I would add a couple thoughts on World Court jurisdiction:
Only “states” can be parties to a World Court proceeding. Would the Cherokee people be considered a “state”? Possibly, but I kinda doubt it.
The United States would have to agree to submit the dispute to the World Court, which is unlikely, unless the Cherokee can point to some treaty in which the United States has already agreed to submit to the World Court on this sort of issue. This also seems unlikely to me.
These men were “tried” and “executed” in exactly the same sense that the IRA uses those terms. Elias Boudinot, for example, was surprised and tomahawked in the back of his head.
Now did these guys sell out the Cherokee? Yeah, they did. Were they corrupt men? Undoubtedly. Were they “tried” and “executed?” Well, it’s a question of semantics, I suppose.
There is plenty of room to argue that the Cherokee were ripped off (and they were) without trying to turn them into saints.
A system which has imprisoned seven-and-a-half times more Blacks than Whites ought not to preach about proper justice. Oolwatie was anything but surprised.
Major Ridge himself said, when he signed his treaty with Indian Hater Jackson, “I have just signed my death warrant.” He in fact signed the death warrants of thousands of innocent people.
It is sad that you have stooped to defending Ridge’s mob and condemning the people who endured the suffering that he helped cause.
Who’s defending Ridge? I said that he sold out the Cherokee and that he was likely corrupt.
And you keep ignoring the fact that “Indian Hater Jackson” raised an Indian child as his own son.
Libertarian, you have plenty of room to argue that the Cherokee were ripped off without rewriting history or spreading half-truths. You should be ashamed of yourself for doing so on a message board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
a) The treaties signed by the Cherokee “authorizing” the removal resulted in the death of the Cherokee signees. Now if there’s a more significant way you can refuse to ratify a treaty let me know…
So in this case, they would probably have a case. But I dont really know the legal precendents in the world court and what not.
b) The Federal government viewed Indian tribes as “domestic dependant nations.” That is Native Americans could not conduct their own foreign affairs with entities outside of ‘recognized’ (by western nations) foreign borders. In addition, Native American tribes were not a part of the constitutional structure of the U.S. and could only make treaties with the Federal government. (see S.C. cases: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia) Hence the only thing they could do was deal with one expanding nation. They were diplomatically and constitutionally isolated. They were reduced to two choices: fight Americans (and lose) or deal with the U.S. on its own terms.
Here there could be a good case for the illegal subjugation of Native American tribes as sovreign entities in general. Conquest of land is explicitly taboo this day and age, so if this happened today the Native Americans would have a case.
The bottom line though is that this did not happen today… it happened in a different time with different standards. Different attitudes about race, attitudes about America.
I am really sorry for what happened to the Cherokees and for that matter most if not all of the indian tribes as relates to their lands. I just don’t understand what good an apology would serve coming from people that had nothing to do with it. Yes, I know that it is the same government, but that government is not run by anyone that was responsible for what was done.
If the intent of these threads is to make us more aware of the mistreatment the Cherokees suffered, then that is good. If the point is to blame someone living today and make them feel the need to apologize for something they weren’t responsible for then that is ridiculous.
By your logic, if my dad steals a car from the Cherokee and I inherit it, I should not give the car back? I cant speak for the law, but Id imagine that Id have to give the car back if seen driving it.
Just as generally accepted accounting principles require that an owner divorce himself as an entity from the company he owns, so does ethics require that people in a government divorce themselves as entities from the institution they serve.
George Bush, Congress, and the Supremes are not the government. They are merely the latest stewards in its long continuum of history. The same Constitution was in force then as now. An apology from the government is not an apology from a person or persons.
personally i think they will lose the case, no matter how strong their case is, much to my dismay.
first of all, the US will create lots of noise in the World Court/UN and pressure just about everyone into taking their side. that’s the primary reason why i think they’ll lose their case, not because the Cherokee do not have a strong position, but simply because they are up against the US government, which is powerful enough to make them lose their battle using any apparatus, right or wrong.
secondly, if the US concedes and makes just monetary compensation, it will probably create waves and encourage other Native American peoples to demand for compensation like the Cherokee, such as the 6 Nations of Iroquois. the US will certainly not provide the Cherokee any compensation for fear of this.
this is a sad and unfortunate thing that i myself wish did not happen, and i do not agree that the descendants of a previous people should not take responsibility for anything done by your ancestors. it’s like saying the present German government should not apologise to WWII victims, should not offer compensation to Holocaust victimes, and should reconquer back the lands lost to Poland and Soviet Union at the end of WWII, just because it’s not Schroeder’s gov’t which created this mess! it’s Hitler’s! which is completely ridiculous.
if there is anything the US (and China) can do to prevent the natives’ plight from sinking further, it is to take proactive measures to protect the indigenious cultures from destruction, for posterity. i’m not saying they should halt the integration of these peoples into the majority Anglo-Saxon culture, but at the same time they should not forget their roots at doing so.
