In a landmark decision, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation supreme court ruled that Rhonda Grayson and Jeffrey Kennedy, two descendants of people who were once enslaved by the tribe, are entitled to tribal citizenship.
The court ruled on Wednesday that the Muscogee Nation’s citizenship board violated a 1866 treaty in denying Grayson and Kennedy’s 2019 application for enrollment. At the time, the citizenship board argued that the descendants should be denied because they could not identify lineal descendants of the tribe.
Grayson, who is the founder and director of the Oklahoma Indian Territory Museum of Black Creek Freedmen History, and Kennedy are descendants of the Creek Freedmen, people who were enslaved by the Muscogee Nation. They can trace their lineage back to people who are on the Dawes Rolls, a list that identifies people from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole tribes. Grayson’s and Kennedy’s ancestors are also listed on the Freedmen Roll, but not the Muscogee Roll. This discrepancy is how the tribal citizenship board previously justified denying Grayson’s and Kennedy’s applications for enrollment.
However, the court ruled unanimously this week that such a decision was in violation of the Muscogee Nation’s laws. “Are we, as a Nation, bound to treaty promises made so many years ago?” the court wrote. “Today, we answer in the affirmative, because this is what Mvskoke law demands.” According to the ruling, any future applicant who can trace their ancestry to someone on either roll will be eligible for enrollment.
The decision comes after the Muscogee Nation attorney general, Geri Wisner, appealed a 2023 ruling by district judge Denette Mouser in favor of Grayson and Kennedy.
A sordid history
Until an 1866 treaty with the US government, which addressed the status of people of African descent who lived among the south-eastern Indigenous nations, the Muscogee Nation, along with the four other south-eastern tribes in Oklahoma, enslaved Black people. With the abolition of slavery, laid out in the treaty, the nation granted citizenship to the people it had once enslaved.
Many of those who were enslaved by Indigenous nations were also forced to participate in the Trail of Tears, named for the suffering and death that thousands of Indigenous people and the Black people among them experienced when the US removed them from their lands to facilitate the expansion of settlers. The Trail of Tears is considered to have been an act of genocide.
In Mouser’s decision, she acknowledged the shared history of Freedmen and the people who enslaved them, noting that the enslaved people often spoke the tribal language and participated in ceremonies.
“The families later known as Creek Freedmen likewise walked the Trail of Tears alongside the tribal clans and fought to protect the new homeland upon arrival in Indian Territory,” she wrote. “During that time, the Freedmen families played significant roles in tribal government including as tribal town leaders in the House of Kings and House of Warriors.”
But, almost a century later, the relationship became more fraught.
In 1979, the Muscogee Nation adopted a constitution that restricted membership to only those who could identify themselves as descendants of people listed as “Muscogee (Creek) Indians by blood” on the Dawes Rolls.
Today, the Cherokee Nation and the Seminole Nation grant citizenship to people who were enslaved by members of the tribe, though citizenship in the latter nation is not entirely equal. The Freedmen citizens in the Seminole Nation cannot run for higher office or access tribal housing or education assistance.
In the fight for enrollment and citizenship, Freedmen groups across the five nations have been created.
“While this victory honors our past, it also offers a meaningful opportunity for healing and reconciliation,” said Grayson in a statement to the Associated Press. “It’s time now to come together, rebuild trust, and move forward as one united Nation, ensuring future generations never again face exclusion or erasure.”
