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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. Thanks for being with us. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, let me play something for you.
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Rebecca Nagle: Major Ridge was a Cherokee chief and leader in the early 1800s at a time of great turmoil and change for our tribe.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: You listened to the voice of Rebecca Nagle, activist, writer, citizen of Cherokee Nation, and host of the podcast, This Land from Crooked Media.
This is Rebecca in the first episode of the first season talking about the fateful treaty between Cherokee leaders and the US government which forced Cherokee Nation off their ancestral lands east of the Mississippi River and on to the deadly trail of tears to what is now present-day Oklahoma. A quarter of the Cherokee population died on that treacherous journey.
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Rebecca Nagle: Major Ridge and John Ridge two generations of my family were killed on the same day. They were assassinated for a choice they made. That decision brought our tribe to this land on the promise that it would be ours for as long as the waters run and the grass grows but the United States didn't keep that promise.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Major Ridge and other Cherokee leaders who signed the Treaty of New Echota relinquish ancestral lands for a paltry $5 million. Nagle complicates the idea that these men were simply treacherous or foolish.
Theirs’ were almost impossible choices and by Nagle’s recounting, at this moment, the 1830s, the Cherokee faced the choice of either retaining tribal sovereignty by relinquishing ancestral lands or keeping those lands but being fully absorbed into the US.
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Rebecca Nagle: In other words, there would still be Cherokee people living on Cherokee land but no tribe, no self-governance, no nation.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Today, nearly 200 years after the Treaty of New Echota displaced the Cherokee enforced migration West, Cherokee Nation is the country's largest tribe and the treaty, which pushed them off their lands, also contains an unfulfilled article. A guaranteed right to send a non-voting delicate to the House of Representatives.
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Chuck Hoskin Jr.: For two centuries, Congress has failed to honor that promise.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. in the PSA produced by Cherokee Nation earlier this month.
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Chuck Hoskin Jr.: However, the Treaty of New Echota has no expiration date. The obligation to seat a Cherokee Nation delegate is as binding today as it was in 1835.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Kim Teehee is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Director of Government Relations for Cherokee Nation, and Senior Vice President of Government Relations for Cherokee Nation Businesses. In 2019, Chief Hoskin designated Kim Teehee as the first Cherokee Nation delegate to the US House of Representatives. Delegate Teehee, Welcome to The Takeaway.
Delegate Kim Teehee: Hello, Melissa. Thank you for having me.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Have you been seated in this position that is part of the 1835 treaty?
Delegate Kim Teehee: I have not been seated yet and that's something that we are working on to get completed by the end of this year. We've asked Congress, the House of Representatives, in particular to hold a hearing and to seat the delegate this year.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, I walked through the way that Rebecca Nagle tells the story of the treaty and of the forced removal in part to highlight the issues, the challenges between political sovereignty and political inclusion. Talk to me about the current space of those debates relative to this seat.
Delegate Kim Teehee: In our history, there's still fights going on today. Our history, the removal, was an effort for the United States to try to expand their territories to the West because of the discovery of gold and such. We prevailed in those court proceedings. We all went all the way to the Supreme Court, but Andrew Jackson infamously said that John Marshall made his decision that let him enforce it.
There are still battles going on today regarding the state encroachment on tribal lands and such. We're still fighting some of those same battles at post-removal all these years later but look, we have a treaty that has expressly stated-and it is a mandate- that Cherokee nations shall have a delegate in the US House of Representatives.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, what's the value of non-voting representation?
There are some other bodies that have this. For example, the City of Washington D.C. which is not a state not represented in the US Senate House with a voting delegate, but there is a non-voting delegate. What can we learn, for example, from the D.C. non-voting delegate about the value of non-voting representation?
Delegate Kim Teehee: Sure. Delegates have lots of authorities in the House of Representatives. They can vote in Committee, they can sit in committees. They can rise in leadership. They can introduce legislation, amend legislation, speak on the House floor. They just can't vote on the House floor and that is the legal distinction between a delegate and a member of Congress.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm wondering about also this question of enfranchisement in our conversations in recent days about Puerto Rico again in the context of the hurricane and thinking about questions of Puerto Rican statehood.
