back

by TMWNN·7y ago·view on hn ↗
>Some organizations could mount legal challenges to the Cherokee Nation's push for a delegate, Rosser added, potentially arguing that the move gives citizens of the tribe more representation in Congress than non-indigenous US citizens.

This is going to prevent the representative from being seated. This is why tribes opposed the Indian Citizen Act of 1924 [1] in the first place; they were afraid that giving all Indians citizenship would fundamentally change the nature of their relationship with the US government.

The Cherokee can't have it both ways. They can't have American citizenship—and, thus, representation in Congress in Oklahoma or elsewhere—and an extra delegate of their own. Such exists in New Zealand, but that's explicitly provided for by law, and it's controversial; the New Zealand First Party,[2] which a few years ago held all seven Maori seats,[3] has a policy of wanting to abolish said seats, and no longer runs candidates for them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_First

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Māori_electorates

7 comments
It can be done. In New Zealand, our indigenous population (Māori) has New Zealand citizenship, and has an opt-in seperate electoral roll which has 7 seats of the 120 seat parliament [1]. Māori citizens have the choice whether to vote on the "General roll" or the "Māori roll".

This acts to ensure indigenous people always have a voice in parliament, and is seen as fulfillment of the treaty obligations on which this country is founded. This -combined with "mixed member proportional" style voting largely prevents any attempts at racist gerrymandering.

In practice, while the number of seats may not be large, MMP governments frequently are made from coalitions between parties, meaning that both our two largest parties are interested in contesting either the seats themselves or securing an alliance with whichever smaller party might win them, meaning the presence of these seats does translate into actual policy concessions to our indigenous people.

I should note here that at the time of its historical origin in 1867, the seperate Māori roll was compulsory for Māori, and was intended as a way to disenfranchise Māori by proportionally reducing their influence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Māori_electorates

I always thought the Māori electorate was a way to give Māori voting rights while acknowledging that they didn't have the same concept of land ownership as the colonists. At the time voting was tied to land ownership. The Māori electorate is tied to race and not land ownership like the general electorate was.
For reference, the Māori seats were created in 1867 during the period where much Māori land was confiscated by govt, provoking wars, and the property ownership requirement for voting in the general roll (basically for "white" people, which in NZ are now referred to as "Pakehā") was scrapped a little over a decade later in 1879; while for almost the next century Māori were forced to participate on only the Māori roll, determining only handful of available seats -effectively forcing them into underrepresentation - until 1976.

If we were to say the intent was to "give Māori voting rights", I think it could be far more fairly characterized as "give Māori some voting rights but systematically ensure that this counts for substantially less than their non-Māori peers".

It's not hard to believe that constitutional issues could prevent the Cherokee from getting their own representative. That doesn't mean it's not worth it for them to push the issue, though. Even if they do not, ultimately, succeed in getting a representative, maybe they can get other concessions. They do have a treaty, after all.
Māori electorate seats have a "controversial" history in the same way anything related to the Treaty of Waitangi does. Anything related to the treaty and it's settlements will always bring out the noisy racists.

Winston Peters, the leader of the New Zealand First Party is known to say and do anything to ruffle feathers and make the days front page. If you kept researching, you'd see he back pedaled hard on his Māori seat comments and said it should be voted on by a referendum. Then, in the most recent election he "compromised" even further and dropped the idea completely because he knew labour (coalition partner) wouldn't tolerate that shit.

> The Cherokee can't have it both ways. They can't have American citizenship—and, thus, representation in Congress in Oklahoma or elsewhere—and an extra delegate of their own.

The Cherokee nation initially inhabited parts of what you now call Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Alabama. If they are in Oklahoma now is due to ethnic cleansing.

The Cherokee have a more legitimate claim to representation than you do. They have been here for thousands of years, you just got here.

If you want to appeal to fairness there are a lot of things that are wrong about your narrative.

I think your argument makes some sense logically, but I conjecture that a workaround would be by means of two criteria: 1) being an (extreme) minority and 2) having some kind of historical status (in contrast to minorities that are newer to the continent).
After all the shit the invader ruling classes in the United States did to the native population it's in fact THE LEAST it could do. Political representation is a very very small gesture to address invasion of homeland and subjugation of all of its people by Europeans. Too bad nothing similar happened to the British or the Germans where we are arguing that they can't have a very small political place in what is in effect their land occupied by foreign invaders.
We are all illegally occupying America from natives. So, let's be considerate to the natives of this land.
Legality is not a universal moral concept. It is nonsensical to say invading and conquering a group is illegal. What law are we breaking?
"A treaty is an official, express written agreement that states use to legally bind themselves." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty#Modern_form

The US has made treaties with many Native American nations. "American law is that international accords become part of the body of U.S. federal law." (same Wikipedia page).

It has also broken some of these treaties. Eg, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fort_Laramie_(1868) :

> The government eventually broke the terms of the treaty following the Black Hills Gold Rush and an expedition into the area by George Armstrong Custer in 1874, and failed to prevent white settlers from moving onto tribal lands. ... The 1868 treaty would be modified three times by the US Congress between 1876 and 1889, each time taking more land originally granted, including unilaterally seizing the Black Hills in 1877.

Thus, if treaties are supposed to be legally binding, and it is broken in order to take more land, then that land is illegally occupied, yes?

Indeed,

> On June 30, 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that the government had illegally taken land in the Black Hills granted by the 1868 treaty, by unlawfully abrogating article two of the agreement during negotiations in 1876, while failing to achieve the signatures of two-thirds the adult male population required to do so.

Thus, it's also possible to take more than a century for the courts to recognize that the land was taken illegally.

I feel like "universal moral concept" is a different concept. Treaties are also not universal moral concepts either, are they? Yet you see people refer to treaties as being legally binding.