Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 years

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress.

Chuck Hoskin Jr, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was among those who testified before the US House rules committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the US House. Hoskin, the elected leader of the 440,000-member tribe, put the effort in motion in 2019 when he nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to Barack Obama, to the position. The tribe’s governing council then unanimously approved her.

The tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised. A separate treaty in 1866 affirmed this right, Hoskin said.

“The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties. I’m here to ask the United States to do the same,” Hoskin told the panel.

Hoskin suggested to the committee that Teehee could be seated as early as this year by way of either a resolution or change in statute, and the committee’s chairman, the Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern, and other members supported the idea that it could be accomplished quickly.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/16/cherokee-nation-oklahoma-first-congress-delegate

About damn time. But all these nations, commonwealths, and territories should also be allowed to vote on matters that affect them.