Black Indians
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black Indians is a term generally used to describe people who have significant traces of both African and Native American ancestry and/or African Americans who have lived for a long time with Native Americans.
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[edit] Relations between Native Americans and Africans
It is believed that 40% of African Americans possess Native American ancestry. [1] [2] African slaves brought to the United States, and their descendants, have had a long history of cultural exchange, and notably intermarriage, with the Native peoples they encountered and their descendants (largely in the American South); it is widely believed that this exchange and intermarriage is a primary reason behind certain folkways that have origins in Native American culture that have been incorporated into African American culture. This cultural mixing is also believed to be the reason why certain phenotypes common within Native peoples also occur in a large percentage of the African American population to this day.
Native American groups have had both positive and strained relationships with the Africans and African Americans they encountered. Some groups were more accepting of Africans than others and welcomed them as full members of their respective cultures and communities. Some Native Americans, especially as they became more assimilated into the dominant American culture (aided in large part by White intermarriage with Natives), came to treat African Americans with contempt, as did much of the White population.
Many African-descended people were held as slaves by members of Native groups, and some later recounted their lives for a WPA oral history project in the 1930's [3]. Many Native Americans and African-descended people both fought alongside one another in armed struggles of resistance against U.S. expansion into Native territories, as well as resistance against slavery and racism.
There are efforts currently underway to promote greater cooperation and understanding among both modern African American and Native American tribal groups. Some intermarriage still occurs between these groups; some African Americans who descend from or who identify as Black Indians identify strongly with the Native cultural traditions that they were raised with.
[edit] Genealogy
Many modern African Americans have taken an interest in genealogy, and learning about the Native heritage within their individual families. Some African Americans have knowledge of Native ancestry through oral history resident in the family for generations, and try to confirm these anecdotal stories of Native ancestry through genealogical research and DNA testing. Some have petitioned to be members of Native American tribes and have met with some resistance.[4]
[edit] Cherokee Freedmen
The Cherokee Nation, in a tribal Supreme Court ruling, reinstated about 1,000 African American members into their community in March 2006 after denying them membership in the mid-1970's. In response, there is a movement among many in the Cherokee Nation to force a referendum requiring Cherokee blood for citizenship in the tribe, which would effectively reverse the decision. The argument is that the African American descendants hold no Native blood and therefore should not qualify for membership, and voting rights, in the Cherokee Nation. [5]
An advocacy group representing the African American members claims that they are entitled to membership as they are indeed part Cherokee by blood, even though this is not immediately evident from the existing historical records (most notably the highly controversial Dawes Commission enrollment records, which tended to exclude those of African descent from being officially considered "Indian" for the purposes of tribal enrollment, even if they also clearly possessed Native ancestry and testified as such). [6] [7]
Before the Dawes Commission was established, "(t)he majority of the people with African blood living in the Cherokee nation prior to the Civil war lived there as slaves of Cherokee citizens or as free black non citizens, usually the descendants of Cherokee men and women with African blood...In 1863, the Cherokee government outlawed slavery through acts of the tribal council. In 1866, a treaty was signed with the US government in which the Cherokee government agreed to give citizenship to those people with African blood living in the Cherokee nations who were not already citizens...African Cherokee people participated as full citizens of that nation, holding office, voting, running businesses, etc." [8]
After the Dawes Commission, those African American "freedmen" of the Cherokee and the other Five Civilized Tribes were often treated as harshly as any other African American. Degrees of continued acceptance into tribal structures were very low throughout the ensuing decades, with some tribes restricting membership to those with a documented Native ancestor on the Dawes Commission listings; because of the apparent deliberate exclusion of most people with African blood on these "blood rolls", it was difficult for Black Indians to establish official ties with those Native groups they genetically belonged to. Many of the freedmen feel that their continued exclusion from tribal membership, and the continued resistance to their efforts to gain recognition, is racially motivated. [9]
[edit] Famous Blacks with Native American Ancestry
Historical:
- Crispus Attucks
- Frederick Douglass
- Langston Hughes
- John Mercer Langston
- Edmonia Lewis
- Bass Reeves
- James Beckwourth
- Josephine Baker
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Modern:
- Christopher Judge
- Della Reese
- Willie Stargell
- James Earl Jones
- Salli Richardson
- Eartha Kitt
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Tina Turner
- Eazy-E
- Jimi Hendrix
- Oprah Winfrey
- Chris Tucker
- The Game
- Aaliyah
- Tiger Woods
- Chaka Khan
- Katherine Jackson
- Rebbie Jackson
- Jackie Jackson
- Tito Jackson
- Jermaine Jackson
- La Toya Jackson
- Marlon Jackson
- Michael Jackson
- Randy Jackson
- Janet Jackson
- Traci Bingham
- Stacey Dash
- Alice Walker
- Lena Horne
- Ronnie Spector
- Eartha Kitt
[edit] See also
- African American
- Maroon (people)
- Black Seminoles
- Zambo
- Cafuzo
- Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
- Cherokee Freedmen
