FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS
February 2, 1999. This morning I read a most interesting Post about the upcoming Cherokee Nation elections, and the state of the Cherokee Nation, on the Cherokee Observer WebBoard, at http://www.cherokeeobserver.org/
I posted the following reply about the current corruption:
"Almost everything you wrote is true, and thanks for writing it. Recently when I made the same points (that Cherokees outside the 14 counties don't know what is going on, etc.) I got jumped on big time. But since then people like Donna Stapp have proved it, as well meaning as she is. But she is learning. Most are not.
Dave H. wrote that at the California meeting Don Crittenden (elected to the Cherokee Council, Tahlequah) got up and asked: "Are there any Indians here?" Everybody but Dave raised their hand! Well, with that 17th century mentality, all native Americans are in trouble. I do wish that all you Indians would move home to Bombay and Calcutta and get off our territory! (Yeah, jump on me for that, too!) What's wrong with gettting over being an "Indian" and becoming a Cherokee? Some of us in Dallas did it. We had to reprogram.
And these same people think they belong to a "tribe" instead of a "nation". We call these ignorant people "Cherokeets". Of the 200,000 registered, we estimate there must be 50 real Cherokees, and 199,950 Cherokeets. A sorry come-to-pass.
And, you seem to have been overwhelmed by the presence of the failed Chief, failed human being, Wilma Mankiller. Her illegal activities, and those illegal bonuses she gave to her cronies as they jumped from their sinking ship, are still in our minds. Didn't you know about that? Read my website. Yeah, you'd all better subscribe to the Cherokee Observer and get the truth. And read some back issues.
Lee MacDonald.
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CHEROKEE GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION
To illustrate the thinking and corruption of the past four Cherokee government administrations (since 1975) we will reprint here a letter that David Cornsilk, Editor of the independent (not government controlled) Cherokee newspaper, the Cherokee Observer. In response to a letter about those running for office in the new elections, David wrote:
Charley...I ran for Council in 1987, and was defeated by the non-resident vote. I won in the Cherokee Nation by a wide margin. In fact, I came in 12th out of a field of 50 candidates. However, when the non-resident absentee vote came in, I was knocked down to 16th, and only the top 15 were seated. The Mankiller administration wanted so badly for me to not be on the council, that when one of the guys that had won died before being certified a winner, they certified him anyway. I should have been moved up to the 15th position, but the Tribunal ruled against me.
But I digress, because the point of the story is how the administration used an overbroad investigation to destroy my chances of winning a seat on the council.
In April of the election year, a man in Tahlequah decided he didn't like my politics and slugged me in the mouth in front of WalMart. Of course I filed charges against him, but I was the one who was punished. The Mankiller administration used its influence to protect him from persecution (he was never prosecuted) and used the information against me in a mailer to the non-resident Cherokees.
The mailer told the voters I was involved in a "brawl" and that I had "even filed charges" and "was that the kind of person the Cherokee Nation needed to represent it?" And all with no name, just an anonymous letter, costing a bunch of money to mail out.
The crux of this story is, Charley, they can take anything small and turn it into something big and ugly. I spoke up for my rights and the rights of other Cherokees and got busted in the chops and busted at the polls.
They played the non-resident voters like a violin...and did the greatest service they could have ever done. Why, you ask?
If I had won a seat on the council, the Cherokee Observer probably would never have been.
David Cornsilk.
Note: February 19, 1999. This illustrates just a little bit of how dirty the politics have been, starting with W. W. Keeler in the 50's and 60's, continuing through Ross Swimmer (who made millions out of his Cherokee connected offices), and on through Wilma Mankiller. This true story that David tells us illustrates the crooked, wrong-thinking and wrong-acting that Wilma engaged in from the start. Then, she got worse.
A few weeks ago Wilma appeared at the political convention hosted by the Cherokee National Party. It was open to all, unfortunately, but some unworthy Cherokees seemed pleased and honored at her presence. It has been pointed out to us that Wilma has never been formally charged or found guilty of any crime, but we have pointed out that she has been charged with crimes and misdemeanors, just has never been tried in a court for them. She is a failed Principal Chief, and a failed human being, and should not be treated as an honorable person. Such misguided kindness sends the wrong signals. David Cornsilk wrote us about Wilma showing up at the political meeting: "I didn't find her presence there any more exciting than a gum stuck to my shoe".
The above story, also, proves why we have long maintained that those registered Cherokees living outside the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma (I am one of them) should NOT be given a vote. Seldom do they know what or who they are voting on, and these "absentee" votes (mostly spurious, thousands of them put together in Oklahoma, flown out to California and mailed back)
are used by these crooked, corrupt "ins" to keep themselves and their friends in office. The
CHEROKEE NATION OF OKLAHOMA as it so disgustingly calls itself, is a "cesspool of corruption" as the Oukah says, propped up by the BIA from Washington, D.C. which is even more corrupt.
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