Cherokee Self-Determination and Cherokee Racism

Members of the Cherokee Nation recently (Saturday, March 3, 2007) voted to change the Cherokee Nation’s constitution to revoke membership from approximately 2800 descendants of slaves once owned by Cherokees. As Murray Evans of the Associated Press writes in an article in the online Indian Country Today for March 12, 2007, the Cherokee Supreme Court had affirmed in a 2006 ruling that an 1866 treaty had granted then recently freed slaves formerly owned by Cherokees and their descendants tribal citizenship. The recent election was a ballot initiative to change the Cherokee constitution to strip descendants of these “freedmen” of this citizenship and restrict membership in the tribe to individuals with traceable descent to the tribe “by blood.”

Cherokee Principal Chief Chad Smith presents the vote as purely an example of tribal self-determination. He is quoted by Evans, “The Cherokee people exercised the most basic democratic right, the right to vote. Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to make that determination.” (Frankly their voice is not clear. Smith presents the turnout of over 8700 voters, more than in most Cherokee elections, as a high turnout related to the importance of identity. He’s likely right that the importance of this particular issue in questions of core identity drove a higher voter turnout than normal; at the same time, the turnout can be viewed quite differently in terms of the clarity of the results. As Ben Fenwick of Reuters news service reported on March 6, 2007, “The tribe has about 250,000 people, but only 8,500 cast ballots in Saturday’s vote.”) Smith is also right that the vote is about self determination, but it is certainly not just about self determination. Voters could have equally determined to not kick out the descendants of Cherokee slaves.

There are at least two issues at play in voters’ decisions – one is the importance of being able to assert self determination and autonomy, but second is economics. Self determination and autonomy are touchy issues for many Native Americans, and for good reason. For the past couple centuries, the ability of most Native Americans to autonomously determine their own destinies has been highly circumscribed when not eliminated all together. Today, when Native American groups are occasionally able to take proactive steps to place their communities on stronger economic or political footing, there is usually resistance – witness the controversy that tends to arise any time a particular group attempts to open a tribal casino, or the current controversy surrounding the opening of the Grand Canyon Skywalk by the Hualapai (see my post below from March 8). Quite often, real autonomy and self determination for Native American communities is restricted to actions of a partly symbolic gesture that have little or no effect on North American society generally (for example, the Umatilla tribe’s persistence in trying to retain the remains of “Kennewick Man” despite any even remote empirical connection to their tribe [though there is logic to their claim – since they claim that they have always lived where they live now, and that before Euro-Americans arrived only they had lived there, Kennewick Man can’t be anything other than Umatilla], or the Makah tribe’s attempts to engage in whaling as an expression of cultural heritage). Because self determination if usually so circumscribed, and because even in the case of symbolic gestures they are often resisted by the non-Native public, the ability to assert self determination in these limited circumstances becomes more important. Though this can’t be proven, I suspect that the vociferousness of the Umatilla in their claims for Kennewick Man or the Cherokee in revising their tribal membership would be altered or moderated if they had greater overall political and economic autonomy and self determination.

Money is also important here. Casinos are one way in which some Native American groups have been able to improve the economic position of their communities in recent years and assert greater autonomy. Problems can accompany casinos as well, though, and one common problem that arises is infighting over who gets to share in the spoils of gambling profits. Although this issue is strangely absent from much reporting I’ve seen on the Cherokee vote, Fenwick writes, “Exclusion from the tribe means the black Cherokees cannot vote in tribal elections or receive entitlements such as health benefits or a share of casino revenues on tribal lands.” There’s the rub. One thing people were voting to do when they voted to exclude Black Cherokees was voting to increase their own shares of casino revenues. This doesn’t seem to have been the only, or even necessarily the main issue, or it would seem that more news reports should have picked up on this dynamic, but at the same time, I find it hard to imagine the sustained effort of the ballot initiative (and the 77 percent vote in favor of excluding Black Cherokees) without this economic component.

It’s clear that Cherokees should have the same basic human right to self determination and autonomy as anyone else. It’s not clear that voting to exclude individuals who help to constitute the polity is constitutionally legitimate. The vote is highly disappointing in that it smacks of racism and it denies the very self determination to Black Cherokees that Principal Chief Smith so strongly asserts for Cherokees in general.

The Grand Canyon Skywalk and Hualapai Self Determination

The Hualapai are a small Native American tribal group (less than 2000 people) living along a stretch of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon that until recently was largely inaccessible to Canyon tourists. The Hualapai reservation is also beset by poverty (with around 50% unemployment currently), as well as associated problems with alcoholism. As a recent article in the Los Angeles Times by Julie Cart makes clear, the Hualapi aim to remedy their situation, and open this portion of the Canyon to tourists, in dramatic fashion via the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

The Skywalk, slated to open at the end of March, is a potentially vertigo inducing horseshoe shaped walkway with floor and side walls made of 4 inch think glass that will jut out 70 feet over the canyon’s rim, allowing a bird’s eye view of an over 3,000 feet vertical drop below the pathway.

The Skywalk has also generated controversy. Cart quotes Robert Arnberger, former superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, “It’s the equivalent of an upscale carnival ride.” And “Why would they desecrate this place with this?” Kieran Suckling of the Arizona based Center for Biological Diversity is quoted, “What the Grand Canyon needs most is a place for quiet contemplation and recreation. The Skywalk is part of a process that is turning the canyon into a tacky commercial playground.”

It’s hard to know exactly what the Skywalk will look like until it is actually in place, but from all the artist’s renditions and plans, it’s actually an elegant looking structure, and one likely to offer visitors a unique vantage on the Canyon, and perhaps a new appreciation as well. The Grand Canyon is such a special place that it’s right to worry about its being turned into a tacky tourist trap or being desecrated, but it’s hard to see how the Skywalk as it is designed would constitute such desecration. At the very least, and as the tribe points out, their Skywalk (at least as currently envisioned) represents a less obtrusive presence at the Canyon’s rim than the much larger scale economic development at the main National Park site, with its 4.5 million visitors per year.

More importantly, if anyone has a right to determine and pursue their own economic interests at the Grand Canyon, it is the Hualapai, the people whose ancestors have lived there for centuries. Arnberger, Suckling, and others don’t have to like this, but at least at the moment, it does seem that in this instance they will have to deal with it. Arnberger at least seems to recognize this: He’s also quoted as saying, “They [the Hualapai] say the Grand Canyon is theirs to do with however they please. Under law, it’s hard to argue that proposition. But obviously the lure of dollars for the tribal treasury is greater than the obligation to manage the Grand Canyon for its cultural and historic values.”

It’s hard to see, though, how the Skywalk, if it represents a “desecration” (which at this point I don’t see), is more a desecration of the Canyon than any of the other development that doesn’t directly benefit a Native American community. The fact that a Native American community would recognize a need for their own economic development (again – 50% unemployment and problems with alcoholism) and do something about it for themselves is here turned against them. The attempt to determine their own destiny in an entrepreneurial fashion (which would seem like living the American Dream in most other contexts) is here presented as failing to manage cultural and historic values and greedy money grubbing.

The land they’re developing is theirs to do with as they please. The Hualapai have chosen an elegant design for this project which will enhance the experience of the canyon for many visitors. (This doesn’t preclude adding on all sorts of tacky tourist trap stuff, and if they do, I won’t like it, but I’ll also just have to deal with it.) Finally, the Hualapai have recognized their own economic needs, and with the Grand Canyon Skywalk, they’re taking positive steps to try to meet those needs for themselves – something that normally is applauded in America. In short, this a controversy where there shouldn’t be one.