Racial Strife Splits American Indian Tribe
Wed Jul 3, 3:49 PM ET
By Ben Fenwick
ADA, Okla. (Reuters) - The American Indian Seminole tribe, a people who honor their ancient ties to the land, today find themselves riven by a modern case of racial strife.
A fight over the status of blacks who first joined the tribe in the early 1800s is at the center of a struggle between two Seminole chiefs competing for the leadership -- and a hefty sum of money from the U.S. government earmarked for the tribe.
The split is over the Freedmen Bands, a group descended from escaped and former slaves as well as free people of African heritage whose ancestors joined the Seminole Nation in the early 19th century in Florida.
Former tribal chief Jerry Haney lost an election last year in which the Freedmen were barred from voting after they were excluded from the tribe over doubts of their Seminole ties. Haney supports including Freedmen into the Seminole Nation as equal members and claims the election was invalid and that he is still chief.
But Ken Chambers won the July 2001 poll and said it was a mandate for the view that the Seminole people should decide who is of Seminole blood.
The federal government does not recognize Chambers as the Seminole leader because the Freedmen were barred from voting.
Without federal recognition for the sitting leader, hundreds of thousands of dollars for health care, education and social welfare programs were put on hold.
Some of that money was freed up last spring after a tribal court ruling allowed money for basic services to be used.
At that hearing in the small Oklahoma town of Ada, members of each camp shouted insults at each other, with Haney beating hasty retreat.
Money and blood started to come into conflict in the early 1990s, when the U.S. Congress granted $75 million to the Seminoles in reparation for lands seized in Florida generations ago.
The infusion of the money into a trust fund for the tribe was followed by a move by some Seminole council members to question the Freedmen's affiliation with the tribe.
With the 2,000 or so Freedmen out, the remaining members of the tribe, which number about 15,000 in Oklahoma, would have a larger slice of the pie.
In August 2000, the tribe removed the Freedmen by amending its constitution, which stipulates who is a member of the Seminole Nation and the rules they live by in Oklahoma.
FROZEN FUNDS
But the conflict led the government to freeze the $75 million and call for a full reinstatement of Freedmen tribe members and a new election in which they may vote.
"The Freedmen are outside of their constitution and we are trying to get them back where they can have an election and get back inside of their constitution. It's going to take an accommodation of both factions to do that," said Neal McCaleb, head of the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Although they trace their roots to Africa, the Freedmen worked the land with the Seminoles, learned the language and intermarried with the tribe as they lived in kinship for nearly two centuries.
The Seminoles are one of several American Indian tribes whose ranks were swelled by freed slaves and free blacks who aligned themselves with Indian tribes after finding themselves disenfranchised by the young U.S. government.
"The issue is, does our tribal government have the right to govern itself and amend its constitution? The issue still remains one of sovereignty," said Jackie Warledo, spokeswoman for the Chambers administration.
Haney, the ousted chief, said the move to split the Freedmen from the tribe was a terrible mistake.
"We have to bring the Freedmen back in to be recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs," Haney said. "You have to rescind the laws that were passed in order to bring them back in."
Lena Shaw, leader of the Freedmen in Oklahoma, said the Chambers camp did not want to share the federal money the nation received for its seized land with the Freedmen and that greed was behind the ousting of the bands from the tribe.
McCaleb met privately in May with both the Chambers and Haney camps to smooth over their differences. He insisted that the U.S. government saw the Freedmen as part of the tribe and needed to be included as equal members.
Since the controversy began, the tribal council has granted the Freedmen limited tribal rights, including a seat on the council and some voting privileges.
But the U.S. government saw the moves as a cosmetic change, noting that the Freedmen bands were still excluded from tribal schools and other federally funded programs.
The Freedmen's association with the Seminoles dates to the struggle of Chief Osceola, a Seminole leader who resisted white soldiers in Florida in the early part of the 19th century, said Shaw, the Freedman leader.
After U.S. troops captured Osceola, the Seminoles were forced to cede their lands to the government. American Indian tribes, including the Seminoles, were forced to march to Oklahoma Territory from 1838 to 1842 in an operation known as the Indian Removal Act.
"Whoever came in to help them fight those wars became part of the tribe," said Shaw, who says she has traced her own lineage to those times. "It wasn't about blood, it's a culture."