This may be an interesting read for Brad and others at the Foundation. The Cherokee Nation was eviscerated in Federal Court today over the Cherokee Freedmen issue and found to have violated the 13th Ammendment of the Constitution and the ruling aborragated our sovereignty over the issue of Freedmen membership. It's hitting the front page of a lot of publications.

The Cherokee related articles on the English Wikipedia may get a lot of hits over this topic, and potentially a lot of vandalism. The Freedmen are African slaves who are for the most part Cherokee by blood. They have their own dialect of the Cherokee Language which has been spoken for several hundred years that combines some Kaswahili with our language (only about 10 fluent speakers of this dialect are still living, most of them over 80 years old). This language variant is very beautiful and musical to hear with very interesting glottal stops and interspersed African inflections. Most of these Freedmen speakers speak only Cherokee and did not speak English in ancient times.

The ruling is at:

http://indianz.com/docs/court/freedmen/order121906.pdf

I have been in contact with this group in Oklahoma and we are working to document this dialect. Marilyn Vann, the person who is behind this lawsuit is one of the speakers of this Cherokee dialect, but she is not as totally fluent in it. I personally feel that those freedmen who married into our culture should be allowed membership in the Nation, since anyone who speaks Cherokee as a first language is certainly a Cherokee Indian. I am neutral on the blood issue. It's a tough one. At any rate, some interesting reading on the legal sissues dealing with tribal sovereignty. This ruling potentially has redefined its boundaries and will have far reaching impacts on all tribes.

Jeff