Just out of curiosity I thought I’d look up what I could learn about Cherokee law. It turns out that not only is the Cherokee Constitution in a serious crisis, but it’s been that way for years now. In the wake of a catastrophic breakdown in Cherokee government—which involved officers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs supporting a would-be dictator in what amounted to a coup d’etat—a Constitutional Convention was held in 1999, which scrupulously adopted a new Constitution for the nation (replacing the Constitution of 1975). The new Constitution contains several reforms, but under the provisions of the 1976 Constitution, it must be approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But when the BIA refused to approve it without various revisions, the tribe decided instead to remove the federal-approval requirement from the 1976 Constitution. See D. Jay Hannah, The 1999 Constitution Convention of The Cherokee Nation, 35 Ariz. St. L.J. 1, 15 (2003). Of course, this change also required BIA approval.* In the meantime, the Cherokees ratified their new Constitution.
Since that time, they have waited for BIA approval of their decision to abolish the federal approval requirement. And waited. It’s now been two years since the Constitution was approved by the people whom it is to govern, but federal bureaucrats, for no discernible reason, continue to sit on their hands.
* Hannah claims that the Bush Administration approved the removal of the federal approval requirement in April of 2002. Id. at 15. Either Hannah is in error, or I misunderstand. If there are any readers out there who know more details, I’d be very interested.
Update: A Mr. Richard Feder, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, writes,
You may have already seen this link from the Cherokee Nation website, April 2002, with the relevant quote: In a signed letter, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb wrote: “We have no objection to the referendum as proposed and I am prepared to approve the amendment deleting the requirement for Federal approval of future amendments.”
Of course, McCaleb resigned a few months after writing the letter. His replacement, David Anderson, also resigned due to ethical conflicts.
So I would imagine that the lack of action is partly due to the problems within the BIA. I found a number for “general information” that might be useful if you're looking to fact-check, since the BIA’s website is temporarily shut down due to ongoing litigation....
Comments policy