In the years following the 1835 ratification of the Treaty of New Echota, John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, had to lead a people suffering from the tolls of forced displacement. The treaty, which sold roughly seven million acres of ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River to the U.S. government for $5 million, pushed Cherokee peoples westward from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina, marching along the Trail of Tears between 1837 and 1839. In the fall of 1838, federal troops rounded up and escorted approximately 16,000 Cherokees ahead of a four-month journey to modern-day Oklahoma, during which one in four émigrés died due to malnutrition, disease, starvation, and even physical exhaustion while battling the extreme winter weather.
Now, nearly two centuries later, the Cherokee Nation is trying to revive one of the few concessions its ancestors were able to secure in the Treaty of New Echota: the promise of congressional representation. “So many of my predecessors were trying to rebuild the Nation or keep us from dissolving in the face of great oppression and great obstacles,” says Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., who holds the same leadership title tracing back to Ross.
The treaty, authored after Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, stipulates that the Cherokee Nation “shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives in the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.” A lesser-known trust obligation, it remained dormant until three years ago, when Hoskin tapped Kimberly Teehee to become the Nation’s delegate—despite any official authorization by the House to do so.
“My inspiration comes from trying to get a measure of justice for our ancestors, looking back at a treaty that did so much injury to the Cherokee people,” Hoskin tells me. “To be able to reach back and find something as powerful as representation in the House of Representatives is very important to me.”
A renewed public campaign to seat a Cherokee House delegate that launched in September follows years of “internal and behind-the-scenes efforts on this issue,” says Hoskins. The Nation and its leaders hope lawmakers will address their grievances in the final months before the end of this session, as Democrats fear losing their House majority following the 2022 midterms. “The stars are aligned right now. I think we’re seeing, in our lifetime, the most diverse Congress,” says Teehee. She’s hopeful that Congress will act swiftly during the lame duck session following the midterms, at least in terms of holding a House hearing on whether there should be a delegate representing the Cherokee Nation. And from there, it would only take a simple House majority vote to officially establish the position.