Cherokee Nation: appeals court allows Freedmen's suit to continue, but only against officials
The National Law Journal reports: The descendants of "Freedmen," former African slaves owned by the Cherokee Nation, may go forward with a lawsuit against the tribe's officers in which they claim they were barred from voting in two tribal elections because they lacked an ancestral link to the "Blood Roll" of native Cherokees, a federal appellate court has ruled.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held on July 29 that the tribe itself was protected from suit by sovereign immunity, but that immunity did not extend to tribal officers. Vann v. Kempthorne, No. 07-5024.
The sovereign immunity question drew the panel back into the tribe's history, a history marked by a "stain" shared by the United States, it said: ownership of African slaves. In an 1866 treaty with the United States, the Cherokee Nation renounced slavery and involuntary servitude, and promised to extend "all the rights of native Cherokees" to the former Cherokee slaves, who came to be known as "Freedmen."
In 1896, Congress directed the Dawes Commission to create membership rolls for the so-called Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma, which included the Cherokee Nation. The rolls for the Cherokees, completed in 1907, resulted in two lists: a "Blood Roll" for native Cherokees, and a "Freedmen Roll" for former slaves and their descendants. The panel explained that the lists serve an important function because the tribal constitution of 1976 provides that citizenship in the Cherokee Nation must be proven by reference to the Dawes Commission Rolls. -- Law.com - Descendants of Former African Slaves Owned by Cherokee Nation May Proceed With Suit