You don’t get your tribal citizenship from the US government. Either something of your tribal identity, your peoplehood, survives as more than family folklore or it does not. If it does, it’s an important political question to what degree your tribal citizenship conflicts with your US or Canadian or Mexican citizenship? What would you say to Charles Curtis, a Kaw who served as Vice President of the United States? As far as that goes, what do you say to me when I sit as a Texas state judge under both the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star? If this is too esoteric, I’ll notice that the oath of office I took did not differ substantially from the oath I took upon enlistment in the US armed forces. In my day, more Indian young men took that oath than did not. Did we swear falsely? Historians tell us that the modern nation-state was born in 1648, when power passed on paper from Divine Authority to various European warlords in the Peace of Westphalia. That’s a “truth” on the same level as democracy being born in 1215 (Magna Carta) or the Common Law beginning in 1066, when a thug called William the Bastard changed his historical identity to William the Conqueror at the battle of Hastings. No ordinary person in 1066 or 1215 or 1648 would have noticed much of anything, except for men under arms and the warlords who commanded them.Get the Story:
Steve Russell: Disenrollment Is a Disaster (Indian Country Today 12/16)
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