By BROOKLYN BROWN
Tsisqwohi (Birdtown)
During the Legislative Hearing on the Lumbee Fairness Act on the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 5, United States Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, made some remarks that are damaging to the Cherokee people – Cherokee Nation, United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians – and the rest of Indian Country.
Sen. Mullin opened questioning by discussing his experience as a white passing Native person and then demanded that Ugvwiyuhi (Principal Chief) Michell Hicks turn around and look at the Lumbee people in the crowd and “tell [him] they are not Native,” practicing gross phenotypical racism which he himself testified to be a victim of in his experiences as a Native congressman.
In the final minutes of the hearing, U.S. Senator Catherine Marie Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) rebutted Sen. Mullin’s earlier remark, “I’m not in a position to look in the audience, and like some of my colleagues, to say whose a member and who isn’t, just like I’m not in a position that I should think I should be looking out in my communities and saying just because you have brown skin, you’re undocumented.”
Sen. Cortez Masto masterfully demonstrated the dangers of Sen. Mullin’s line of questioning, which is racial profiling that is harmful to the sovereignty of tribal nations in determining citizenship, and the battle against racist stereotypes that have plagued Indian Country since colonization. That type of phenotyping, as the senator explained, is part of what has caused fear in minority communities in recent deportation issues.
Sen. Mullin also asked Ugyvwiyuhi Hicks to confirm that there was a “split” between the Cherokee Nation and the EBCI, referring to the Indian Removal. He said he was descended from those who walked, and the EBCI are descended from those who “stayed behind,” and in the same breath stated that he believes the EBCI should be considered descendants of the Cherokee Nation, rather than a separate sovereign nation. Sen. Mullin’s categorization of Cherokee “history,” which seemed much more like a targeted dig at the EBCI, was simply ahistorical and asinine.
The “split” Sen. Mullin refers to is one of the darkest eras of American history, in which the Cherokee people were forcibly separated. Families were torn apart. We did not “split,” like a boy band in the ‘90’s. We were ripped from each other’s arms. And we did not “stay behind,” like choosing to stay home rather than going on vacation. We hid, we starved, we fought, we were executed, we sold our homes for nothing, we lost everything, including our families to mass graves in the West, and we had to rebuild from the ground up. Given Sen. Mullin’s history as a Cherokee person, I am deeply saddened that he would characterize the darkest part of our history in this way.
The Cherokee Nation, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, we are all Aniyvwiyah. Anikituwah. And we each have significant histories that make us the strong sister nations we are today. Just like The Three Sisters that have sustained us since time immemorial. To discredit any part of those histories is a dagger to the heart of our people.
To Senator Mullin, I had a Cherokee Nation elder explain to me that uneg is not a color, but a character. I am here to tell to you that your biggest fears are true. You’re uneg. And not because of the color of your skin, but because of the content of your character.
