Watson files bill to cut Cherokee-U.S. ties

By Will Chavez
Staff Writer

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., has re-filed legislation designed to sever government-to-government relations between the Cherokee Nation and United States if the tribe does not restore citizenship to its Freedmen.

Introduced June 8, House Resolution 2761 would sever relations “until such time as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma restores full tribal citizenship” to Cherokee Freedmen disenfranchised in a March 3, 2007, special election and until the CN fulfills its treaty obligations with the U.S.

The bill has 10 co-sponsors and has been referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Judiciary Committee.

Watson has said she was “outraged” by the 2007 election that stripped CN citizenship from about 2,800 descendants of Cherokee Freedmen. In that election, CN citizens amended the tribe’s constitution requiring Indian blood for citizenship.

She also recently joined five Congress members in requesting U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder initiate a “full-scale investigation” of five Indian tribes, including the CN, over alleged abuse of Freedmen rights.

Principal Chief Chad Smith said Watson has broken her word twice regarding the Freedmen and is now “restarting her personal crusade to terminate the Cherokee Nation.”

He said Congress had agreed to let the courts decide the Freedmen issue and in 2008 passed legislation to that effect. Instead of letting the courts decide, Smith said Watson has asked Holder to intervene and now has introduced another bill to cut CN ties.

“Congress must ask itself why Rep. Watson is so afraid of letting the courts actually state what the law is,” Smith said. “Rep. Watson prefers to hurt the elderly, young and sick of the Cherokee Nation without even waiting to let the federal courts decide the law. Enough is enough.”

Two lawsuits regarding the Freedmen situation are in two federal courts – in Washington, D.C., and the Northern District of Oklahoma. A third is waiting to be heard in CN District Court.

Watson has been a vocal opponent of the CN since 2007. She introduced a similar bill in June 2007 to sever federal relations with the CN, but it did not garner enough support to pass. 

Smith said HR 2761 is the same scorched-earth bill introduced in 2007 that would “punish…Cherokees” by eliminating federal funding for services such as health care, housing and education.

“Her bill is a throwback to when it was U.S. government policy to eradicate tribes, disperse their peoples and seize their property. The reintroduction of termination legislation specifically targets Oklahoma and the region,” he said. “If Watson gets her way, 7,000 people who work for the Cherokee Nation would lose their jobs. At the same time she would cut every penny of federal funding for those newly jobless people, as well as programs that help their elderly parents and grandparents and the programs that educate their kids.”

Smith said more than 7,500 families would lose housing assistance, 1,000 children would lose their Head Start programs and more than 40,000 meals a year for elderly Indians would be eliminated.

Watson claimed in 2008 that her first bill introduced in June 2007 was not a termination bill and would not have overturned U.S. recognition of the CN. She said her intent was to cut the tribe’s funds until it fulfilled its treaty obligations regarding the Freedmen.

“There is not one word…that discusses or calls for the termination of the Cherokee Nation…,” she said.

Smith said the first words of Watson’s 2007 bill were: “To sever United States’ government relations with the Cherokee Nation…” and added there is no legal distinction between the words terminate and sever.

Watson has also said the issue is not a matter of tribal sovereignty, but of treaty rights. She said the issue is whether the CN can violate the Treaty of 1866, which she claimed granted former Cherokee slaves and their descendants all the rights of Cherokee citizens.

Smith said the tribe hasn’t broken the treaty, but the U.S repeatedly has.

“Over the past 140 years, Cherokees have had to watch Congress systematically tear this treaty to tiny shreds, and now, contrary to history, Rep. Watson acts like it was the Cherokees who tore it up in the first place,” he said.

He also said Watson has wrongly told the Department of Justice that the CN had breached treaty provisions.

“She did this knowing that the interpretation of that treaty is before the federal courts in lawsuits in which the Department of Justice itself is a defendant,” he said.