Halito Sisters and Brothers,
It angers me today the thought of once again having the FBI go through our government and weed out our own corrupt leadership. Why can’t we, as Chahta people, do this? Is it naïve of me to think that our people are smart enough, diligent enough and have enough integrity to rid ourselves of the greediness and arrogance on our own?
Let’s go into why we can’t. Our foundation of laws, the Choctaw Constitution has been weak for 181 years. A constitution that served are ancestors in 1831 is not going to serve us well now. A constitution whose amendments have been altered to fit the pockets of leadership willing to swell their own bank accounts at the expense of our children and elders is not going to serve us well now. The lack of compassion to our people who need it most disgusts me.
This new Miko, Gary Batton, is unwilling to give up any of his power. He is unwilling to change the constitution and is very laid back and easy going about it. He may be justifying it to himself as he knows what’s best. Is this the same justification used by Roberts and Pyle? Oh I’m sure it is. How else could any of them sleep at night. He must go. PERIOD. This is our opportunity to make change and he stands in the way. He represents a regime filled with sexual abuse, corruption, greediness, fraud and lies. The worst part is he sees no need for change so what does that say about him? It says everything we need to know.
So what should a Chahta Miko look like? He should be Chahta. He should put our people above the corporation. He should know this is a family business not a corporation. He should give a good deal of his power back to the people. He should be for term limits and balancing the constitution. He should give greater opportunities for representation outside of the Chahta boundaries. He should give a portion of his power back to an uncorrupt council. Where is this man???? OR Where is this woman??? To find this person does it mean we have to drop the residency requirement? Because I’m telling you right now I do not, nor will I ever, support dropping the blood quantum requirement for elected officials. In my mind and in my heart I believe all tribal entities should be operated by tribal members.
We need to find our next Miko my people. We need to find her/him and we need to exercise our right to vote because it’s been taken away from us way too long by the current administration. THE FBI DOES NOT NEED TO CLEAN UP THIS MESS! IT IS OUR MESS AND IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TAKE OUR POWER BACK AND CLEAN IT UP WITHIN OUR OWN FAMILY!
Yakoke,
CW
choctawvotingblock 
So will the Choctaw Voting Block become the old National Party? If that is so, how do you hope to overcome the fact that 80-92% of the votiers are less than 1/4th Choctaw? And the fact that 75% plus of the voters are absentee? Hard to keep keeping the blood quantum and residency requirements given that, don’t you think?
Also, both requirements are in place now, so how do you see this is helping us? Given the corruption and lack of accountability you are pointing out with them in place now?
Make no mistake, I do not and will not support further dilution of our tribal leadership. But I think arguments need to be framed recognizing the reality of the situation. Above all, Chahta need to be informed so that they can cut through the rhetoric and make their voices effectively heard.
Halito Bob,
I can’t speak to becoming the new old National Party but the Choctaw Voting Block Party is above all about integrity and balance in our leadership. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that our leadership have the Chahta people uppermost in their thoughts when carrying out Chahta business. The well being and empowerment of the Chahta is or should be the priority of the leadership of our government.
The blood quantum requirements for leadership positions within the Chahta Nation is not for a few men to decide or the CVB for that matter. It’s a question that the people should decide via referendum. Looking at the stats you have provided a vote of the people would most likely see the removal of the blood quantum requirement. I don’t agree with this but it’s not for me to decide either. We need to give the people more of a voice. As for the residency requirements we need more qualified CHAHTA people who can run for elected offices and we may need to go outside of the CNO boundaries to do so. So yes, I am for removing the residency requirements. Should an elected official understand the unique challenges our people face within our own borders, absolutely or he/she doesn’t need to run for office.
Now to answer the corruption question. It doesn’t matter if the residency and blood quantum requirements are in place or not because our foundation of laws, our constitution does not give the people the power to remove corrupted officials and where it does the loop holes are so big our current corrupted officials use millions of dollars to get around the possibility of impeachment. Until we can balance the constitution we have no options. Until we have a Miko willing to stand up and give away some of his power we will continue to be fighting this particular corruption after you and I are long gone. So I ask my people again – where are we going to find this leader?
I have hope Bob Burlison!
CW
We have some strong young full bloods who are keeping a low profile right now. I am encouraged by all they are doing behind the scenes, setting the stage, gathering support among the People. The cause lies solely with the Chahta. It is theirs to win or lose, but old mindsets of going with the flow will not change without intervention. Keep your hope. We will see a change. We must make sure it is a Chahta change, and not some popular philosophy of the day. We must concentrate on our OWN tribe, our OWN people and stick with our OWN ways without allowing popular thinking to infiltrate our midst.
