BLACK/ INDIAN RELATIONS

National Congress of American Indians


57th Annual Session

MANY NATIONS

ONE FAMILY

St. Paul, Minnesota

November 12 - 17, 2000



TRANSCRIPTION

AFTERNOON CONCURRENT BREAKOUT SESSION NOV 14

EXPLORING THE LEGACY AND FUTURE OF BLACK/INDIAN RELATIONS

Transcription rendered by Dr. Willard R. Johnson

Published 2001 by The Kansas Institute of African American and Native American Family History
with support from The Freedom Forum

For information about the KIAANAFH see end of this document

Principal Speakers

Ms. Wilma Mankiller, MODERATOR
former Principal Chief,
The Cherokee Nation
Dr. Willard R. Johnson
Professor emeritus of Political Science,
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Daniel F. Littlefield Jr.

Professor of History and Director of the American Native Press Archives,
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Dr. Patrick Minges
Director of Publications,
Human Rights Watch Inc.

Ms. Deborah Tucker
Director of Community Outreach and Cultural Activities,
Adamany Undergraduate Library
Wayne State University

Dr. David Wilkins
Associate Professor of Indian Studies,
University of Minnesota

* * * * *

Chief Wilma Mankiller:

I became interested in the relationships and the connections between Native American and African American people many years ago. I had been reading a book called Things Fall Apart by Achebe. Before that, I was like everybody else who learned from the national news about the struggle against Apartheid in Africa. I knew there were a lot of political organizations, but I really didn't put it together until I read Achebe’s story about an individual family, an individual community, and the destruction of the people. The situation was strikingly similar to what has happened to Native People in this country. It is almost as if the colonizers had "a little black book" that they used to colonize the people, as they went around the world. They took away the leaders, destroyed their medicines, destroyed their governmental system, sent the kids away to distant schools and, in the case of Africa, to French and other European schools, and in our case, to government boarding schools, the native boarding school. That piqued my interest and I have been interested in these issues since that time.

I later found that there were many connections in this country between African Americans and Native Americans, some positive and, some not so positive. In some of the large southeastern tribes, the mixed-blood population were slave holders, and there was and continues to be what I would describe as almost a class system, in the southeastern tribes. And by and large the full blood people were absolutely opposed to holding of human beings in bondage. And so we have that history. On the other hand, we have a history of a great deal of intermarriage; we have a history of our people joining abolitionists in their struggle. It is a complicated history. It is important for us to talk about that a little bit today and think about it.

Why is that important? Why is it important to Indian country? One of the reasons it is important is that, as we in tribal governments continue to be under siege, it is critical to build coalitions with African Americans to advance our issues and theirs. Sometimes our issues are not the same as theirs. In the seventies and the late sixties I had a great deal of trouble explaining to my friends who were working in the Civil Rights Movement that while the civil rights movement tried to help people gain entry into the system, we were fighting for the right to have our own system. And so sometimes we need to understand our different issues here, and talk to one another about those issues so that we can support their civil right issues and they can support our issues to retain our separate tribal government and our traditional way of life. Coalitions are important.

The other reason it is important is because there are a couple of issues in Indian Country now, where things that happened to African American people happened to all of us. For example, in the case of the Pequots, with the Benedict book, and the fact that the Pequot Nation [is being challenged in] the federal recognition process–- is about racism, not just about questioning their ancestry. Society tends to accept tribal people when mixed with white people, without any problem whatsoever. If you meet someone who says I am half white and half Yakama, or half white and half Oneida, or whatever, people tend to accept those people. But, if you find someone who says I am half black and half Oneida, Yakama, or Cherokee, people have more difficulty with that. That is the reality of the time that we live in. And, I believe, watching this issue from afar, that is what is driving the issue of the Pequots -- part of it is greed, just plain old greed, in envy of their financial success -- and part of it is racism.

There is another issue that I hope Daniel Littlefield will touch on, which is the current issue of freed slaves who generally were a class of citizens, described as Freedmen; and I mean citizens, they were full citizens in the Seminole Nation, until recently. There were two bands that participated fully in the Seminole Nation until very recently, and then in July in the year 2000, there was a tribal vote and they were excluded from further participation in the Seminole Nation. Which raises a couple of questions -- it raises two issues that I think are important for people to talk about, (one) the tribal right, which tribes have fought for since the beginning of contact, to determine who is their membership, (two) the civil and human rights of the Freedmen, and to bring together these very different issues -- they are sort of at a juncture, and I think that we are going to see these issues arise more often.

And finally, I am not a scholar of this issue, I think this is an issue we need to talk about, and that is why I got scholars to talk about this issue -- because I react emotionally, rather than intellectually. One of the things that struck me in going to the South--the last NCAI Congress was in Myrtle Beach --was that I saw people who appeared to be African-American, who I could absolutely look at and say "that person is Creek, or that person is Cherokee. "And, I saw three or four people like that, and I thought that the whole area of family connections between African Americans and Native Americans was very interesting and we should have a dialogue about it.

Anyway, that is where we are, and that is what got us here. I have sort of abused the prerogative of the moderator, I am sounding too much like a retired MIT professor (laughter) so I am going to start with Willard Johnson.

