Muscogee Nation court rules descendants of enslaved people are entitled to citizenship

The Supreme Court of the Muscogee nation judged on Wednesday that two descendants of people once enslaved by the tribe are entitled to tribal citizenship.

The court concluded that the Citizenship Council of the Tribal Nation had violated a treaty of 1866 when it denied the requests of Rhonda Grayson and Jeffrey Kennedy in 2019 because they could not identify a linear descendant of the tribe.

“Are we, as a nation, linked to promises of treaty made so many years ago? Today, we respond to the affirmative, because this is what Mvskoke’s law is asking,” the court wrote in his opinion.

The Muscogee nation is one of the five tribes of Oklahoma which used to practiced slavery, and in this treaty of 1866 with the American government, the tribe abolished it and granted citizenship to space previously enslaved. But in 1979, the tribal nation adopted a constitution which restricted the members of the descendants of the people listed as “Muscogee (Creek) Indian by blood” on the Dawes Rolls, a census of the members of the five tribes created around 1900.

When the Dawes rollers were created, people were listed on two distinct roles: those who were muscogee and those who were identified by the American government as freed. In its decision on Wednesday, the court referred the case to the Citizenship Council of the Muscigee Nation and ordered it to apply the 1866 Treaty to the requests of Grayson and Kennedy, as well as all the future candidates who can trace an ancestor for both.

The decision could create a path to tribal citizenship for thousands of new members who are not muscogee by blood.

The decision is a long -awaited affirmation of their ancestors and their legitimate place in the Muscigee nation, said Rhonda Grayson.

“While this victory pays tribute to our past, it also offers a significant opportunity for healing and reconciliation. It is now time to come together, to rebuild confidence and to go ahead as the only United Nation, ensuring that future generations are never faced with exclusion or erasure,” she declared in a declaration to the Associated Press.

“When I heard the decision, I felt that generations of my family expire immediately,” Kennedy added in a statement. “Our ancestors have signed this treaty in good faith, and today the Court finally honored their words.”

The court also concluded that any reference of “by blood” in the constitution of the muscoed nation is illegal, which could mean that the tribe will have to revise parts of the steering document. A provision of the Constitution requires that citizens be at least a quarter of muscoge “by blood” to stand in the elections.

“We are currently examining the order to understand its bases as well as its implications for our processes,” said Muscogee Nation chief David Hill, in a statement. “It may be necessary to request a review of this order to receive clarity so that we can ensure that we are advancing in a legal and constitutional way.”

Successful legal affairs were brought against two of the five tribes, the Seminole nation and the Cherokee nation, which have since granted citizenship to the descendants of the freed. But the way this citizenship is implemented could be summed up in politics, said Jonathon Velie, a lawyer who worked in the name of Freedmen in both cases.

The approximately 2,500 Freedmen citizens of the Seminole nation are not allowed to present themselves to higher functions and do not have access to certain resources, such as tribal housing and assistance to education. The 17,000 citizens of the Cherokee nation frees, however, have been adopted by the last two administrations and receive all the advantages of tribal members.

With regard to the American Department of the Interior, which oversees many resources due to tribes through treaty rights, the citizens of the freed in the two tribes are the same, said Velie – their tribes simply honor their citizenship differently.

“I hope that the Nation (Muscogee) Creek welcomes them again, because what they won today was not the US government or the American courts they tell them, they said in their own justice system,” said Velie.