Kim Teehee (D-CN)
October 10, 2022 7:35 AM   Subscribe

"Article 7 of the Treaty of New Echota is crystal clear—Cherokee Nation 'shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.' For nearly two centuries, Congress has failed to honor this promise." But that may change, as the Cherokee Nation is once again calling upon Congress to seat their delegate, Kim Teehee.
posted by jedicus (40 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
I would love to see this happen; the second link in the FPP states that there is bipartisan support for the idea (!), so it seems like a real possibility. But I wonder why it hasn’t come up earlier; it is completely in character for the US government to ignore its treaty obligations, but why hasn’t the Cherokee Nation been agitating for representation before this? Or if they have, why is the idea just now gaining attention? I also wonder if other treaties with indigenous peoples have similar provisions; it could certainly make for a different political landscape in the House if they do.
posted by TedW at 9:03 AM on October 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


One of the highlights of my visit to the National Museum of the American Indian was the treaty exhibit. With many original documents. I have the basic American cynical view that the various treaties we signed with the Indian tribes are basically useless, agreements demanded under duress, with bad faith, and ignored literally as they were signed. And this is all true.

But they are also treaties of the United States. And should have force of law and be agreements that our government still honors. Just because the US has not honored those treaties so far does not invalidate them. They are still national law. Or at least should be; enforcement is still difficult. But it was a frameshift to recognize these are not a sad historical footnote but instead a legally binding promise that should still be honored.

A key moment in making these agreements more real was the Boldt Decision, a 1974 Court of Appeals trial about fishing rights in Washington State. It found that the treaty rights agreed to should still be honored and helped set precedent about the power of treaties.
posted by Nelson at 9:14 AM on October 10, 2022 [19 favorites]


This can only be a good thing for everyone. I hope we get this.
posted by bleep at 9:17 AM on October 10, 2022


I'm reminded of MLK's metaphor of a cheque that America's founders had signed but then defaulted on, and the time having come to cash that cheque.
posted by clawsoon at 9:32 AM on October 10, 2022 [9 favorites]


Great post for Indigenous People's Day.
posted by shoesietart at 9:37 AM on October 10, 2022 [18 favorites]


I am 1/64 Cherokee (and 63/64 white) and I endorse this proposal.
posted by neuron at 9:48 AM on October 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


it is completely in character for the US government to ignore its treaty obligations, but why hasn’t the Cherokee Nation been agitating for representation before this?

It should be noted that the linked articles somewhat mischaracterize the actual obligation of Congress under the treaty, as the treaty doesn't directly guarantee the Cherokee Nation a seat in Congress.

Rather it requires that the Nation be granted one "whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.” As this Senate report report containing the full text of the treaty notes in the margin commentary, this provides that "Congress may allow a delegate from the Cherokee nation" (relevant portion is in Article 7). The obvious implication of even the treaty language itself in that article is that Congress should make those provisions for such a seat, but there is technically no legally binding obligation to do so.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:19 AM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


Is the Delegate role interpreted to be a voting member of Congress? I wasn't able to ascertain that from the linked pieces.
posted by dusty potato at 10:23 AM on October 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


Rather it requires one when "whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.” As this Senate report [report containing te full text of the treaty notes in the margin commentary, this provides that "Congress may allow a delegate from the Cherokee nation" (relevant portion is in Article 7).

This sounds like a bullshit tautology to fool people into thinking they're getting something when they're not: "The US promises to seat a member of the Cherokee nation in the House if the US ever decides to allow a seat for the Cherokee nation in the House."
posted by nushustu at 10:25 AM on October 10, 2022 [14 favorites]


The rest of the provision doesn't go away just because you bold the first part. I didn't write the treaty, I'm just noting that the language of the treaty is not the guarantee it's being framed as above, and that it was almost certainly written this way precisely to avoid such an obligation.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:30 AM on October 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


I am 1/64 Cherokee (and 63/64 white) and I endorse this proposal

As someone who was told the same while growing up, I could happily live the rest of my life without ever hearing another white person claim some sort of blood quantum indigeneity.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:34 AM on October 10, 2022 [41 favorites]


I'd be curious to know if there are any hardline pro-sovereignty elements within the Cherokee Nation who reject legitimizing the treaties made with the US in this way. Some of the discussion in this thread illustrates how problematic the concept might be of a treaty between an actively genocidal state and its victim.
posted by dusty potato at 10:42 AM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


This sounds like a bullshit tautology to fool people into thinking they're getting something when they're not

It almost certainly is? I mean, I doubt the people writing the treaties were doing so in good faith, at least not as late as 1835. There had been a whole bunch of treaties made and broken by that point, so "we'll give you a seat in Congress as soon as we decide to give you a seat in Congress" seems pretty on-brand for the United States of the early 19th century.