Jann,
It’s those young Chahta who deserve the right to choose their leaders or to have the opportunity to become our next leaders. Right now they can do neither but it warms my heart to know they are listening, spreading the word and waiting to be the ones to make real lasting change. Tell them they are worthy and this is why we fight.
CW
Jann and CW,
You know I don’t disagree with anything you are saying. But you still do not answer my questions. You make a big point about how you want Chahta to decide the future of our tribe and that is the very thing I am saying needs to be done. Yet what is your definition of Chahta as opposed to Choctaw? Because what I am pointing out to you is that the VAST majority of Choctaw voters are Choctaw and not Chahta. And yet you both seem to ignore this assertion with the belief that using a political system that is both crooked and stacked against true Chahta by it’s very makeup is going to somehow help the Chahta, when history proves that not to be the case. So again, is this “deal with the Devil” for short term gain going to come back and hurt us later, just as other decisions on the destruction of the town chief system in the 1700’s and the lineal descent decisions of the 1970’s that robbed us Chahta of our land and our political power going to come back and bite us in the iskish again? That is my great concern. I think hasty decisions often end in disaster, and I am saying supporting this thing for short term goals in unwise. I understand the frustration, remember, I have been involved in this struggle longer than CW has been alive. And if listening to this Elder thing I hear touted over and over again has any value or is held in any importance, then this poor old Chahta reminds of you of what Jesus said to the Devil on that high place where he was tempted with control of the world if Jesus would simply fall down and worship him, and His reply. Or if you want, consider why the possum has such a big grin. Either way you will see my point I hope. I am no smarter than either of you, but I have walked down this road a little farther I think in my 57 years on this earth. So take it for what it is worth.
Old Bob Burlison (Ayyy – you know I’m not too far behind you in age),
Anyway, beyond being elders – I wish I had a cut and dry answer for you but I don’t. Your concerns resonate with me BIG TIME. I know a lot of Choctaw who are thin blood (no insult meant here by use of the term if anything it makes me a thick blood and that doesn’t sound any better) who want to do the right thing. But would they define the “right” thing as keeping the blood quantum limit for elected offices? I don’t know. I tell you what though, I never would have dreamed that Birdie Williams would have won the absentee vote in her run for District 9 against Ted Dosh. I never even thought that was a possibility. They are listening Bob and they are looking at that joke of a tribal newspaper and saying “hey wait a minute something’s not right here” because unless the CNO has suddenly become an earthly utopia they realize they are being fed a load of mushroom fertilizer.
Even a couple of years ago you told me a measure of a Chahta is not quantum but whether they identify themselves as Chahta and do those things that connects them with their ancestry whether that connection is slight or not. That’s not exactly what you said but that was the jist. I don’t know Bob maybe we should have more faith in our lighter blood family members. As you have pointed out we thick bloods are part of a small minority now in this day and age and that’s simply a fact. I, personally, don’t think we should ever do away with the blood quantum requirement because as you and I have discussed before once it’s gone we will most likely never get it back. We can only pray that ALL of our Chahta family realizes what it means to all of us.
CW
CW,
OK, let’s talk about race for a minute, and how I see it’s impact on Chahta.
Your memory serves you well. I have said that the true, “traditional” definition of Chahta has nothing to do with blood quantum. My favorite, though not always politically correct way to refer to it is “who you stand with when the nut-cutting comes.” In other words, you are a member of whatever group you associate with and are associated with, not during times of plenty, but during times of adversity. For those times are times that show who you love, not with lip service but with sacrifice. And that has little to do with race; it has to do with a way of life.
And that concept fit our Choctaw people in the times before contact with the nahullo. Race was not an issue- there was only one race. True, different tribes, but only one race. Intermarriage between tribes did not cause fear of cultural loss, because there was an INTACT, DEFINABLE CULTURE of which you became a part. Plus there were clan systems that helped bridge inter-tribal relationships. There was no genetically full blood Chahta, never was. We were the genetic products of years of intermarriage between people of multiple tribes. And as there was only one race, this was a non-issue.
The situation changed post-contact. Nahullo, just like us, saw the value in intermarriage with local tribes as a way to secure peaceful coexistence. But as their numbers grew, they also saw it as a way to secure more land, a concept foreign to us. Instead of them adopting the culture of those they met, they decided to destroy the cultures of the native people and insert their own. And this was not lost on early native leaders. Some, like Tecumseh, actively opposed them. Others, like our three war chiefs, used that to secure and improve their own power and influence, eventually causing us to lose our homeland. And given the different racial physical characteristics existing between the Nahullo and intermarried children, race soon became a marker of who was “traditional Chahta” and who were “progressive Choctaw.”
