CHICO, Angie & PICKENS-GORDON, Julia
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| Joe & Dillard Perry Petition to Transfer Cases NRF-90C- F-253 p3 |
In honor of Native American Heritage Month I wanted to
present a few historical documents of people who sought to establish their
heritage as Chickasaw or Choctaw Indians but was denied by these nations
because they possessed some African ancestry.
The struggle to be included and recognized as a Native
American continues to be a blight on the two nations because they seemingly
have maintained the posture that women like Angie CHICO and one of her
daughters Julia PICKENS-GORDON along with their descendants have no claim to
Native American Heritage and in the year 2019 that denial of native people
unfortunately continues.
The history of African-Native children is something that is
a contemporary hot topic and needs a great deal of exploration so my presentations
will unfortunately be short for this exercise but it will be the basis for more
extensive research at a future date.
We don’t have an accurate count of the
descendants of the people who were denied their heritage and inclusion in the
Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations yet is not a stretch to believe there are tens of
thousands of individuals today who can trace their ancestry back to people like
Angie CHICO and Julia PICKENS-GORDON who were the sons and daughters of men
like Edmund PICKENS and Martin CHICO. These men not only fathered
these women but they also enslaved them.
It is my hope that the descendants of approximately
two-thousand men and women who sought to be transferred from the Chickasaw and
Choctaw Freedmen Rolls to the Chickasaw and Choctaw Blood Rolls begin to
research their history, learn about their heritage, take DNA test and band
together and take up the struggle their ancestors engaged in without an honest,
moral and legal conclusion.
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| Joe & Dillard Perry Petition to Transfer Cases NRF-90C- F-253 p8 |
I would like to hear from the descendants of Angie CHICO,
Julia PICKENS-GORDON.
Again, in the month of Native American Heritage it is
significant that a light is shone on the history of the Chickasaw and Choctaw
Nations and their continued practice of utilizing the antebellum practice of
determining a person’s race on the construct that race is determined by the
“race” of that individual’s mother.
In the year 2019 the question remains, do the descendants of
Angie CHICO and Julia PICKENS-GORDON have a right to proclaim their Chickasaw
Heritage?
Would those descendants ever be accepted as Native Americans while
being able to embrace their African ancestry?
More importantly, would the
Chickasaw Nation ever accept the descendants of Angie CHICO and Julia
PICKENS-GORDON as citizens in their nation “with all the rights and privileges”
as a citizen?
I can be reached at:
Terry Ligon
estelusti@aol.com
Please include NAHM in the subject line.
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