Although it's worth pointing out that the Federal government wasn't the biggest asshole in the room with regard to relations with the Cherokee at the time. The State of Georgia gets that particular shit-stained distinction, since they literally ignored the Supreme Court (Worcester v. Georgia, which established the primacy of the Federal government in all dealings with native governments, basically giving them a similar status to foreign governments) in order to auction off native land to white settlers.

This triggered a process which could, in an alternate universe, have led to a Civil War between north and south decades before it actually happened. And I think it was largely the fear of this eventuality that led the Federal government to "negotiate" the Treaty of New Echota and then remove the Cherokee from their land via the Trail of Tears. This was less of a land grab on the Federal government's part (the Federal government at this point having more land than it really knew what to do with or effectively maintain control over) than once again deferring to the southern states on a moral issue many (educated, northern) people knew was flat wrong.

In short, the history of the US through to the Civil War, and arguably until today, is one in which lots of people knew what the right thing was, they just weren't prepared to back it up with force. And a law without force behind it is just some words on paper.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:45 AM on October 10, 2022 [14 favorites]


But I wonder why it hasn’t come up earlier; it is completely in character for the US government to ignore its treaty obligations, but why hasn’t the Cherokee Nation been agitating for representation before this? Or if they have, why is the idea just now gaining attention?

Twitter.

Okay, that's a glib answer, but a lot of Indigenous stuff has always been discussed within Indigenous circles and just doesn't bubble up because American (coughwhitecough) culture actively suppresses minority culture, politics, ideas, existence, etc. if it can't steal and repackage it. But social media allows those groups to gain footholds ("Hey, check out this awesome Native dance! Oh, while I have your attention, there's this treaty...") and eventually reach a, for lack of a better term, tipping point where white people start paying attention.
posted by Etrigan at 10:52 AM on October 10, 2022 [8 favorites]


I didn't write the treaty, I'm just noting that the language of the treaty is not the guarantee it's being framed as above, and that it was almost certainly written this way precisely to avoid such an obligation.

Yah sorry, I wasn't aiming my vitriol at you, but the treaty itself, and the way the US has historically treated indigenous folk in general.
posted by nushustu at 11:44 AM on October 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


This sounds like a bullshit tautology to fool people into thinking they're getting something when they're not: "The US promises to seat a member of the Cherokee nation in the House if the US ever decides to allow a seat for the Cherokee nation in the House."

If their representative could vote, then that gives them a leg up on citizens from Washington DC.
posted by Spike Glee at 11:49 AM on October 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Is the Delegate role interpreted to be a voting member of Congress?

Yes, it looks like "delegate" refers to non-voting members of the House of Representatives, like Washington D.C., the Virgin Islands, and the various Territories before they became States.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 12:15 PM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


If they're represented by this (voting?) delegate, would Cherokee also be allowed to vote on / be represented by other members of the House?

It's... problematic to imagine Oklahoma printing up special Cherokee-only ballots that don't have a House of Representatives entry, but...I can't make an argument that it's unreasonable.
posted by Hatashran at 12:33 PM on October 10, 2022


I am 1/64 Cherokee (and 63/64 white) and I endorse this proposal.

Are you a citizen of the Cherokee nation? That's a choice you can make. Belonging to one of the sovereign tribes isn't really difficult to do, if you pass the U.S. government's criteria. But citizenship isn't defined by blood quanta, you are either in or out, a citizen or not a citizen. The tribes actions won't affect you at a 1/64th rate of other citizens. You will be a full member of the community, at least in my experience. This blood quanta thing is basically built in to diminish the influence of tribes over the passage of time. Choose to reject it. Choose to belong to a community.
posted by Quonab at 1:13 PM on October 10, 2022 [18 favorites]


If they're represented by this (voting?) delegate, would Cherokee also be allowed to vote on / be represented by other members of the House?