I do know that as the mixed blood part of the Nation became larger and stronger, they became more powerful and influential in the tribe. If you look at early Choctaw Nation law, it mirrors closely the laws of anglo, Christian state governments in the South. True, it had of necessity laws that limited nahullo settlement. These were brought about by a strange partnership between wealthy mixed blood “landowners” and Chahta, the mixed bloods wanting to protect their own economic dominance by limiting competition, and the Chahta wanting to limit the further encroachment of nahullo culture. But overall, laws were bent on a hybrid Choctaw/nahullo advantage.
Post Civil War Chahta more and more saw and resented the usurpation of traditional beliefs and customs, especially on the ideal of Allotment. This act struck at one of the very basic tenets of Chahta culture, tribalism. We were a people, and to exist as a people, we had to live together in land held common. This was in direct opposition of the nahullo beliefs as outlined by Senator Dawes:
“Senator Dawes at the Lake Mohonk Conference in 1883, stated:
The head chief told us that there was not a family in that whole nation that had not a home of its own. There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not owe a dollar. It built its own capitol, in which we had this examination, and built its schools and its hospitals. Yet the defect of the system was apparent. They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common. It is Henry George’s system, and under that there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress.”
In fact, the recognition of the danger of nahullo encroachment on our People and Nation became so apparent that in the late 1800’s the National Party, or “buzzard party” as it was called, was formed to oppose Allotment. It was made up of mostly full blood Chahta. Jacob B. Jackson from near Hochatown became it’s leader. The mixed bloods formed their own party, the “Progressives” and there with demonstrated their true allegiance with the nahullo and their beliefs and culture.
If you look at writings from the National Party and testimony given before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, you can see that those Chahta of the party characterized the difference between them and the mixed bloods as a matter of race. They felt that the majority of brown skinned, Choctaw speaking people had a social and belief system that differed from the lighter skinned mix blood, and they wished to remain separate from it, even petitioning to move to Mexico so their culture could remain intact. Now they knew folks who were traditional and lighter skinned; some of them were leaders in the Party. But their belief was that these were in the minority of lighter skinned Choctaw. And that belief was based on the observation of Chahta who still had an understanding of what was Chahta in a much more intact form than we do today.
Forward that to today. The lines are not so clear now. The culture is no longer intact, but piecemeal, thanks to the effects of allotment. Being brown skinned is no longer a sign of being culturally competent in itself. The percentages of brown skinned Chahta and brown skinned Choctaw have changed. And there is no real way to say with certainty that the ratio of light skinned Chahta verses light skinned Choctaw has changed. So it becomes a process of likelihood. We look at the ratios of say, 1880, between both groups and then look at what has happened since then to affect that ratio. We know that allotment happened. We know that Termination and Relocation happened. Both of these would skew the ratio of both groups away from Chahta and towards Choctaw. So, unless there is something you can think of that would move light skinned Choctaw to light skinned Chahta,, there is no likelihood that the ratio of light skinned Chahta has increased. That means that the likelihood of a person being Chahta is higher still among dark skinned individuals than among light skinned ones.
I come from a time that this was accepted. And I have read posts by light skinned Choctaw employees saying how they are more “Indian” than full bloods because they take the classes and try and learn the language, while the full bloods refuse to participate. I could not believe my ears! It shows to me the lack of basic understanding that these Choctaw have for what is truly Chahta. And it demonstrates why I hold that, if we as Choctaw truly want to help re-establish the Chahta culture, then the input has to come from those who are least removed from it. And based on likelihood, these will come from the darker skinned members of our People.
Yes, there are many dark skinned Choctaw. And there are some light skinned Chahta. I do not debate this. And if the dark skinned Chahta want to include them at the outset while re-forming our community and People, I cannot argue with that. But it is the dark skinned Chahta who must bring them in. The dark skinned Chahta must be the original core, in order to limit the effect of outside influences on defining once again what is Chahta.
Once we have a definition, which of course will encompass all aspects of Chahta life, and we have this dedicated core established and strong, then we can once again begin including those who agree to live the Chahta life and be a part of the Chahta people, even as we did pre-contact. What we cannot expect is that Choctaw who are more white than Chahta in beliefs and customs to be able to separate what is Chahta from what they know. I say this knowing that traditional Chahta recognize all mankind as brothers and sisters, and we are. But not all mankind is Chahta, called to the same duty by our Creator. We all have out duties, and we need to re-learn them, reassemble them, in the correct order. The question then is how best to do that, and I would think it reasonable to start with those with the clearest understanding.