We've been talking about individual enfranchisement but not the island itself of Puerto Rico being enfranchised in the US Senate because again not a state. Help us understand for a Cherokee who are individually enfranchised, who can vote, but who are not enfranchised as a nation at this point, not represented in the US House. Is this simply about fulfilling 1835's promise or is there something enfranchising?
Delegate Kim Teehee: It's absolutely fulfilling this treaty right. This country through its policies made a promise to the Cherokee Nation where a quarter of our population perished and a part of that promise was that we shall have a delegate in the House of Representatives that act, the act of honoring that treaty right would provide some small measure of justice to those who lost their lives during that forced removal.
I think it absolutely is something that would give Cherokee Nation an additional voice, a seat at the table, this delegate position to represent Cherokee Nation government. We have 437,000 citizens throughout the United States that live in a variety of areas in a variety of ways. Through this treaty, it would send a strong message that this country keeps its word.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Have there been previous attempts to see a delegate? Has Cherokee Nation previously, across these nearly 200 years, attempted to see a delegate?
Delegate Kim Teehee: No, we haven't. If you keep in mind that for forced removal in the 1830s in addition to displacing the government, we had to rebuild a nation after forced removal. It took time to rebuild a nation. After forced removal, bad stuff didn't stop. Congress kept enacting laws that were designed to dismantle our governmental authorities and to take away our lands.
If you think about all that it took from the 19th century into the '70s. It wasn't until 1975 that Congress approved a law to give Cherokees once again the legal authority to elect its own chief. Think about that. How long it took to rebuild the nation after removal? In Congress's role, it had in dismantling the nation and frankly curbing our ability to rebuild. We fought hard to do all that. We feel like we're in a place where we can finally get the delegate seated.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm wondering about the ways that this decision now to lay claim to again this promise in the treaty. Is it at all connected to the fairly recent decision by the Supreme Court in McGirt to acknowledge the treaty around the space now understood to be Oklahoma still is enforced, that it does not end just because of, as you pointed out, bad stuff did not stop happening.
Delegate Kim Teehee: Correct. We talk about the 1835, the treaty right for the delegate but our 1866 treaty, which was our last treaty with the United States affirms all prior treaties that were not otherwise inconsistent with that treaty. That treaty still stands. You're talking about the McGirt decision and such. Cherokee Nation has had its recent court victories where our own reservation was reaffirmed.
It interpreted that 1866 treaty. 1866 treaty is the similar treaty of the Muscogee tribe and the McGirt decision was interpreted and the treaty was similar to ours, similar provisions with regard to our reservation boundaries. The courts have a hand in reaffirming our reservations. We're still battling it out in the courts today. State of Oklahoma didn't like that particular ruling, but we're still fighting in courts but the law is clear in the court decisions that reaffirm our reservation in the interpretation of our treaties from 1866 and including the 1835 treaty right to have a delegate to Congress.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm wondering if you have an opportunity to take a seat as the Cherokee Nation delegate. The extent to which you see this as representing exclusively Cherokee Nation or an opportunity for a more pan-Indigenous representation?
Delegate Kim Teehee: Well certainly, I'm mindful of the fact that I'm there because the delegate is representing the Cherokee Nation, but our tribe is pretty similar to other tribes in what we advance in Congress when it comes to federal funding, healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture, drought issues and such. I think that having Cherokee Nations delegate at the seat at the table would be an additional voice for Indian country.
Melissa Harris-Perry: When you begin to lay out a framework for me, tell me, what would your agenda look like? What are the key issues that you'd be fighting for?
Delegate Kim Teehee: As I mentioned, we'll cross that bridge when we get there but for sure, absolutely appropriations, housing, addressing murdered and missing Indigenous women issues, protecting our language are some of the issues that are critical to us.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Delegate Kim Teehee, it's a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and is the first Cherokee Nation delegate to the US House of Representatives and is making a claim on her right to take that seat. Kim, thank you for joining The Takeaway.
Delegate Kim Teehee: Thank you.
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