It's... problematic to imagine Oklahoma printing up special Cherokee-only ballots that don't have a House of Representatives entry, but...I can't make an argument that it's unreasonable.


I asked a friend in the House Historian's office about this potential delegation in general, and he says this is actually the biggest issue: dual representation. Cherokee Nation members have representation in their respective states. While a CN delegate would not have voting power in House votes, they would have voting power in committees.

Now, this doesn't particularly bother me: A Cherokee Nation delegate would be representing a distinct polity from, say, the Representative from Oklahoma's 2nd District, and an historically underrepresented one at that, but the objections to this could be legitimate.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:28 PM on October 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


and he says this is actually the biggest issue: dual representation. Cherokee Nation members have representation in their respective states.

If you're squeamish about the idea and looking for historical precedent, perhaps they could be counted as 5/3rds of a person for purposes of representation...
posted by clawsoon at 2:17 PM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


Blood quantums are a racist system developed by white settlers. Imagine if other sovereign nations used blood quantums to determine citizenship.
posted by Aleyn at 2:22 PM on October 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


I suspect that neuron's "1/64" comment was meant facetiously.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:34 PM on October 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


Imagine if other sovereign nations used blood quantums to determine citizenship.

There are surely millions of people who are not citizens of the place where they were born and have lived their whole lives because of the passport held by their parents. On the one hand, jus sanguinis is very much a totally different thing (though sometimes adopted for explicitly xenophobic and racist reasons) but on the other hand, this feels like raging US-centrism.
posted by hoyland at 3:36 PM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


The vast majority of countries in the world determine citizenship by jus sanguinis and utilize blood-quantum-ish measures in determining whether those of mixed parentage or foreign birth are entitled to citizenship.
posted by MattD at 3:49 PM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


The vast majority of countries in the world determine citizenship by jus sanguinis and utilize blood-quantum-ish measures in determining whether those of mixed parentage or foreign birth are entitled to citizenship.

Have these other people in other countries been physically relocated in the past?
posted by Quonab at 6:38 PM on October 10, 2022


Is the Delegate role interpreted to be a voting member of Congress?
No, the Constitution is pretty explicit that members of the House are chosen by the states. It would require an amendment (or Cherokee statehood, I guess).
posted by Flunkie at 7:34 PM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


Is this "blood quantum" thing that is dominating this thread not a derail? I understand that it's a sore point, but it seems only tangentially related.
posted by Flunkie at 7:38 PM on October 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


According to the US Census, there are almost 10 million people with native ancestry, although the number of enrolled tribal members is much lower — closer to one million. Even so, that would make them equal to or larger than 8 states.

In a just world, we would designate 2 Senators to represent members of tribal nations. Any member living on a reservation would vote for them by default. Members living off the reservation would be able to request a ballot in lieu of voting for a state’s senator.

I think it makes perfect sense, so it will probably never happen.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:38 PM on October 10, 2022


It would require a re-write of the constitution, so good luck, but yes, members of the native nations should have representation as parts of their native nations.

As for blood quantum and all that, all native nations have membership criteria. Ideally, those criteria would be set by the nation itself instead of the US's insistence, as all nations have control over their "borders": who counts as a member of the national polity. The Cherokee have the Dawes Roll. It's really the US's fault that being a Native American has been reduced to only being an ethnicity or ancestry instead of being part of a social and political community. Restoring representation as a nation would give some credence to the idea that native nations are just like states.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 5:39 AM on October 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Blood quantums are a racist system developed by white settlers. Imagine if other sovereign nations used blood quantums to determine citizenship.

Okay, but... the Cherokee Nation doesn't use blood quantums to determine citizenship, so which nation are you talking about?
posted by dusty potato at 8:17 AM on October 11, 2022


I asked a friend in the House Historian's office about this potential delegation in general, and he says this is actually the biggest issue: dual representation. Cherokee Nation members have representation in their respective states. While a CN delegate would not have voting power in House votes, they would have voting power in committees.

Is there an actual provision somewhere that forbids "dual representation"? (non-rhetorical question, I have no idea.) Because if the issue is just conceptual rather than official, people in Wyoming already have more than 'triple representation' in Congress compared to people in California.
posted by dusty potato at 8:21 AM on October 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Dual representation as in being represented by two different positions in the same body. Voting for the Cherokee delegate and the local US House Rep. The US allows malapportionment, but it doesn't normally allow a person to vote for people in two different states/districts.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 8:26 AM on October 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Lord Chancellor: "The US allows malapportionment, but it doesn't normally allow a person to vote for people in two different states/districts."

