"Indian Country had established its own middle class even before the creation of what we now know as the United States. Although now shaped by federal self-determination policy, we are our own organic creation, with a tribal middle class rooted deep in the American past.

Take, for example, the Cherokee Nation. By the early 19th Century, the Cherokee had their own government, equipped with a constitution, judicial system, and police force, as well as their own thriving tribal economy. For many Cherokee, tribal economic activity had raised them to at least modern middle-class socio-economic status.

Then, in the late 1820s, Georgia passed a series of laws denouncing the Cherokee and asserting a supposed right to enforce state law inside of tribal territory. The attack, which was purportedly made in the name of “states’ rights” to manage all lands within their borders, drew support from those new Americans who thought “the tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, whose occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest.” (Johnson v. M’Intosh). In reality, the Cherokee were the very opposite of the “savage” other who they were portrayed. Again, the Cherokee Nation had a strong government and vibrant economy, with a surplus of individual Indian wealth."

Get the Story:
Gabe Galanda: Attack on the Tribal Middle Class, Part III (Indian Country Today 11/15)

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