Hello, everyone – Summary: The context of poverty and patronage in northeastern Oklahoma is at the base of the contests over the administration and direction of the Cherokee Nation. Interested? Read on… To watch/listen to this update, go to youtu.be/lupf9AYZ2IM In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a young anthropologist named Albert Wahrhaftig worked among the Cherokees. He was engaged with activists of the time (some Indian and some not) and worked in some of the most traditional communities of the Cherokee Nation, informed by people such as Hiner Doublehead and Finis Smith. Many Cherokee scholars since have drawn on Wahrhaftig’s very valuable work and his complex descriptions of the social dynamics of the time, both within the Cherokees and between the Cherokees and the non-Indian power structure in northeastern Oklahoma. In an era when the Cherokee Nation was just beginning to stand up again governmentally and economically, after decades of being under the thumb of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Wahrhaftig and many of the younger, activistically-oriented Cherokees viewed the tribal leadership of W.W. Keeler and his attorney Earl Boyd Pierce as an “establishment,” employing the Vietnam-era rhetoric of the time about a leadership that in their view was too acculturated, too entangled with federal and corporate structures and out of touch with traditional Cherokees. Wahrhaftig’s work can be critiqued on many points, but in hindsight, many of his observations and predictions resound with great accuracy. He described a stratified Cherokee society and a small, rural system in northeastern Oklahoma in which individuals of Cherokee heritage, but without substantial connections to deeper Cherokee cultural and community traditions, values, and worldview, held many of the positions of local influence – sheriffs, mayors, town councils, school boards, judges, police chiefs, district attorneys, etc. Although I have never agreed with the racialization of the dynamic he described, in which he named such persons “white Cherokees,” the description of a certain strata of Cherokees who held power and authority is accurate, as many from the region will acknowledge. It was a system that mirrored larger structures in Oklahoma which have long been corrupt, virtually from day one of the state’s existence. (A recent national report quoted in the Tulsa World named Oklahoma the 11th most corrupt state in the country based on systems of political and business patronage, favoritism, kickbacks, etc.) Early and mid-20th century, the Democratic Party was predominant in the state – after all, this is the state that spawned Woody Guthrie and strong contests over labor and unions, as well as other progressive issues. But it was never the progressive arm of the party that dominated in the state’s politics, rather the backroom-dealing southern Dixiecrats. And it led to reactions on the part of the citizenry. One of my elder relatives recently told me that when he first registered to vote in Pryor (Mayes County), he registered as a Republican in opposition to the political corruption represented by the Dixiecrats. And others have told me that it was exactly that corruption that turned Oklahoma into a red state. (And I might add, I think many are finding that both red and blue are problematic in the great state of Oklahoma). As the Cherokee Nation was beginning to rise in the time when Wahrhaftig was working, he essentially predicted that it, too, would soon be overcome by the corrupt power structure of the region dominated by “white Cherokees” that he saw as unresponsive to the more traditional communities except to draw them into allegiances through the dispensing of patronage and favors to people who were among the poorest in the country. Wahrhaftig saw Ross Swimmer in the same light, and when Swimmer was elected as Principal Chief in 1975 (near the end of Wahrhaftig’s period of fieldwork and publication about the Cherokees), Wahrhaftig and others seemed to feel it was a continuance of that local “establishment.” But a few years later, Swimmer made a move that Wahrhaftig would not have predicted and which changed up the dynamic for a couple of decades. He chose as his deputy chief candidate a young, high-quantum, social activist who had been raised outside the area – in California, in fact – but who had returned to renew her relationships with her relatives and community who still remained here and to invest herself in the Cherokees of northeastern Oklahoma. And, oh, yeah, she was a woman. She was, of course, Wilma Mankiller. She was very different from Swimmer and yet the mutual respect between them and the willingness to form alliances between people of differing backgrounds and political orientations represented a continuance of Cherokee values and worldview. It was balance, it was autonomy, and it was strategic. And it held the regional power structures at bay for another couple of decades. Mankiller’s commitment to Cherokee communities was genuine and based in sound principles of development, which she studied. It was not based in patronage or favors, but in equitable treatment and respect. People were uplifted, people became increasingly invested in the Cherokee Nation. Services expanded, and the Nation began to go after every available federal dollar through “638 contracts” now possible after the 1975 Self-Determination Act. By the early 1990s, and under Mankiller’s Director of Justice, Chad Smith, who recognized the legal aspects of sovereignty that might be possible, the Cherokee Nation asserted greater and greater degrees of jurisdiction over law enforcement, taxation, water rights, and other governmental interests. By the mid-‘90s, the Cherokee Nation was entering into gaming and significant revenues began to be generated. And the regional power structure that had never seemed to care when the Cherokee Nation didn’t have much in the way of resources reared its head again. Although there had been evidence of patronage operating, particularly when federal and state contracts began to enter the picture, especially in the Cherokee Nation Housing Authority and some other services offered through the Cherokee Nation, the Nation had managed to stay relatively independent of local political influences. Overall, the region was opening up as it grew and the outside world penetrated more than it had in earlier decades. The power and corruption that had dominated regional political and economic systems had been significantly weakened. But it was not gone and it didn’t look like it had in the past. The years of the late 1990s brought crisis to the Cherokee Nation that I submit was a symptom of the struggle between the regional rural power base and the vision of a greater Nation that would be outside and beyond that domination. It is a struggle that continues and the stakes are high as the Cherokee Nation has become the largest employer in the region and an economic generator that contributes more than any other to the overall well-being of the region, as well as making substantial contributions to the state. The fate of the Cherokee Nation will impact many, well beyond the Cherokee citizens, and far beyond its boundaries in northeastern Oklahoma. More next time…
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 02:32:56 +0000
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