By ROBERT JUMPER
One Feather Editor
CHEROKEE, N.C. – The March meeting of the committee to prepare a constitution draft for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians began without a quorum on Thursday, March 26 at 5:30 p.m. in the Cherokee Council House.
Lloyd Arneach Jr. gave the roll call. Those present at roll call were Aniwodi (Painttown) Rep. Shannon Swimmer, Nancy Pheasant, Lloyd Arneach, EBCI Beloved Woman Carmaleta Monteith, and Jack Cooper. Those absent were Elawodi (Yellowhill) Rep. Shennelle Feather, Pam Straughan, Randall Crowe, Cherokee Chief Justice Brad Letts, Cherokee Court Judge Barbara Parker, Dakota Bone, and Avery Maples. Alternates Peggy Hill and Colby Taylor were also absent. Chairwoman Nancy Pheasant directed that Janet Arch be added to the alternates. Janet Arch was also not in attendance.
Because a quorum was not reached at the start of the meeting, voting could not take place, including the approval of the previous month’s minutes.
Chairwoman Pheasant also said that the first 30 minutes of each meeting are reserved for public comment, but no one was in attendance beyond the members of the committee. She said that since there was no quorum, they would discuss issues without voting.
Pheasant said that she had developed a “draft timeline” that had been sent out to selected members of the committee. Action was for the draft to be distributed to more members of the committee. Pheasant moved on to new business, which she said included “draft constitution work, establishing a working approach, section-by-section reviews with AG (Attorney General) redlines, consensus or motion-based revisions. Items for consideration for the 2023 draft-tribal council age restrictions, judicial authority and enforcement, sovereign immunity, weighted voting, census, supremacy clause, emergency powers, continuity of government, grand council, and recall.”
Beloved Woman Monteith discussed the Attorney General’s red-lined version. She disagreed with his recommendation to strike the acknowledgement and history of the foundational documents used to build the 2023 draft.
Randall Crowe came in late to the meeting via Zoom. Pheasant halted the discussion and moved back to the approval of the minutes because the presence of Crowe created a quorum. At that point, they were able to approve their minutes for March 12 and February 19. Arneach read the minutes from the February 19 meeting.
Then Pheasant went back to the question brought up by Monteith. This led to a discussion of how the Attorney General’s red lines came to be and the reasons behind them. Crowe suggested that the committee use the draft and go through to address specific issues instead of “reinventing the wheel”.
Arneach stated, “Well, as far as the AG’s red line version, a lot of it has no rhyme or reason, and I’m not going to try to interpret why the AG’s office made the corrections, adjustments, whatever you want to call it, to that document because a lot of it just doesn’t make any sense.”
So, he suggested just taking the draft and continuing to work on it based on the input from “the entities we have represented”.
Crowe agreed and stated he feels that “the AG serves the government, not the people, which is not always the same thing.”
After several minutes of discussion, the committee tabled for further discussion.
Arneach and Pheasant discussed the remaining items and the need to assign topics for more in-depth research and have members prepared to recommend based on research. Several references were made to the draft timeline.
There was a discussion on where to start reviewing different articles, whether they would take them out of order to focus on the most challenging first. Rep. Swimmer expressed concern that government officials are involved in a constitution that is supposed to be driven by the people. The committee voted to begin reviewing Articles 4 through 6, articles that have to do with branches of government and their powers.
There was more committee discussion concerning scheduling conflicts for individual committee members.
The committee stated that they will take up Article 4 at their next meeting. Pheasant says that April 9 at 5:30 pm in the Council chambers will be the next meeting of the Constitution Committee.
The Constitutional Committee meetings are open to community members and are livestreamed on the EBCI Communications Department Facebook page for a limited time.
