CHEROKEE WENT TO
MEXICO
Many Cherokee went to Mexico to escape
enrollment and persecution. Just as Andrew Jackson wanted them to do.
Sequoya, a well known Cherokee teacher, made trips there to visit and share
his knowledge. To the idiot who can't understand why citizenship must be
granted the Hispanic / Mexican / Cherokee here is the explanation. Any
military man today who has a child in another country now has a child with
the right to lay claim to citizen ship in the country of his father because
his father is a citizen. Hispanics who can trace their heritage verbally to
the Cherokee Nation have automatic US citizenship. The only reason they do
not is because of the inhuman law of enrollment that forbids them their
ancestral rights of belonging to the people of their ancestors. This not
only applies to Hispanics who can trace their heritage back to the Cherokee,
but ancestry among the Apache, Yaqi, Navaho, Hopi, Zuni, Seminole and all
the Southwestern and Southern tribes.
THE NATION GROWS AND GROWS
Is the new Cherokee Nation the fore runner of
US citizenship rights obviously overdue to Hispanics? Very likely. Will
African Americans who have the ancestral blood of the Cherokee finally start
demanding the ancestral rights due them to help with their education now
that Affirmative Action has been crushed? It is within their grasp. Will
white Americans who historically are known to have intermarried with many
Native Americans stand and demand their ancestral rights? The warning is now
out there for Tribal and United States governments.
Native American People all over this
hemisphere as well as those returning from England, and the world are rising
to say, "Give us back what is ours because you were wrong to impose a law
that stated my ancestors did not have free choice to love outside their
race. This law established an intolerable situation and is a crime against
humanity. The unborn child which was me was penalized by giving up what was
rightfully mine, my ancestral heritage. The law of enrollment violated my
constitutional rights generations before I was born, because I was being
denied and rejected by the United States Government and it's flunky tribal
system. These are the governments that labored to exterminate my family.
Before my birth I was denied the basic human right to belong to my own
people, the people that my lineage says I have a right to belong to and I
have a right to receive all the benefits of belonging to my own people.
SO EVERYBODY WHO HAS AN INDIAN IN THEIR FAMILY TREE
GETS ENROLLED? - SORRY IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY
HERITAGE MAKES THE INDIAN,
THE RIGHT IS EARNED, not given
We are neither for the new Red
Nation of the Cherokee or against them, what we say is that, like every
Native American the right to be called such is earned.
Traditional Native Americans have always said it is heritage that makes the
Native American become a human being, and everything comes down to the
education of the people to walk the Red Path, for there is no other way to
set your foot upon it than to live it. Since the enactment of the enrollment
law the greedy sell out has tried to get around this simple truth.
The right to be Native American
is earned. Defend your ancestral heritage by learning it and seeing that the
rights of the people are protected. This is what must happen. The
traditional way of becoming an Indian is by understanding your culture and
learning it. There is no law that can refute this basic human truth.
Ask yourself this question, how
many of you are defending the religion and the religious symbols of our
people? Who are the ones that are crying out about the injustice done to
their people? You know those people well for they are so few. If you wish to
be part of those people honor your people. Honor their rights, their
suffering, their traditional beliefs and then I will accept you as brother
or sister. But if you do not hold our honor in that highest esteem than I
must feel that you are not of my people.
Let your voices be raised to
protect your religious symbols. Raise your voice and demand the dignity of
your people don't sit there and say "We pray to God to get to work" then
ignore the people in front of us, our brothers and sisters, our families. Do
not say we are only mascots for there is no other people living in this day
and age who are entertainment mascots and treated without dignity as is the
Native American.
Demand the rights of your unborn
child and of your ancestral heritage. Demand that the land be returned that
was taken away through atrocities and crimes of genocide in acts of inhumane
proportions. Demand that the Red Holocaust be addressed which is committed
against you as you struggle in this day to regain your ancestral rights.
Remember it was the Red Holocaust that took them away.
FOLLOWING THE PATH BACK TO
THE CREATOR THROUGH THE TRADITION OF CHOICE
THE TRADITIONAL NATIVE
AMERICAN AND THE CHRISTIAN
There are many paths back to the
Creator/God/Great Spirit. The one you take is your choice and the Red Nation
of the Cherokee has made that clear by saying we are Native American and no
one will take the right to earn that honor and walk the path of our
ancestors away from us and our children.
Take for instance, the Sioux
culture, because the traditional Native American Sioux Indian is well
defined and is well known to all in this category. The elder and teacher of
any one who is learning as a child does, asks his student, "Do you still
follow the traditional spiritual and religious beliefs of your people?"
Within the Sioux Nation it is
common knowledge that if you are called Native American, which is your
family, you must follow that religious path back to the Great Spirit. That
is the tradition of the Eagle Feather, the Medicine Wheel, the Pipe and
others which are religious symbols, as we proudly state, symbols for all
time. The Sioux speaks to say, no one can separate us from our traditional
religious beliefs for that is our ancestral path to the Great Spirit. That
is the way we have come through so many generations to know and is our
tradition and our way of life. To use other symbols and to walk with another
philosophy, is to be some thing else. Very simple and common sense.
How can any individual who
follows the spiritual and religious path of the Catholic, Methodist or
Christian churches truly understand the traditional path of the Sioux Nation
back to the Great Spirit? This is very simple and easy to understand, these
people who are Catholic or Christian by choice and have closed the door on
the traditional beliefs of the Native American people they claim to belong
to. Therefore how can they understand, become part of, or belong to the
Sioux Nation if the ancient traditional spiritual and religious path is cut
off from their understanding?
Introduced by the Red Nation of
the Cherokee there now exists a flag for the people. On that flag is the
eagle. They made the statement, "The eagle is the sacred bird that carries
our prayers to the Creator". By choosing the eagle feather they have made
the statement they no longer hold the cross but instead have chosen the
older traditional religious symbol, the one that has existed from the birth
of the Cherokee Nation. The ancient religion of the Cherokee Nation has been
honored. It is this religion which has benefited their people longer than
any other religious symbol and that is the ancient path back to the
Creator/Great Spirit. They are saying they will no longer disgrace their
family's religious beliefs.
Look around you, the ones who
hold the cross have never come forward to talk about enrollment, they have
left you to perish. They have never protected you or your children's right
to belong. They have not honored your right to your heritage, they have
never honored your rights as a human being, but still consider you a redskin
who has survived the holocaust.
The Red Nation of the Cherokee
has obviously make this simple statement, "When you called us redskins you
took away our land, you slaughtered our children and mutilated our women,
created the Trail of Murder (Tears) and now the man who is responsible for
that, you honor on the twenty dollar bill. You classified us as animals,
segregated us like animals by blood, called us redskin savages in that era
and installed a breeders law on us. Now we tell you we are human beings, we
are not animals but Human Beings, the Real People, Aniunwia, and now we want
that right to claim our heritage. In the 90's your soldiers will no longer
be honored for using one of our three year old children for target practice
as he ran away from the guns of genocide toward the loving arms of his
family. We are human beings. Aniunwia, the Real People."
Originally
published here
copyright by Clem Iron
Wing & Matthew Richter, 1997