Great! Then let the Cherokee representative be appointed by Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, rather than being voted in.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:52 AM on October 11, 2022


I've long thought that perhaps every territory and district of the US (PR, VI, GU, AS, MI, DC) and perhaps also every nation within US control (e.g. the Cherokee Nation) should have at lesat some real (i.e. voting) representation (at minimum, voting member(s) of the House) in the US government, as well as popular electoral power in voting for the President (along with additional investment by the federal government in the territories as requested by them, comparable to states.) This would be along side any statehood process being pursued (esp. PR and DC) as well. What do you think? (And what groups studying and working to enable this kind of reform?)

"It would require a re-write of the constitution." Conveniently, there's a process within the Constitution itself to do just that.

Amendments override any preceding statement in the Constitution so an Amendment can just specify the powers of added special representatives, even if seemingly in contradiction to previous language. (E.g. the 17th [more specific about the Senate] and 23rd [District of Columbia can also vote for President] amendments.)
posted by thefool at 11:51 AM on October 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


"Permanently Inhabited" US Territories have non-voting members in the House of Representatives.

Per Wikipedia:
There are currently six non-voting members: a delegate representing the District of Columbia, a resident commissioner representing Puerto Rico, as well as one delegate for each of the other four permanently inhabited U.S. territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A seventh delegate, representing the Cherokee Nation, has been formally proposed but not yet seated, while an eighth, representing the Choctaw Nation, is named in a treaty but has neither been proposed nor seated.
I would personally not be supportive of converting those to voting members of the House; that seems like something that is the province of US States, period. But there should be a "path to statehood" for Permanently Inhabited Territories that choose to become States, if that's the desire of its residents.

But as Puerto Rico demonstrates, that choice isn't necessarily an easy one, nor do I think it necessarily should be made artificially simple. With no clear mechanism for secession and a rather bloody war the last time someone tried, statehood should be considered irrevocable, and the mechanism should certainly require broad popular support for joining the United States (and becoming subject to its laws, for good or ill, in a manner similar to any other state) over a considerable period of time, maybe more than a generation.

As for voting for President, I can't see any reason for denying that to residents of US Territories, since they are quite directly under the jurisdiction of the Federal government, and I've never understood the tortured legal reasoning for the current situation. AFAICT, it would be a political shoo-in, if not for the Electoral College making recent Presidential elections into artificial "horse races" where every EC delegate counts. In a sane one-person-one-vote system, the number of people in most US territories would make them (with the notable exception of Puerto Rico) hardly worth arguing over.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:04 PM on October 11, 2022


The US allows malapportionment, but it doesn't normally allow a person to vote for people in two different states/districts.

Yes, but all current such districts are mutually geographically exclusive, and a person is only allowed to vote in one place. So I'm curious if overlapping representation is expressly disallowed, or if it just feels that way because it's not been tested.
posted by dusty potato at 8:58 AM on October 12, 2022


(My point in bringing up malapportionment is that if objection to overlapping representation were on the principle of imbalanced voting power rather than on any actual legal basis, well, we already have situations in force that are functionally analogous.)
posted by dusty potato at 9:02 AM on October 12, 2022


Also-- sorry y'all lol-- if the weirdness of potential overlapping representation were the main objection to a voting representative of the Cherokee Nation, that's not an unsolvable problem, either. Some sort of system could surely be devised such that, let's say, if I were a Cherokee citizen who also lived in Oklahoma, I would choose between voting in OK-2 or the Cherokee Nation district by registering my address to vote as either 10 Main Street, Tahlequah, OK or 10 Main Street, Tahlequah, CN.
posted by dusty potato at 9:12 AM on October 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


You could make the argument that by making tribal members US citizens, they now have representation in Congress and the treaty obligation has been met. I’m not in favor of this argument but it is logically defensible.

I think to get fair representation for all citizens of the US requires we think of the two houses of Congress differently. The House is based on basic geography — where you live is what matters. The Senate is based on where are you a resident (for state membership) or a citizen (for tribal membership). Territories, then, would get representation in the House but not the Senate. Native Americans would get Senators since there isn’t really a geographical requirement for tribal membership.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 3:42 PM on October 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


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