Indianz.Com > News > Shannon Holsey: U.S. must honor treaty promises to tribal nations
Seating Cherokee Delegate Strengthens Sovereign Rights for All Tribes
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
President, Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians
Recently members of the House of Representatives held a hearing on seating the Cherokee Nation’s long-promised delegate to Congress. As they contemplate next steps, I ask them to remember that our voices matter in policymaking. We, after all, were this land’s first people.
Today we are also neighbors, community leaders, co-workers, business owners and economic drivers of this country. Native Americans help shape America’s past and we are engines of its future. We have long had an undeniable role in the history of the United States. Now we are asking for it to be recognized because we know representation matters. Our voices need to be heard in the nation’s capital as policies are made.
The Cherokee Nation holds a unique treaty-mandated right, a non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. It was included in the Treaty of New Echota which was signed off on by the president and ratified by the Senate nearly 200 years ago. The delegate has not been seated yet because the House hasn’t voted to seat her, it is the last relatively simple step in a centuries long process.
Shannon Holsey is President of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, a federally-recognized tribe of American Indians. She also serves as the Treasurer of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).
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