And you know, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have a decent answer for you… yet. I know it seems a little silly that I could be doing this sort of thing all these years and not have a pat answer for a question as basic as that, but I don’t. However, I’m in an excellent position to find and provide some answers for you, and as soon as I get some of them I’ll let you know.
Libertarian’s response to the “that was then, this is now” argument is dead-on. It’s a surprisingly difficult concept to convey, but it’s really quite important to understand it: the federal government has and always had an unfulfilled obligation to American Indian tribes which still exists, and which must be met unless the laws are dramatically changed.
Here’s the part that so many people I know have trouble grasping. The above statement is a fact. It’s not an opinion, or an emotive argument, or some politically-correct call for fairness. It’s the law, as described in the Constitution, codified by Congress, and regularly bolstered by precendent from the Supreme Court.
Any arguments to the contrary are arguments for how things should be, not how things are right now. The problem is that too many people–including our current President–simply refuse to believe that’s the case, and regularly seek to ignore or weasel around those obligations. That’s why we have ugly situations such as that in upstate New York, and that’s probably why Libertarian (rightly, in my opinion) wants an apology.
I’m not backing any horse in this debate, which has gotten bizarrely rancorous, but I’d like to point out that the fact you note above, by itself, means bupkus. As Michael Collins said after he signed the treaty establishing the Irish Free State, “…I tell you, I have signed my death warrant.”
He was right - he was ambushed and killed for having signed the Treaty. However, the treaty remained in effect.
The point is, Michael Collins’ death (as well as those of the Cherokee signees’) had no impact on whether the treaty he signed was legitimate or not.
That’s true. However, why was the signatory recognized by the US Government as representing the Cherokee nation (aside from the fact that he was a pal of Jackson)? Ross, not Ridge, was the Principle Chief. And he produced 16,000 signatures to back him up.
If the US signs a treaty with a Kurdish rebel, is it recognized as a treaty with the State of Iraq?
I think Libertarian has a good argument that Ridge and his cohorts were not the duly-authorized representatives of the Cherokee, and therefore had no authority to sign the treaty.
The US government had a bad habit of getting signatures on treaties without worrying too much about whether the “chiefs” were chiefs at all, or had any authority to sign over land. (It also had a history of using bribery to obtain treaties.)
As far as threats or coercion are concerned, that didn’t happen with the Cherokee. What was going on was that squatters were pouring into Cherokee lands. The Cherokee were asking for US government assistance in keeping them out. The government did make some efforts to do so, but you could argue that the feds dragged their feet on the issue as a way of putting pressure on the Cherokee to give up their land. In essence, the Federal government was playing “good cop” to the “bad cop” of the Georgia government and the white squatters:
“Gee, we’d like to help you out, but we can’t control them. Looks like they’re going to take over, and boy you guys are going to be in real trouble when they do. We can’t be responsible for what they might do. There could be violence… Say, why don’t you trade us your land in the Southeast for some nice acreage we have out in Oklahoma? We’ll even throw in a little cash to boot…”
One definitely gets the sense that this is the game the feds were playing. Is that a sort of inverse coercion? Or were the feds genuinely unable to effectively expel squatters? A matter for debate.
I think Libertarian has a good argument that Ridge and his cohorts were not the duly-authorized representatives of the Cherokee, and therefore had no authority to sign the treaty.
The US government had a bad habit of getting signatures on treaties without worrying too much about whether the “chiefs” were chiefs at all, or had any authority to sign over land. (It also had a history of using bribery to obtain treaties.)
As far as threats or coercion are concerned, that didn’t happen with the Cherokee. What was going on was that squatters were pouring into Cherokee lands. The Cherokee were asking for US government assistance in keeping them out. The government did make some efforts to do so, but you could argue that the feds dragged their feet on the issue as a way of putting pressure on the Cherokee to give up their land. In essence, the Federal government was playing “good cop” to the “bad cop” of the Georgia government and the white squatters:
“Gee, we’d like to help you out, but we can’t control them. Looks like they’re going to take over, and boy you guys are going to be in real trouble when they do. We can’t be responsible for what they might do. There could be violence… Say, why don’t you trade us your land in the Southeast for some nice acreage we have out in Oklahoma? We’ll even throw in a little cash to boot…”
One definitely gets the sense that this is the game the feds were playing. Is that a sort of inverse coercion? Or were the feds genuinely unable to effectively expel squatters? A matter for debate.
Lib, no opinion - I simply don’t know enough. I was just trying to point out that one shouldn’t put more weight into evidence than the evidence can hold.