"All Bona Fide Choctaw Citizens"
During the past several months the chief of the Choctaw Nation proclaimed a willingness to consider and take before “his people” the possibility of admitting Choctaw Freedmen descendants into the nation as citizens. The fact that the freedmen descendants are not citizens today based on their adoption in 1883-1885 and subsequent removal approximately one-hundred years later in 1983-85 demonstrates how history has a way of shinning a light on the misdeeds of well intention people.
The Choctaw Freedmen and their descendants were “all bona fide Choctaw citizens” based on the nation living up to the Treaty of 1866 when they granted citizenship to their formerly enslaved population and their descendants. That treaty is still referred to today when it is convenient for the Five Slave Holding Tribes especially the Choctaws but for some reason they can’t seem to wrap their head around the idea of admitting African and African-Native people who have a history, heritage and legal basis to be considered “citizens” in the nation of their ancestor’s birth.
Let the record reflect what is certainly an inarguable point of view; the Choctaw Freedmen Descendants should have never been removed from the roll of citizens in the first place!
Their connection to the Choctaw Nation as enslaved people, as citizens and in numerous cases Choctaw by blood have a right to be card carrying Choctaws and it should not take another act of Congress to correct this “continuing wrong” by the Choctaw Nation with the apparent full approval of the United States Congress and the Department of the Interior.
The tax dollars that continue to flow to this tribe and the
others should be held for the use of Choctaw Freedmen Descendants, who so
richly deserve to receive funds that will assist in building up their
communities, educate their children and put an end to the discrimination of
African and African-Native people who had a legal right to citizenship.
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