Black Natives
I just read the latest clusterfuck regarding blacks/NAs and my head is just spinning. I’m not sure if I have much helpful to say but I’ll say what it’s got me thinking. First, it appears that the black people are talking about the Cherokee Freedmen, for the most part, and that’s where the misunderstandings are coming from. There are over 500 tribes in North America, we don’t all have the same history. Many of the NAs on tumblr are not Cherokee. Sure, some know about that history anyway, and some know a little, and many don’t know anything. Why should we? It’s like expecting someone in Ireland to know detailed history of Poland just because they are both white countries. With the exception of 5-10 tribes in Oklahoma, the other 490 of us do not have Dawes rolls. Since our black relatives, if there were any in the distant past, were not excluded in that way, we are clueless about what you are talking about when you say, “What’s the matter with you? You don’t know your history and how you all excluded us!” We didn’t. My tribe is Canadian, and there are many Canadian tribes who were the last stop on the underground railroad. We took escaped slaves in and a lot of times they stayed and intermarried and yes, were members of the tribe, not excluded.
Second, that person who tried to explain about blood quantum, and people who are excluded, was only saying that there are so many tribes, each with different ways of determining members that it’s complicated, and not necessarily race based since sometimes full blooded members get excluded in some cases. He or she wasn’t saying, “Tough luck and screw you! You’re out and we don’t care!” But you do have to know who your people are, how can we help if all you tell us is that your father said that your great great great grandmother was “Indian”. You also don’t know where your ancestors are from in Africa, but do you scream in anger at people in Kenya, Algeria, Namibia, etc for excluding you? They would tell you the same, that they can’t help you with history, culture, or citizenship, or anything else unless you know who your people are.
Third, most of what I’ve read/heard says that NA respected women, many times the women were chiefs, clan mothers, medicine people, and other important positions in the tribe. I’ve also read/heard histories written by white people taken captive and they were always shocked that “the women weren’t interfered with”. So just because white culture says that rape of slave women is okay, doesn’t necessarily mean that NA slaveholders did the same, and it sounds like the Cherokee were racist too, which means they though black people were beneath them. If this is true, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to hang your hat on the idea that lots of freedmen have Cherokee blood. I have a feeling you’ll find that DNA tests will disprove that. You would have a better chance of recognition through the treaties and their promises to treat you as citizens and equals after the civil war.
One last thing, while doing genealogy research, I saw many black people say that after doing their own research, they don’t think that they have any NA blood after all. Some think that it was just easier to tell the family that the light skinned family is due to a consenting romance with an Indian, than because grandma was raped by the slave owner or overseer. Others said that what started out from looking at pictures and seeing a relative with “high cheekbones” or “long straight hair” that MAYBE could be due to Indian blood, became a definite Indian relative in the retelling. I’m not saying there aren’t any black people with native blood, but this is another reason why we can’t just go by family legend and need people with at least the name of their tribe or history of where their black ancestors met up with their native ancestors in order to have any possibility of matching them to a tribe.
PS. It’s become a joke amongst many natives to hear someone say that they are Blackfoot, since we know them as a nation in the northwest US/southwest Canada. Karnythia provided this link from the Blackfoot that explains that historically there were other nations who were identified in documents as Blackfoot.
