties and no reason not to repatriate the land.

 

[Comrade Clod]

Well, the easiest thing to do would probably be "give every tribe with 100,000+ people a non-voting rep"

But then you get into all sorts of complicated situations since there's still about a half dozen tribes with more than 50,000 so do you combine their votes or...?

It'd be a complex piece of legislation, and something that would need actual bipartisan support which brings into question if the current political atmosphere would even allow it to happen?

The Cherokee and Choctaw are easier for the moment though, everythng else I suspect will have to wait until 2020/2021

 

[Deleted member 1]

Well, the easiest thing to do would probably be "give every tribe with 100,000+ people a non-voting rep"

But then you get into all sorts of complicated situations since there's still about a half dozen tribes with more than 50,000 so do you combine their votes or...?

It'd be a complex piece of legislation, and something that would need actual bipartisan support which brings into question if the current political atmosphere would even allow it to happen?

The Cherokee and Choctaw are easier for the moment though, everythng else I suspect will have to wait until 2020/2021

My plan would be to organise the tribes into six to nine major cultural groupings and give each one statehood as a discontiguous state. There is nothing in the constitution to prevent it, and getting 12 - 18 Senators and 14 - 20 representatives would go a long way toward addressing the actual issue of the fact that we destroyed their way of life, and then generally broke the treaties meant to address it. Of course, we also need to create an act which fixes the reimbursement to the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a function of the number of indigenous people registered, so that we are no longer forcing the tribes to fight a zero-sum game over the recognition of new tribes. Then we can recognise all the Indian nations we have resisted recognising, especially on the east coast. Then the final step is to outlaw gambling off of indigenous reservations. It's a poison and it should be tightly controlled and given to the indigenous nations as a monopoly.

Then we will have largely addressed the matter, when combined with major acts of land restoration from the federal land bank and abandoned lands of the intermountain west. Again, if you ask most western ranchers--the local native people are their neighbours and they would rather deal with them for land use privileges than for the entrenched federal bureaucracy beholden to NYC.

 

[Es Arcanum]

There would be lots of private landowners there now. And frankly they LOST. Right of conquest is a thing. I'd say stretch it out and let the matter fade from public consciousness.

If an area is protected parkland then giving it to the tribes as theirs is in effect saying they can do with it as they please. If they can't then why take it off the government's list of protected parkland? That land belongs to the people of the USA.

 

[Deleted member 1]

There would be lots of private landowners there now. And frankly they LOST. Right of conquest is a thing. I'd say stretch it out and let the matter fade from public consciousness.

If an area is protected parkland then giving it to the tribes as theirs is in effect saying they can do with it as they please. If they can't then why take it off the government's list of protected parkland? That land belongs to the people of the USA.

The probity of a nation is worth sacrifice. Upholding treaties is a critical part of that. Do not violate your probity without good cause, here we have none. The indigenous people have a right to expect more precisely because we bought the success of the United States from them at a very cheap price. In fact. outright, abject conquest rarely occurred; that’s why we have the treaties in the first place. They were smart, shrewd negotiators who often drove real bargains and them once we had agreed to them and we had power over them, we broke them. That is not how a righteous republic of laws should act.

In fact, a very large portion of land in the west is held by the federal government and that land is not parkland. The BLM and the Forest Service own huge tracts, by which I mean a significant fraction of the entire west, which are not parks and are open to exploitation under random, whimsical regulations from the Federal City. Many ranchers depend on this land for their rural way of life, and despite it being used by them under leases for more than a century, latte liberals in NYC want to turn it all into parks. My solution solves both problems at once because indigenous Americans are rural westerners just like their neighbors. Let them sort out land use at the community level and get the federal government out of it.

 

[Es Arcanum]

Realistically I don't think any real penalty will come from effectively continuing to ignore those treaties that were broken centuries ago in any case. In fact trying to honour some now after the fact would probably just invite more attention to past treaties and encourage litigation against the US government by other parties. These are internal 'treaties' with what are now US domestic entities for all the fig leaves about autonomous nations and such. The dispossession happened the treaties that were made were broken, its part of history now. I don't see any overriding need to redo the whole thing it ended up pretty sweet for the USA.

And the solution to federal intransigence on access to parks or land is ideally to fix that through the law and the ballot box, not sign away control to other parties who could all go any which way.

 

[Comrade Clod]

Realistically I don't think any real penalty will come from effectively continuing to ignore those treaties that were broken centuries ago in any case. In fact trying to honour some now after the fact would probably just invite more attention to past treaties and encourage litigation against the US government by other parties. These are internal 'treaties' with what are now US domestic entities for all the fig leaves about autonomous nations and such. The dispossession happened the treaties that were made were broken, its part of history now. I don't see any overriding need to redo the whole thing it ended up pretty sweet for the USA.

And the solution to federal intransigence on access to parks or land is ideally to fix that through the law and the ballot box, not sign away control to other parties who could all go any which way.

Why not just follow the treaty and not be assholes?