Willard had a very distinguished career at MIT. But, I have known Willard in another capacity. His wife, Vivian, and I were both on the Board, in the sixties and seventies, of an organization called Rainbow Television, and, just to show you what we thought when we were young, we thought that we were going to change the perception of minorities in this country -- through television! And so, we had our own television group and went to Hollywood, and you can tell how well we did, because you never heard of it! (laughter)

Willard Johnson was very involved in the anti-apartheid movement. He was one of the authors of some books, published by the Ford Foundation that laid the basis and determined what ultimately became the reconciliation agreement that brought South Africa to democracy. He also started the Kansas Institute of African-American and Native-American Family History (the KIAANAFH. ) And so, with that I will let him begin.

Dr. Willard R. Johnson:

Thank you Chief Mankiller. I am very honored by your introduction. I should make sure you introduce me to whatever program in which I may participate. Thank you so very much.

The first question that we have to think about, that you see on the little program hand-out, was: "what is this relationship historically? "And, because I am not a scholar on this, I will speak more from my experience as an African-American and through the Kansas Institute's work with families, to say that I will make three points -- The first point I would like to talk about is kinship -- in the sense of the relationship being one of kinfolk.

The second point, which I will come back to, has to do with a relationship of slavery. Those two interact, but with Native-Americans they interacted somewhat differently than they did with white Americans. Somewhat! And, the third point has to do with "comrades in arms. " There are a number of ways in which Blacks and Indians had collaborated and in some cases, have been in conflict with each other. So-- kinship, slavery, and comrades in arms.

On the kinship side, it's a question of a memory that is very, very widespread, and sometimes clear, among African-American families. I would say that, by far, the majority of African American families I know, or that I have come into contact with and have worked with, claim to have an Indian connection. A majority, by far. Some scholars have argued that maybe up to two-thirds, or even three-quarters of black Americans have some Native blood tie. I wouldn't go that far. But, I say that the memory is clear in some cases, fuzzy in others. You have some very noted cases--Tiger Woods, who has most recently brought the issue of a complex background for African-Americans into sharper focus; Della Reese, Jesse Jackson, Alice Walker (a close personal friend of Chief Mankiller and a person with Cherokee ties), are others. Those are very noted cases, and no doubt those are documented cases.

We often came across families that could remember the tie, and insist on it, but it was a fuzzy memory when it came to documentation. And often, we would get the story from families in the South and Mid-West-- "Oh yes, we have an Indian tie--it was Blackfoot" Well, it was not Blackfoot, you know; that tribe was far away in Montana and so forth, far from where blacks were.

So, we just took that to mean that there was some kind of Indian connection, and they didn't really know what it was!

That is the clearer side of the memory, actually. The foggy side, and often even close to amnesia side of it, was that this connection also involved slavery. In my own family, we had been told stories about my great great grandfather, as a Cherokee. And only much later did I find that he had Cherokee rights of citizenship as a Freedman. It doesn't mean that he could not have had blood ties! But, I doubt it because he never claimed to. And, it was much easier to get whatever rights there were through blood ties, than simply from Freedman ties.

But, we also have a very famous case of Dr. John Hope Franklin, one of our most eminent American historians, whose great great grandfather was in fact married to a Choctaw. His family had every right to be on the rolls of the Choctaw by blood ties. But, they are not there. You go and look at the record--they are only on the Freedman roll. He tells the story of how that came to be.

But, very few African-Americans remember that the connections came through slavery with the Indians, that they were slaves of Indians. And, this is an important dimension of the relationship.

The final aspect of what was the relationship-- and I will come back to the other questions about "what are the interests involved and what is at stake?" and the question "where is all of this headed?"-- was the dimension of "comrade in arms. " We have two important experiences about this in the work of my Institute (well, one of them is more of a personal concern. ) The first comes directly from the Institute's program--what I call "The Great Escape" of Creeks (mostly, but also lots of Shawnee, Seminoles and some Cherokee were involved) in fleeing from Confederacy controlled Indian Territory into Kansas. They were referred to in the history texts as "the Loyal Indians. " Hundreds and hundreds of Blacks joined them and, I am led to believe that was because word got out that, in fact, a promise had been made that if they stuck together and made it to Kansas, that would end slavery among them. And, as far as I can see, through the record, and we can debate it, that was a promise made and a promise kept. And, it wasn't simply the imposition in the treaty negotiations in 1866 that put citizenship rights into the books. There was also the earlier episode with the Seminoles, the rise of the Seminole nation in Florida as a comrade in arms collaboration between people who had escaped from the U. S. --Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas--into what was not the U. S. namely Florida. They were mostly Creeks, but included lots and lots of Africans. And, the rise of that tribe-- you can't say that there was NO Seminole identity at all, separate and apart from the Blacks, but--their rise and survival, and their later history, was intimately connected. It is a story of an intimate "comrade in arms" relationship between those two peoples! So, we were very touched, very deeply troubled, deeply, by this most recent move among the Seminoles of Oklahoma to expel the two Freedman bands.

So, it is a memory of kinship, fuzzy and clear, and it’s a fact of slavery, but it's also a fact of (having been) comrades in arms, that is a very important part of the story of the survival, in some cases, of Indian culture, as well as the origin of the only reparations, actually, Blacks have gotten in terms of land. (The "forty acres and a mule..." never came from the Federal Government. The only forty acres blacks ever got came from the Indians. )

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