Bob,
Speaking of race, I am a light skinned Chahta with a CDIB that shows a blood quantum of half. Surely I fit in there somewhere? I can’t help but think if the mixed bloods back in the 1800’s had listened and compromised with the “Traditionalists” our tribe might still be in Mississippi and not fractured with half of our family in Mississippi and the other half in Oklahoma.
At this point, it comes down to integrity. Randy Jacobs, a long time warrior in the fight for self governance, told me a story about having lunch with FBI agents and how one of them had said something to the effect of “You think this system is corrupt, just wait until your own people are the crooks” and that man was right.
You are right in that our own people need to lead us out of this corrupt mess but it will take all of us, light skinned and dark. It will take an overwhelming majority of registered voters to oust this government but I don’t think doing away with the blood quantum limit on leadership is the answer. I think the problem transcends the blood quantum/light skinned/dark skinned debate what we need more than anything is one elected Chief who is willing to distribute power and make those changes permanent in the Choctaw Constitution.
Why one Chief? Because the previous Chief’s have made their own rules and made those rules the restrictions we now must follow as a tribe. They wrote the laws in the constitution for themselves for their own greedy selfish reasons and it will take a selfless leader to go in and right the wrongs.
CW
We are talking about two things, reform in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma tribal government, and re-establishment of a Chahta community and people. I too used to think the first would lead to the second, but I am no longer so sure. Certainly it could, but the likelihood is not so clear.
But yes, you are right. All you need to do is to unite the majority of good Choctaw and get them to vote in an election in numbers to overcome any vote-fixing by the tribal government. Sounds so simple. I wonder why no one has done it before? Or have they? And what things stopped them from doing it?
Those are the questions I wait to hear solutions to. Because, in my experience and the experience of other Chahta who have sought to do this multiple times in the past, simply pointing out the problem does little to change it. I would like to hear solutions that have not been tried before. I would like to see where these solutions have worked in other places with similar circumstances. I do not like to see things that have failed in the past done over and over, wasting the efforts of good Chahta such as yourself. Our People are too dear, as I know you agree. With that I will say no more other than I pray for your efforts and guidance from our Creator in what you do.
Bob Burlison, I most certainly see your point and agree with everything you say, except for one…… you are definitely smarter than I am. I lean toward blood quantum in my definition of who is Chahta. There are those with less blood quantum who are good Choctaws, but if push comes to shove, I would be willing for the thin bloods to be ousted…..even at the expense of my own grandchildren. Yet, in my grandparents’ time, being Chahta was by generational association with the tribe. I do not not know if there were lighter blood Choctaws a hundred years ago or not, probably so, but growing up we all knew who was Chahta and who wasn’t by association within the tribe. You have a good grasp of our historical, political issues and like you, I know that a “deal with the devil for short term gain” will continue to hurt the cause. We did not get to this place overnight, and there are no quick fixes. That’s about it for me in a nutshell. Blessings.
Chief’s attorney Burredge wired in with US Congress, lets contruction guy take the fall, but protects council, asst chief, chief, city mayor with help from congressional cronies who told IRS and FBI to cool it
Oh yeah, chief appoints Burredge as Tribal Court Judge, how can you possibly sue chief, you can’t!!
Tribe can’t be sued, sovereignty won’t allow it
No rules, no accountability
Try to campaign against chief, private jets, free fuel and pilot, voter list, 80% of Choctaw voters outside Oklahoma
JM Keye,
I hear you loud and clear and I feel the same way. Our tribe’s sovereign status is a wonderful thing when used properly it protects our people much like a U.S. Consulate in a foreign country. When used for personal gain it almost hinders our ability to rid ourselves of corruption through the democratic process.
I say this because the way our tribal system stands at this moment we must have the cooperation of the Chief to make immediate change. We have seen more progressive change from this Chief in a few months than we have have seen in almost four decades from Roberts and Pyle.
Does that mean there aren’t unanswered questions? Nope. Does that mean this Chief because of positive progress shouldn’t be held accountable by his people? Nope. It means we must be “allowed” by this Chief to invoke our rights as a democratic tribal nation. It takes a brave leader indeed to give the people back the power to hold him accountable – really think about what that means for him. Recovering our rights as voters is our first step in a process that is going to take years to balance but we are making progress. I look forward to hearing from you again.
SC