For black Cherokees, past and future collide in fight over identity
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -— When Lucy Allen sets out to tell her family's story, she first finds an empty room with plenty of open table space.
Others, she knows, illustrate their ancestral legends by passing around a single prized photograph or diagram of the family tree. But Allen arrives wheeling two big black suitcases, each stuffed with enough supporting evidence to do Perry Mason proud...
And years later, a long-forgotten document proved her suspicions right.
It was just as her parents told her. Yes, she was black. But there was Cherokee in her veins, too.
There was a catch, though, and it was bound to persist no matter how clear the evidence might seem to Allen.
She could call herself an Indian. She and others like her could argue that, Indian blood or not, they had as much right to the Cherokee Nation's identity as anyone else.
But Allen's "proof" could just as easily be cited to show her people were not real Cherokees at all, but a human burden a defeated tribe had been forced to shoulder.
A century past, Allen's ancestors had secured what they thought was a permanent place in the tribe. Now, though, it was clear the only way she could ever be acknowledged as Cherokee would be to take on the very Cherokees who refused to count her as one of their own...
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Others, she knows, illustrate their ancestral legends by passing around a single prized photograph or diagram of the family tree. But Allen arrives wheeling two big black suitcases, each stuffed with enough supporting evidence to do Perry Mason proud...
And years later, a long-forgotten document proved her suspicions right.
It was just as her parents told her. Yes, she was black. But there was Cherokee in her veins, too.
There was a catch, though, and it was bound to persist no matter how clear the evidence might seem to Allen.
She could call herself an Indian. She and others like her could argue that, Indian blood or not, they had as much right to the Cherokee Nation's identity as anyone else.
But Allen's "proof" could just as easily be cited to show her people were not real Cherokees at all, but a human burden a defeated tribe had been forced to shoulder.
A century past, Allen's ancestors had secured what they thought was a permanent place in the tribe. Now, though, it was clear the only way she could ever be acknowledged as Cherokee would be to take on the very Cherokees who refused to count her as one of their own...