Obama weighs in against CBC legislation on Cherokees
By Kevin Bogardus
Posted: 05/09/08 01:19 PM [ET]

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has weighed in against legislation proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) that would punish the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

CBC lawmakers have proposed a number of provisions this year that would cut off federal funding to the tribe because of its decision in March 2007 to remove the Freedmen -- descendants of freed slaves once owned by tribe members - from Cherokee membership.

But Obama disagrees with those measures. In a statement to The Hill provided by his Senate office, the Illinois Democrat said that although he opposes unwarranted tribal disenrollment, Capitol Hill should not get involved.

"Discrimination anywhere is intolerable, but the Cherokee are dealing with this issue in both tribal and federal courts . . . I do not support efforts to undermine these legal processes and impose a congressional solution," said Obama. "Tribes have a right to be self-governing and we need to respect that, even if we disagree, which I do in this case. We must have restraint in asserting federal power in such circumstances."

I understand there are Indian readers of Wampum who disagree with us as to whether Congress should get involved in what would overtly appear to be merely a "tribal sovereignty" issue. However, I believe that the dangers of not upholding the 1866 treaty are much greater to tribes and tribal members than conceding that the Cherokee treatied away their sovereignty in regards to the Freedmen. And I find it very disconcerting that the most likely Democratic nominee would hand over his Senate responsibilities to another branch of government.

Appeals court hears Cherokee Freedmen dispute
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Filed Under: Law

A federal appeals court on Tuesday pressed the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma to explain why the tribe hasn't lost the right to determine its own membership.

In March 2007, tribal voters amended their constitution to deny citizenship to the Freedmen, who are the descendants of former African slaves. At least two judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the move appeared to violate an 1866 treaty.

"It's not totally up to the tribe to determine its membership, isn't that right?" observed Judge Merrick B. Garland, a Clinton nominee.

An attorney for the tribe had a hard time refuting that assertion. "That's correct," responded Garret G. Rasmussen, a Washington, D.C., attorney.

Mr. Loving pointed to the couple's marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, "That's no good here."

The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races.

Why is this important to remember? Because despite history remembering Mildred Jeter Loving as a black woman married to a white man, she herself had a different identity:

Mildred Delores 'family had lived in Caroline County, Va., for generations, as had the family of Richard Perry Loving. The area was known for friendly relations between races, even though marriages were forbidden. Many people were visibly of mixed race, with Ebony magazine reporting in 1967 that black "youngsters easily passed for white in neighboring towns."

Mildred's mother was part Rappahannock Indian, and her father was part Cherokee. She preferred to think of herself as Indian rather than black.

My grandfather told me as a child that in Maine, he was often, to his face, referred to as a "wood nigger". Newpapers and court records asserted that the Indians, my own ancestors, who were removed from the coastal islands in the early 1900s, in order to offer the land to wealthy white vacationers, were "mixed-race negros". In the very first session of the Maine Legislature in 1821, an anti-miscegenation law was passed aimed primarily at Indian-white marriages, annulling all current and prohibiting all future ones. It wiped out three generations of vital statistics records for non-reservation Indians, until it's revocation in the late 1880s.

Mildred Loving's brave battle was not aimed at providing justice for only one group, but for all Americans. But as an Indian, I'm especially proud, despite her personal identity having been appropriated for the larger civil rights battle in America.

Burma dropped off the BGP tables during the 3rd and 4th, so routing data was not exchanged during this period and it was not externally reachable.

We must decide whether customs officers at Los Angeles International Airport may examine the electronic contents of a passenger's laptop computer without reasonable suspicion.

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In 1990 Donald Edmond Pelotte, Abenaki and member of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, became the third Bishop of the Diocese of Gallup, and the first Indian to elevated to Bishop.

In April 2004 Francis Cardinal Arinze, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments said that public figures who are "unambiguously pro-abortion" must be refused Communion.

In June 2004 Bishop Pelotte of Gallup went to Rome and asked Cardinal Ratzinger, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, if Arinze's refutation of the position of the US Bishops' Task Force on Catholics in politics on the question of Communion and dissenting politicians, was the position of the the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the position of the Pope.

Donald Pelotte's doctoral thesis at Fordham University was entitled "John Courtney Murray, Theologian in Conflict: Roman Catholicism and the American Experience", and was a historical and theological analysis of the relationship of the Church and State in the United States and the American experience of religious freedom. The dissertation was published by Paulist Press in 1976 for the American Bicentennial and was granted the Catholic Book of the Month Award by the Catholic Book Club in October, 1976.

