In the 1970s, as the Cherokees regained the power to elect their own tribal leaders and amend political documents, including the Cherokee Constitution, they began to ponder the social and economic directions the tribe should take. And this raised the question: If the tribe became wealthy, who would benefit?
Today, tribes across the country have wrestled with this same question. Many have responded by enforcing the strategic exclusion of certain members in order to economically benefit the citizens who remain. For Ross Swimmer in the early 1980s, the choice of which group to exclude was clear: the historically oppressed Black members of the tribe, who descended from people who were once enslaved by Cherokees and who generally share Cherokee ancestry.
At Swimmer’s urging, the Cherokee Tribal Council modified the Cherokee Nation Tribal Code to stipulate that tribal membership required proof of Cherokee blood. Freedmen who attempted to vote in 1983 suffered the pain and embarrassment of being turned away at the polls.
The experience Mankiller had had with Native people from many backgrounds and tribes — and her own experience as a mixed-race person and a woman who’d faced discrimination — should have led her to see this for what it was: a prejudiced, and purely political, attack. Instead, she was willing to accept a distorted version of Cherokee identity and disenfranchise thousands of people. And for what? To consolidate power? To strengthen a handpicked portion of the Cherokee Nation?
What does it mean that a woman who exemplified Native female power and pride was also a supporter of segregation and inequality?
When Ross Swimmer was appointed assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he resigned his tribal position, and Wilma Mankiller was sworn in, becoming the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. In 1987, she ran for the position and won, serving two terms in office — terms that were largely defined by her attention to improving access to such essential programs as Head Start. She also helped to establish the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Tribal Justice.
But Mankiller’s stance on the Freedmen was not just a one-time misjudgment.
In 2003, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs was poised to reject the results of Chad Smith’s election because Freedmen had not been allowed to vote, Mankiller was part of a delegation poised to meet with Bush administration officials to protest. The BIA backed down, and Black Cherokees continued to be excluded until 2017, when, again, the United States sought to pressure the Cherokee Nation into abiding by its treaty provisions concerning Freedmen. Finally, the Cherokee Nation, under the Hoskin Jr. administration, accepted that allowing the political inclusion of Freedmen was the right course of action.