BREAKING: Chief Gary Batton of the @choctawnationOK wrote a letter to Speaker of the House @SpeakerPelosi in which he condemned @RepMaxineWaters for a recent move by Waters to advocate for Choctaw Freedmen rights per the Treaty of 1866. 
In the letter, Chief Batton argues that the @choctawnationOK has the right to deny Freedmen of citizenship rights because their constitution—which was passed in 1983–outright excluded Freedmen from citizenship.
Freedmen descendants were the only descendants of tribal citizens (documented in the tribal census of 1885) who were barred from voting on the citizenship criteria of the nation in 1983.
Remember Freedmen are the descendants of Black and Afro-Indigenous slaves who were owned by Choctaw masters and other free people of African ancestry. The Choctaw Nation’s vote in 1983 specifically did not take into account the descendants of Freedmen in 1983.
This would be like if the United States barred specifically Black people from a vote on US citizenship in 1983. Such a decision would obviously not be a fully sovereign decision, as a specific group of citizens would be barred from making decisions on national citizenship.
Also note that Chief Batton misspelled @RepMaxineWaters’s name throughout the letter.
If you feel passionately that Maxine Waters’s attempts at enforcing the Choctaw Nation’s sovereign obligation to their Freedmen should continue, please write to @SpeakerPelosi’s office in support of Choctaw Freedmen and Maxine Waters.
