2023-07-18 13:52:13
Washington y Nueva York. When Chuck Hoskin Jr was elected chief of the Cherokee Nation, he became the leader of a people of 450,000 citizens with an economy of 3 billion dollars, and a sovereign territory of more than 28,968 square kilometers in the east from the state of Oklahoma, and as one of his first acts in office, he appointed a delegate to represent that nation in the United States Congress.
Four years later, that representative, guaranteed to the Cherokee by an 1835 treaty with the federal government, still hopes to sit on Capitol Hill.
That delegate’s is an integral part of a long and hard history of the Cherokee. The origin story of this indigenous people says that they first inhabited a volcanically active island south of what is now the United States, and forced to leave it they traveled in 14 contingents of canoes to reach the southeastern coast of the United States. By 1540, when the Spanish Hernando de Soto entered these lands, the Cherokee nation included much of what is now the states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.
Over the course of three centuries, European settlers brutally suppressed and displaced the Cherokee, and in 1835 some 7,000 American troops drove them out in a last exodus march called “the Trail of Tears,” where of the 16,000 who began the trek, 4,000 perished en route to what was called “Indian land” in what is now Oklahoma. To justify this move, the US government signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota with a Cherokee group, and the agreement was ratified by the Senate.
“The treaty contains a very simple text,” Principal Chief Hoskin explained in an interview with The Conference. He says that the Cherokee Nation “has the right to a delegate to the United States House of Representatives when Congress makes provision for the same.” Hoskin notes that when the Cherokee arrived on what is now their land, they struggled to recover from the forced exodus and even lost contact with some who decided to travel to Mexico instead of staying in Oklahoma.
a matter of justice
Today, the Cherokee are the largest indigenous people in the United States, with a business presence in all 50 states of the Union and more than 20 countries around the world, and their self-government has 14,000 employees. “I thought it was a good time to assert that right” to representation in Congress, Hoskin says. “The Cherokee had mandated their leaders to take this action within our Constitution. It is not only a measure of having a representative in Congress, it is also a matter of justice, since the treaty is part of a document that has been a source of much pain for our people.”
Delegate Teehee, without office in the lower house
Hoskin noted that while there is no explicit resistance to the lawsuit in Congress, he acknowledges that four years have passed and the delegate Kimberly Teehee he named has not yet been granted the right to participate in the House nor does she have an office or staff. . This, despite the fact that the House Rules Committee confirmed that the treaty is valid and in force. Hoskins claims that the Cherokee will continue to insist on their rights under the treaty.
And they will continue to build their nation. On a recent visit to the Cherokee Nation of The Conference, an extensive territory with a developed governmental infrastructure was evident. “We are stronger than at any time since the exodus,” Hoskin emphasizes. Some 141,000 Cherokees live in the territory in Oklahoma under their home rule, and Hoskins acknowledges that they face “difficult challenges,” from poverty to lack of educational opportunities to addiction. However, he proudly claims that they enjoy the largest and best health care system of all the more than 500 tribes in the United States, and an efficient government, more entrepreneurial activity in factories, schools, construction, universities, and casinos.
Hoskin commented that “during certain periods, when the United States has gotten out of the way, we have prospered.” The Conference He pointed out that some have expressed that same sentiment in Latin America, at which he laughed, saying he understood.
His grandfather, he recounted, “spent much of his life in a world where the Cherokee were so suppressed, where we were supposed to be consigned to history. Today the opposite is true, and I am very proud of that.”
The National Museum of Cherokee History, in the Indian capital of Tahlequa, offers the history of this nation, as well as a special exhibit on the African-American slaves held by some of the Cherokee (not all of them supported slavery) and their fight not only to be freed , but recognized as members of the indigenous nation. It is a complex and little-known story. Hoskin and the museum director emphasize that it is part of an effort to reveal the entire history of this town and the struggles for equality.
A short distance away, there is another museum in what was the home of the great Cherokee inventor, historian, artist and linguist, Sequoyah. Born in North Carolina, the intellectual was convinced that the written language was a source of power, as in the case of whites, and from 1809 he began to develop the written version of the Cherokee language. By 1821 he had created a system of 87 symbols from a type of syllabary of the hitherto oral language. That language—oral and written—continues to be taught to Cherokee students, used in official bilingual advertisements and in the first Indian-published newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenixwhich was founded in 1828, and which is bilingual to this day (https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/).
At the end of his life, after the forced exodus of his people, Sequoyah traveled to Mexico with the purpose of convincing the Cherokee who left that country to return to Oklahoma. However, he died on that trip near a town called San Fernando. The Cherokee Nation of Mexico, located in Zaragoza, Coahuila, is recognized by that state government, but few in their nation in Oklahoma know much about them. Hoskin commented that “there is no official link to groups in Mexico that claim to be of Cherokee descent, but we are not against that. The issue has not been brought up.”
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