LOCAL
Joe Tomlinson, The Oklahoma Eagle
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s Council House located in Okmulgee is a relic of pre-removal Muscogee life. This is where the present day government was formally established. Photo: Tim Landes/The Oklahoma Eagle
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation Citizenship Board filed a petition Monday asking the tribal nation’s highest court to rehear a July case that ordered the tribe to include freedmen as citizens based on the Treaty of 1866.
Attorneys representing the MCN Citizenship Board said a rehearing must be granted so the nation’s Supreme Court can “restore the entire Constitution created by the people in 1979.”
“The Nation’s Constitution springs from its people – not from the Court,” the petition states. “The Constitution binds the Nation together. Through it, and it alone, the People breathe life into the Nation’s government. The Constitution defines its citizens. The Constitution describes the powers of the People and the limits of government. The People did not give their courts the power to rewrite the Constitution.”
The MCN’s constitution restricted tribal citizenship to descendants of people listed as “Indian by blood” on the Dawes Rolls, the government count of Muscogree (Creek) citizens completed in 1906. The constitutional language effectively disenrolled freedmen, the descendants of enslaved people brought to Oklahoma in the 19th century by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation during the forced removal period.
The nation’s highest court ruled July 23 that freedmen are to be included as tribal citizens and that any reference to “by blood” citizenship in the tribe’s constitution is unlawful and void.
That ruling was based on a September 2023 order by the tribe’s district court, which stated plaintiffs Jeffrey Kennedy and Rhonda Grayson should’ve been granted citizenship when they applied in 2019.
MCN Principal Chief David Hill declined to comment on the latest petition.
The history of freedmen, Treaty of 1866
Following the Civil War, the U.S. signed treaties with what were then known as the Five Civilized Tribes, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations. The treaties abolished slavery within those nations, required formerly enslaved people to be recognized as tribal citizens and granted reservation land to each nation.
However, attorneys for the five-member MCN Citizenship Board argue that the nation had the right to determine its own citizenship requirements prior to enactment of the Treaty of 1866.
“The plaintiffs’ claim perpetual citizenship cancelling [sic] the Nation’s constitutional citizenship requirement,” the petition states. “That claim can succeed only if the Nation in the 1866 Treaty expressly surrendered their existing right in the future to impose citizenship requirements that the plaintiffs do not meet.”
Additionally, attorneys for the MCN Citizenship Board argue that the 2020 landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma “does not require the invalidation of the Constitution’s citizenship requirement.”
