Yes, Native Americans in the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, and Creek Nations owned slaves. Yes, members from these tribes fought on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Yes, the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations continued to own slaves until 1866.
The Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Nations deny the descendants of these documented slaves citizenship rights to this day. The Seminole Nation only allows for the descendants of their slaves to have partial citizenship rights.
This needs to be at the center of discussions of anti-Blackness in the United States. There are still four sovereign nations that we allocate federal funds towards that discriminate against the descendants of their slaves. And no one ever seems to mention this on national media
The descendants of people enslaved by the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations pay federal taxes towards funds for tribes that discriminate against us. Indian Territory is worse than Jim Crow as we are not even citizens of the Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw Nations.

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More from @ChoctawFreedmen

13 Nov
A lot of Black people today spread misinformation about Tulsa—saying that Black people pulled themselves up through hard work and that Tulsa is an example of successful Black capitalism when in fact it’s an example of how government redistribution allowed for Black Oklahomans
to build capacities for independence and wealth-building. Tulsa is NOT an example of Black people overcoming apartheid with capitalism and hard work. It’s an example of Black unity around redistributed land allotments and Freedmen investing the profits they made off of those
land allotments they received from the federal government. But keep in mind that Tulsa only became a center of Black flourishing because the Creek Nation’s collective land was forcibly broken up into individual land allotments for tribal members.
Read 5 tweets
13 Nov
Tulsa didn’t become “Black Wall Street” because a bunch of Black capitalists worked through Jim Crow to make a large amount of profit and found ways to build wealth in family units. Tulsa’s wealth was built off land allotments Afro-Indigenous people received from the federal govt
In fact, most of the Black towns in Oklahoma were built on Freedmen’s land allotments and were developed by Freedmen from money they made from oil on their land or from building businesses on their land allotments.
We need to stop acting like Tulsa is some story about the success of Black capitalism or respectability politics. In fact, Oklahoma was so unique because Freedpeople of all genders and marital statuses from the Five Tribes received land allotments.
Read 13 tweets
13 Nov
A lot of y’all’s “Indigenous Faves” are anti-Black on the low 👀 and a lot of them are anti-Black in your face and are openly taking anti-Black actions and you watch in silence, knowing that Black Natives will likely be hurt by them moving up the political ladder.
I guess Indigenous representation doesn’t have to include protections for Black Indigenous folks. If @Deb4CongressNM gets appointed to Secretary of the Interior and makes Freedmen’s lives in Indian Territory worse or neglects us while in office, please remember you ignored our
warnings beforehand. We have been tweeting about this for awhile and many non-Black Natives with large platforms are actively ignoring her anti-Freedmen past. We need to call her out before she enters office.
Read 4 tweets
12 Nov
Representative @Deb4CongressNM has co-sponsored legislation undermining Black Freedmen of the Five Tribes. She co-sponsored legislation that REMOVED a past clause that called on the Five Tribes to follow the Treaties of 1866 and equally share housing resources with Freedmen.
We cannot allow for our “Native representation” to be anti-Black and undermine Black Natives—some of the most vulnerable people in Indian Country. Please, if you believe in her, hold her accountable for the legislation she co-sponsored and demand that she be an ally to Freedmen.
We cannot continuously be pushed to the side. Despite being citizens of the Seminole Nation, Black Seminole Freedmen are denied any of the resources that other Seminoles have. The clause in NAHASDA that was removed would have required Freedmen to have access to housing funds.
Read 6 tweets
12 Nov
What obligations does a nation have to the descendants of those they enslaved? Citizenship, surely. Equal rights. An apology. So why do we ignore the fact that the @ChickasawNation, @choctawnationOK, and @MvskokeRez all still deny the descendants of their slaves the basics?
Is it possible that even Native people are treating these Nations as if they are not fully sovereign nations? Because no other sovereign nation with a history of chattel slavery is held to such a low standard with the descendants of those they enslaved.
Indigenous people and nations must be held to the same human rights standards as all other nations. They must follow the treaties they signed and they must treat Black members equally.
Read 5 tweets
12 Oct
You do realize that Indigenous slave-ownership continued after colonization? We are the descendants of people of African descent owned by Indigenous people from the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. Colonization didn’t “end” enslavement by Indigenous people.
Colonization led to the enslavement of the people Indigenous to this land by European colonizers, enslavement of people of African descent owned by both European and Indigenous people, and mass rape, murder, and the spreading of never-seen-before diseases.
Colonization in North America was a violent process in which European colonizers—in order to extract resources from the land and from the Indigenous people on the land and the African people they brought to this land—raped, killed, and harmed Black and Indigenous people.
Read 5 tweets

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