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Robin Mayes |
Cherokee
Robin Mayes tries to make himself relevant in trying to exclude Marilyn Vann from running for office. She's a FUCKING hero, a warrior women in a time when most sit on the sidelines. Remember when
Mayes WANTED the Freedmen to vote?
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Marilyn Vann |
The Cherokee Nation’s principal chief said he would usually stay out of an election dispute between two candidates for the Tribal Council, but Chuck Hoskin Jr. made an exception Wednesday to describe a recent complaint as “just offensive.”
The case involves a descendant of Cherokee freedmen, or former Cherokee-owned slaves in the 19th century, who filed paperwork Monday to run for an at-large seat on the tribal council this summer. On Tuesday, another candidate asked the tribe’s Election Commission to disqualify Marilyn Vann on the grounds that “she is not Cherokee by blood.”
The tribe has had long political fights and court battles over the status of freedmen descendants, but Hoskin pointed to a federal court decision from 2017, and to a Cherokee Nation Supreme Court decision the same year, that recognized descendants of freedmen as “full Cherokee citizens under the law.”
“Our tribe is a better nation for having embraced full and equal citizenship of freedmen descendants, including the right to seek public office,” Hoskin said in a statement to the Tulsa World.
“The anti-Freedmen proponents of this lawsuit, if successful, would force Cherokee citizens of Freedmen descent to essentially start over in their effort to secure civil rights in the Cherokee Nation. Those efforts, which are completely contrary to settled Cherokee law, must not succeed.”
Vann, president of an advocacy group called the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, vowed to fight the complaint in court if necessary.
“We will fight for the law,” she told the World. “We will fight for the right of the people to choose their representatives.”
Read the TULSA WORLD ARTICLE