By CHARLY EDSITTY
The UNITY News Online

Conversation got heated Friday afternoon when the floor was opened to audience members at the Native American Journalist Association’s “Who is an Indian?” panel.

For nearly two hours, panelists fielded questions, giving insight into the complexities of American Indian culture.

Debate over American Indian citizenship dominated the conversation. The Cherokee Freedmen controversy that called into question the tribal citizenships of 2,867 people drew the most debate.

“There are different concepts of history at play here,” said Kenneth J. Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist from Boston. “The Cherokees don’t know their own history.”

Cooper directed his comments toward panelist and current Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chad Smith in a debate that lasted several minutes. Cooper argued that race was a major issue in deciding the Freedmen dispute and that a certain group of people who shared mixed Cherokee heritage were wrongly denied tribal membership because they were black.

Ancestors on Cooper’s mother’s side are descendents from slaves who were owned by Cherokees in northeastern Oklahoma. He said he is of Cherokee blood and joins other people whose Cherokee citizenship has been called into question, revoked and then reinstated through a mess of treaties, court cases and tribal elections.

“The first columns said we kicked all blacks out of the Cherokee Nation,” Smith said of media coverage surrounding the controversy. “That’s absolutely false.”

“If you look at the records, tribal membership is not based upon color or appearance,” Smith said. “You just have to have one Cherokee ancestor and it doesn’t matter what you look like or what your other ethnicities are.”

Because a solution has yet to be found, Congress is considering cutting funding to the Cherokee Nation through legislation called HR 2824. Smith played a nine-minute video explaining that the funding cut would negatively affect the oldest, poorest and neediest Cherokees in the nation.

Other panelists included Suzanne Jasper, director of First Peoples Human Rights Coalition; Joe Garcia, president of the National Congress of American Indians; T.W. Shannon, Oklahoma state representative and moderator Karen Briggs, president of Red Hummingbird Media Corporation.

“The issue of who is an Indian must be viewed through the prism of tribal government,” said Shannon, a member of the Chickasaw Nation.

He said issues of citizenship handled by the federal government have been “catastrophic” and said he thinks it’s best if it is left up to the Cherokees to determine citizenship.

“Congress should be very careful trying to determine citizenship for someone else when they have their own issues trying to deal with American citizenship,” Shannon said.

Garcia objected to federal interference with tribal citizenship and regulations on dual tribal enrollment, which limits citizenship to only two tribes, even if someone is a member of more than two by blood.

“Who set that policy?” Garica asked in reference to the federal government. “That’s what gets to me. It takes the right away from my grandchildren to be members of tribes to which they belong.”

Garcia’s granddaughter is a member of several tribes by blood, but does not have citizenship to all of them.

Defining citizenship has proven to be a very emotional issue for American Indians. Smith explained that the fundamental definition of an Indian is a citizen of a tribal nation, but said there are other definitions.

Smith offered up his own definition that didn’t include papers or documentation, but a strong emphasis on community and relationships.

“Are you a member of an Indian community? That’s a relationship,” Smith said. “It doesn’t matter what you look like or where you come from, but if you are accepted by an Indian community, I think you are.”