Black Seminoles - Seminole Freedmen Exclusion Controversy

Seminole Freedmen Exclusion Controversy

In the 1990s and early 2000s (decade), Seminole Freedmen in Oklahoma were in the national news because of a legal dispute with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma over membership and rights within the tribe. Black Seminoles believed that due to their ancestral descent from the tribe, they should be included in services provided by a $56 million federal settlement, a judgment trust, awarded to the Seminole Nation because of land taken from them by the United States at their removal from Florida. As the judgment trust was based on the tribe as it existed in 1823, when Black Seminoles did not have citizenship rights, Seminole Freedmen were excluded from the benefits. Many Black Seminoles had held and farmed land in Florida, and suffered property losses equal to the Seminole as a result of US actions.

In another aspect of the dispute over citizenship, in 2000 the Seminole Nation voted to exclude as members any Seminole Freedmen who did not have an Indian ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls, the federal registry established in the early 20th century. At the time during rushed conditions, registrars had frequently listed Seminoles with visible African ancestry as Freedmen, regardless of their proportion of Indian ancestry or whether they were considered members of the tribe. This excluded some Black Seminole from being listed on the Indian-Seminole list, although they qualified by ancestry. In addition, because the Dawes Rolls included many Intermarried Whites who lived on Indian lands, but did not include blacks, the Seminole Freedmen believed the tribe's 21st-century decision was racially based and opposed it on those grounds. The Seminole Freedmen brought suit against the nation, but as of 2002, they did not succeed in the courts.

The Seminole Indians had voted to exclude any Seminole Freedmen without documented Indian descent from inclusion in the settlement and membership in the tribe. In June 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow the Seminole Freedmen to sue the federal government for inclusion in the settlement unless they could obtain the Seminole Nation's consent, as the latter has status as a sovereign nation.

Later that year, the Bureau of Indian Affairs held that the exclusion of Black Seminoles constituted a violation of the Seminole Nation's 1866 treaty with the United States. They noted that the treaty was made with a tribe that included black as well as white and brown members. The treaty had required the Seminole to give the Seminole Freedmen full citizenship and voting rights in the tribe. The BIA rescinded all federal funding for services and programs to Seminole, prompting the tribe's members to change their decision on membership. In 2004 the Nation voted to include the Freedmen in the tribe for voting in all elections and sharing in allotments and settlements. Journalists theorized the decision could affect the similar case in which Cherokee Freedmen had been excluded from the Cherokee unless they could document a direct Indian ancestor on the Dawes Rolls.