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Wed, 08.30.2017

Cherokee Nation v. Nash is Decided

*On this date in 2017, Cherokee Nation v. Nash was ruled. This ruling gave decedents of African slaves of the Native American tribe Cherokee citizenship.

The decision stated holding that "the Cherokee Nation's sovereign right to determine its membership" was limited by an "1866 Treaty" giving certain descendants of former slaves held by the Cherokee Nation before the Civil War "a present right to citizenship in the Cherokee Nation that is coextensive with the rights of native Cherokees.” In writing his opinion,

Thomas F. Hogan, Senior United States District Judge, commented: “Although it is a grievous axiom of American history that the Cherokee Nation's narrative is steeped in sorrow as a result of United States governmental policies that marginalized Native American Indians and removed them from their lands, it is, perhaps, lesser-known that both nations' chronicles share the shameful taint of African slavery. This lawsuit harkens back a century-and-a-half ago to a treaty entered into between the United States and the Cherokee Nation in the aftermath of the Civil War. In that treaty, the Cherokee Nation promised that "never here-after shall either slavery or involuntary servitude exist in their nation" and "all freedmen who have been liberated by voluntary act of their former owners or by law, as well as all free colored persons who were in the country at the commencement of the rebellion, and are now residents therein, or who may return within six months, and their descendants, shall have all the rights of native Cherokees."  

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Poetry Corner

Slaves are said to have worked hard & long on this island Sunup to sundown & beyond Sundays & Christmas off Two clothes a year are memories bestowed to old... ST. HELENA ISLAND by Tom Dent.
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