Muscogee Nation court rules descendants of enslaved people are entitled to citizenship

The Muscogee Nation Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that two descendants of people once enslaved by the tribe are entitled to tribal citizenship.

The court found that the tribal nation’s citizenship board violated an 1866 treaty when it denied the applications of Rhonda Grayson and Jeffrey Kennedy in 2019 because they could not identify a lineal descendant of the tribe.

“Are we, as a Nation, bound to treaty promises made so many years ago? Today, we answer in the affirmative, because this is what Mvskoke law demands,” the court wrote in its opinion.

The Muscogee Nation is one of five tribes in Oklahoma that once practiced slavery, and in that 1866 treaty with the U.S. government, the tribe both abolished it and granted citizenship to the formerly enslaved. But in 1979, the tribal nation adopted a constitution that restricted membership to the descendants of people listed as “Muscogee (Creek) Indians by blood” on the Dawes Rolls, a census of members of the five tribes created around 1900.

When the Dawes Rolls were created, people were listed on two separate rolls: those who were Muscogee and those who were identified by the U.S. government as Freedmen. In its ruling Wednesday, the court remanded the matter back to the Muscogee Nation’s citizenship board and directed it to apply the Treaty of 1866 to Grayson and Kennedy’s applications, as well as any future applicants who can trace an ancestor to either roll.

The decision could create a path to tribal citizenship for thousands of new members who are not Muscogee by blood.

The ruling is a long-awaited affirmation of their ancestors and their rightful place in the Muscogee Nation, said Rhonda Grayson.

“While this victory honors our past, it also offers a meaningful opportunity for healing and reconciliation. 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,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press.

“When I heard the ruling, I felt generations of my family exhale at once,” Kennedy added in a statement. “Our ancestors signed that treaty in good faith, and today the Court finally honored their word.”

The court also found that any reference of “by blood” in the Muscogee Nation’s constitution is unlawful, which could mean the tribe will have to overhaul parts of the governing document. One provision of the constitution requires that citizens be at least one quarter Muscogee “by blood” to run for office.

“We are currently reviewing the order to understand its basis as well as its implications for our processes,” Muscogee Nation Chief David Hill said in a statement. “It may be necessary to ask for a reconsideration of this order to receive clarity so that we can ensure that we move forward in a legal, constitutional manner.”

Successful legal cases were brought against two of the five tribes, the Seminole Nation and the Cherokee Nation, which have since granted citizenship to Freedmen descendants. But how that citizenship is implemented could come down to politics, said Jonathon Velie, an attorney who worked on behalf of Freedmen in both cases.

The roughly 2,500 Freedmen citizens in the Seminole Nation are not allowed to run for higher office and do not have access to certain resources, like tribal housing and education assistance. The 17,000 Freedmen citizens in the Cherokee Nation, however, have been embraced by the last two administrations and are given the full benefits of tribal members.

When it comes to the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees many of the resources owed to tribes through treaty rights, the Freedmen citizens in both tribes are the same, said Velie — their tribes just honor their citizenship differently.

“I hope the (Muscogee) Creek Nation welcomes them back in, because what they won today wasn’t the U.S. Government or the U.S. courts telling them, they told themselves in their own judicial system,” Velie said.