Today's Challenges

In the 1830s, John Ross was 7/8-Scotch/Irish and only 1/8-Cherokee by descent when he was elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. He valiantly fought against the removal of the Cherokee tribe from Georgia. His principal opponent was John Ridge, a full-blood Cherokee who had given up hope of retaining tribal lands in the East. Ridge — called "Major" Ridge by appreciative whites — secretly negotiated a treaty with the U.S. that gave Pres. Andrew Jackson the excuse he needed to dispossess the Cherokee. The Trail of Tears was the result.

Much later, in the 1970s and 1980s, tribal membership rolls were turned back over to the tribes. The irony is that, today, most tribes have adopted blood quantum as a way of keeping out — or weeding out — members who may have tenuous ancestry. The process has become contentious for some tribes because now there are casino revenues involved.

As Mark Macarro says in A Seat at the Drum, "We're wrestling with this idea that a third of us [Pechanga tribal members] hadn't been out there, evidently. But once we opened a casino they showed up. And I think this frustrates a lot of the existing tribal members. There's this long, tedious and ongoing discussion about how best to deal with that."

The Pechanga have dealt with membership questions by dis-enrolling several extended families who could not trace their ancestral roots back to Spanish mission records.

In the 1990s, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma dealt with the question by lowering their blood quantum requirement making it easier to prove ancestry. The Oklahoma Cherokee tribe grew from 40,000 members to 300,000.

In Spiral of Fire, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation was dealing with the debate by auditing the tribal roles.

All current Eastern Band tribal members have to prove that they have at least 1/16 Cherokee blood in their veins and that they are descendants of someone named on a 1924 roll of the tribe prepared by a government agent named Fred Baker. But rumors still persist today that some non-Indians paid Baker $5 to get their names on the list.

It's a contentious issue. But Theresa McCoy, a proponent of the audit, says it's not about casino money. "I can say without a doubt that there are people on the rolls of the Eastern Cherokee [tribe] that are not legitimately Cherokee Indian. And, therefore, I feel they should be stricken. I believe what the audit actually boils down to isn't a matter of money. It boils down to a matter of blood."

As of October 2006, the tribe had hired a company to trace birth certificates and other documents of the 12,000 enrolled members. The work had not yet been completed.

Bo Taylor, archivist at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, has a more inclusive view of Indian identity. In Spiral of Fire, LeAnne Howe asks him about various celebrities who claim Cherokee heritage. He's willing to allow Wayne Newton, Cher and Elvis Presley into the tribe. However, he says,

"The minute you say that you're Cherokee, I'm going to expect something out of you. I'm going to expect that you know something. Being Cherokee is about that culture, the language and the history. The fact that we had to hide and that we about starved to death. If, one of these days if, you know, my great-great-great-grandkids are 1/1000 Cherokee and they're whatever color — I don't know what color they'll be — but you know I would hope that somebody down the line they're still singing the Cherokee songs. And they're still speaking the Cherokee language. And the Cherokee is always there, and that spiritual fire will always burn inside of them. That's what will make them Cherokee."

Page 1 | 2 | 3

^ back to top