Tribes like the Cherokee, Pechanga, Picayune, Redding, Enterprise, Snoqualmie are threatening sovereignty by wielding it like a club. If Congress reacts to this, Indian Country, they could also very well OVER-React. Is this what you are willing to gamble? Express your MORAL OUTRAGE at these tribes by refusing to do business with tribes that violate the civil rights of their people. I believe this is what the CBC is doing right now.
Opinion: Cherokee Nation's boat of federal funds
Friday, April 25, 2008 Filed Under: Opinion
The following is the opinion of Steve Osburn, a Cherokee/Delaware from Oklahoma.
When it comes to the Freedmen, Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith keeps saying "Let the courts decide this case," when they already have. The Cherokee Supreme Court ruled that the Freedmen are Cherokee citizens. But he ignored that decision because it didn't go the way he thought it would.
Smith strips other tribes of their federal funding and recognition, like he did to the Delaware Tribe. So what's the big deal -- are Indian leaders only outraged when it happens to the Cherokee Nation? They never stood up and scolded Smith for doing for doing this to the Delawares.
Smith doesn't care if another tribe's federal funds or recognition are taken away but he expects everyone to jump up and down and throw a fit when it's happening to his tribe because he doesn't want the federal government to cut off his flow of money.
He's already ruined the Shawnee Tribe when they separated from the Cherokee Nation, and he's attempting to do even more damage to the Delawares with promises of regaining our federal recognition if he can control all of our federal funding. We said "NO!" to that idea.
Other tribal leaders are jumping on Smith's bandwagon because he's using scare tactics and telling them similar legislation will be attached to everything Congress does in the future for all Indian tribes. The bill sponsored by Rep. Diane Watson (D-California) does not even mention terminating the Cherokee Nation -- it only threatens to cut federal funding to the Cherokee Nation.
Smith is afraid of being in the very same boat he put the Delawares in. A boat with no federal funds!
OP: Cherokee made $110 MILLION in profits last year, why are they getting FEDERAL FUNDS anyway?
http://www.tribalcorruption.com/
www.pechanga.info/forum
ALSO
http://64.62.196.98/News/2008/008375.asp
Cherokee Freedmen dispute threatens NAHASDAThursday, April 24, 2008
Filed Under: Politics
The Cherokee Freedmen dispute could derail the Native American Housing and Self-Determination Act, the nation's largest Indian housing organization warns.
NAHASDA, first passed in 1996, is set to expire unless it is reauthorized. The House has already passed its version of the bill and the Senate is set to take action within the coming weeks.
But unless the status of the Freedmen within the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma comes to a "creative, equitable resolution," the bill won't become law this year, the National American Indian Housing Council fears. An April 18 letter urges tribal leaders to lobby Congress to address the controversy.
"The NAIHC is very concerned that the Freedmen matter might upend not only the pending NAHASDA reauthorization but the passage of all Indian tribal legislation in this and possibly future congresses," Chairman Marty Shuravloff wrote. "This would be an unfortunate outcome for the hundreds of thousands of American Indian and Alaska Native low income families that would be unwitting victims in a controversy involving one Indian Tribe."
Last September, the House included a provision in H.R.2786 that bars the Cherokees from receiving housing funds unless the Freedmen, who are the descendants of former African slaves, are restored to citizenship
OP: So then the correct headlines could be:
Cherokee Nation THREATENS Hundreds of Thousands' tribal housing because of their actions against their own tribal members.
or
Cherokee causes damage to tribal sovereignty, erodes it for all tribes.
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