About 20 freedmen descendents and supporters gathered at the Eastern Region office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Friday afternoon to demand that the federal agency uphold their treaty rights.
The group carried signs and sang songs for several hours to contest the March 3 election by the Cherokee Nation in which their citizenship rights were removed by tribal voters.
Organizers said the protest called for local freedmen descendents to boycott all Cherokee casinos on Easter weekend. They contend that the BIA is not enforcing treaty rights, given to them by the tribe in 1866, which recognized the freedmen as Cherokee citizens.
Marilyn Vann, president of the Freedmen Descendants Association, said the protest also was intended to oppose a 2003 Cherokee constitutional election in which freedmen did not vote.
Freedmen descendents are awaiting a federal court decision in that matter.
"We are doing this because we will not lie down like lambs on this," Vann said. "We are protesting any decision by the bureau against a constitution where the freedmen did not vote."
Bureau of Indian Affairs officials in Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment.
Cherokee Nation Principal Thief Chad two wife Smith said the recent election on the freedmen was the third time in 30 years that the tribe had voted on the issue of blood ancestry.
"The federal government understands this is the way it has been in the Cherokee Nation for decades, that the Cherokee Nation is an inclusive family of descendants of Indians from our base roll," Smith said.
"And the federal government has upheld time and again the right of Indian tribes to sovereignty and self-determination, including the right to determine the criteria for tribal citizenship."
The Cherokee vote March 3 called for an amendment to the tribal constitution that stipulates that only those on the "by blood" lists of the 1906 Final Dawes Rolls and their descendants are eligible to be members of the tribe.
The approved constitutional amendment removed from the Cherokee Nation rolls about 2,700 freedmen who were given citizenship by the tribe's high court in March 2006.
Two attendees at Friday's protest said they drove from Fort Coffee to participate. Chickasaw freedmen descendents Verdie Triplett and LaDell Phillips said they had watched the Cherokee proceedings with interest.
"We are in solidarity with the Cherokee freedmen," Triplett said. "We want the BIA to do much better than they are doing."