Cardinal Ratzinger gave no direct answer and only advised caution and stated that to refuse Communion was a very serious thing.

In 1984 Donald Pelotte gave the closing liturgy for the Tekakwitha Conference, followed by Powwow and Chicken Scratch Dancing, and preceded by a session on the four lessons from Vatican II. In 1986 he gave the closing liturgy. In 1989 he gave the opening prayers, followed by group prayers in Mohawk and Hupa. In 1990, now a Bishop, the first Amerind Bishop of the Roman Church in 497 years since Inter caetera, he gave the Eucharistic Liturgy.

Any American Bishop could have gone to Rome to task Cardinal Ratzinger with the obvious question, but it was an Abenaki who actually did, and that is why pro-choice Catholics, dissenters, may receive communion.

As I listened to Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. do four YouTube reels plus another reel of Q&A at the Press Club last Monday, I was aware of the similarities of the modern Puritan Church, the Church MB and I married in, the United Church of Christ, Rev. Wright Jr.'s church, and the Wabenaki Catholicism of MB's mom, Pat, and its shared tradition of Social Justice.

Both are as distant as the breath of the eastern sea from the cult of privilege, the Word of Faith cult that has hallowed out the pillars of the "values voters."

Here is something worth reading. Sara Robinson's What (Else) Is Going On. If you have an opinion on Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and you don't read it, you've lost a quarter hour of your life you can't get back, and quite possibly are stuck with an opinion that isn't really yours.

The price of rice has doubled in just the past five weeks. Rajat Nag directs the Asian Development Bank, and he estimates that a billion human beings in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America are getting hungrier.

A a work of political framing, the Campbell letter doesn't impress me. I can't see any of the staffers and members of the CBC reading "... individuals claiming to be descendants of slaves, known as Freedmen ..." and not having adverse responses to the entire text.

As a work of policy framing, the Campbell letter also fails to impress. If it is improper to make funding Chad's administration conditional, what is the Congressional Theory of the Federal-Tribal Relationship? That Congress can't decrease, maintain, or increase, appropriations except at the pleasure of each interested Tribal administration? That Congress can't manage its relationship with inferior domestic entities, like Oklahoma, through appropriations? If Oklahoma decides to abolish the speed limit on federal highways within Oklahoma, is the Congressional recourse limited to authorizing federal troops to enforce the speed limit on federal highways? Is the only constitutional recourse available to Congress for systematic voter suppression by an incumbent Tribal executive revisiting the Act which enabled elections?

Again, as a work of political framing, the Campbell letter is wicked beyond its sell-by date. Congress should defer to the Courts ... this Congress? The Pelosi/Reid Congress, should defer to a judiciary constrained by the precedents of the Rehnquist Court on a controversy that ultimately arises from voter disenfranchisement? That may have worked for the DeLay/Frist Congress, but that time has passed. This is Gore vs Bush for Indian Country, involving much more than just the CBC.

I keep wondering about how quickly assistant secretary Carl Artman signed off on Chad's "we're done with election oversight" letter.

I started work on a post about politics and religion a few days ago, but before I completed it news that took place on the 28th caught up with me. CNN is not included in the KLM in-flight video mix, nor is it beamed out with Orwellian intensity in Schipol.

In comments Tom at Automatic Preference was kind enough to lend us an "E", which I like to think of as a Battle E. I'm passing along a Battle E to Corpsman Wright.

You know that they had to be having a good day over at Le Monde putting together that headline and portrait above the e-fold.

Justice Official Who Oversees Cases On Corruption, Fraud Is Quitting
Washington Post
Thursday, May 1, 2008; Page A17

Alice S. Fisher, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, said yesterday that she will leave government service at the end of the month after nearly three years overseeing major public corruption and corporate fraud cases.

Her departure leaves the Justice Department even more short-staffed. Fisher is one of only four remaining division chiefs who have navigated the Senate confirmation process.

Among the ongoing investigations Fisher has been overseeing are cases involving members of Congress and executives at mortgage companies caught up in the credit debacle. Her deputy, Barry M. Sabin, a former federal prosecutor in Miami, is serving in an acting capacity, and her chief of staff left for private practice earlier this year.

Amazing that the WaPo article doesn't even mention Fisher's most famous prosecution, Jack Abramoff. Also, Fisher was Chertoff's right-hand (wo)man, and is still very close to him. I think I need to do some serious sleuthing around on this story. More to follow if I find anything.