Just because someone’s family lived as a legally white person for generations, it does not mean that they are not Indigenous. Non-Black members of the Five Slaveholding Tribes we’re legally reclassified as white in 1908 and we’re legally treated that way for generations.
Does this mean all of our non-Black members are not actually Native? Of course not! Their reclassification as white Americans was part of settler colonialism and was a central part of redistributing land and creating anti-Black legal codes.
Freedmen were also reclassified legally as “Negro/Black,” no matter what languages they spoke, their parentage, etc. This doesn’t mean our ancestors were “pretendians” nor does it mean we—their descendants are either. The point of allotment & Jim Crow was to erase our Indigeneity
so that white men could accumulate our tribal lands. We are still Native. Our tribes were quite literally forcefully disbanded by the federal government. This led to the breaking up of our communities. But we are still Native.
Btw this does not mean that non-Black members of the Five Tribes may not also have anti-Black beliefs, however, this doesn’t erase their Indigeneity. People of mixed ancestry were always still 100% Chickasaw/Choctaw. These “identities” were primarily of citizenship and lineage.
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