Racist Tendencies Common in Too Many Tribes

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Social Science, United States on 2012-06-02 03:28Z by Steven

Racist Tendencies Common in Too Many Tribes

Indian Country Today Media Network
2012-05-23

Cedric Sunray, MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians
Alabama, USA

Last month’s racially motivated killings in Oklahoma, perpetrated by Cherokee Indian Jake England and his white roommate against members of North Tulsa’s black community, once again bring to light the prejudicial tendencies held by many in our Indian communities.
 
This reality is the literal “Negro Elephant in the Room,” which many tribal communities attempt to pass off as issues of sovereignty, enrollment decision making, “and, well we had it as bad as them” rhetoric. However, the real effect is that our children grow up in environments where tribal governments and tribal members broadcast their racist ideologies — such as in the more recent case of the Cherokee Freedmen—to an audience of young people who are not provided with the full histories and realities of their historical connections to the black community.
 
I have seen one too many times where the half-black grandchildren of Indian people are even marginalized by their own Indian families or are viewed as the “lone exception” to their prejudicial leanings due to their blood connection.

In 1978, Terry Anderson and Kirke Kickingbird were hired by the National Congress of American Indians to research the issue of federal recognition and present a paper on their findings to the National Conference on Federal Recognition which was being held in Nashville, Tennessee. Their paper, “An Historical Perspective on the Issue of Federal Recognition and Non-recognition” closed with the following statement:
 
“The reasons that are usually presented to withhold recognition from tribes are 1) that they are racially tainted with the blood of African tribes-men or 2) greed, for newly recognized tribes will share in the appropriations for services given to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The names of justice, mercy, sanity, common sense, fiscal responsibility, and rationality can be presented just as easily on the side of those advocating recognition.”…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

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