WORDS FROM LEE MAC:
The BIA Bastards: There is no doubt that the good old United States of America (hereinafter only USofA) has been very good to all the imported foreigners and their descendants. There is also no doubt that it has been a living hell for the natives of the country. Was, during the "takeover" (by hook and crook, and/or bloodshed at gunpoint), and still is. Native Americans are the ONLY class of people in the country who have a government agency running and controlling their business, which we consider to be illegal and unconstitutional (not that the federal government cares to obey its own laws). The BIA bastards never quit, and never get straight. Some people are now saying that the office of the BIA should be abolished. The Oukah has been saying that for 30 years.
Request for Information.
Two years ago we finished the first draft of "A Chronological History of the Cherokee Nation", and put it aside. We have now started from scratch, and when finished will compare the two to make sure that all the facts and dates are correct. However, some information is missing.
In 1968 Mr. George Groundhog and others filed a lawsuit against the federal government, after they responded to the Oukah's message. In 1971 Groundhog notified the Oukah that they had won the lawsuit, that legal elections had been ordered by the court, and that he and 4 others were coming to Dallas for a meeting with him.
Oukah prepared a lunch for them, but they never showed up. He learned later that their building on the highway had been firebombed the night before, and their records destroyed. Later, the Oukah's Dallas apartment was broken into several times, but no jewelry or antiques were taken. We know now that since we cannot find our copies of these legal proceedings that it was the documents they wanted.
We were informed that the court had put out a restraining order on the President to keep him from ever "appointing" the principal chiefs of the Five Oklahoma Nations. Destroying the documents may have been Nixon's first coverup, even before Watergate.
But, somebody has a copy of the court order...and somebody knows who firebombed the building and put them out of business. We need someone with some guts to inform us, so we can publish it. After all, it is still a part of Cherokee history.
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"OUKAH" or "HOGWASH"?: On the Cherokee web board sponsored by the independent Cherokee monthly newspaper, the Cherokee Observer, Archie Jordan posted the following question to the Managing Editor, David Cornsilk, on January 11, 1999:
"David C. Please, if you may a thought or two on this Oukah and his claim to fame and the legitimacy of the particular organization earlier mentioned in a post titled Information".
Later in the day David Cornsilk responded: "Archie, the fella calling himself the OUKAH is a gentleman, a scholar, a Cherokee, irascible, quick to anger, generous, funny, even regal in his countenance, and a descendant of many noted Cherokee families. Anything beyond that, I leave to your own discretion to discern. He neither wants nor needs input from me to defend or detract from his claims".
When I printed this out and showed it to the Oukah, he just grinned and said: "I didn't know I was irascible!"
Actually, the Oukah does not call himself the Oukah. That's what other people call him. He IS the Oukah, and nobody has ever said that he wasn't. And he has no "claim". In royal circles, a "claimant" is somebody who thinks that he or she should have a certain title or position. This doesn't fit the Oukah's case, either. He has the title. He owns it. It is in his possession, and he uses it every day. It is his, and there isn't anything anybody else can do about it, even if they wanted to. There are some Cherokees today keeping the dancing alive. Others are teaching and using the Cherokee language. The present Oukah is just keeping alive and using what came to Him, so that something old and beautiful should not perish from the earth.Who should object to that?
Note to Young Cherokees: Until recently Cherokee young people looked up to their elders. Today there is a club or two of elder Cherokees, mostly men. Don't give them the time of day. They helped get the Cherokee Nation into what it is today (a sorry mess run by crooks and self-serving charlatans). They did nothing constructive in the past, and are not doing anything courageous today. We can't see where they are due any honor, whatever.
Note to Cherokee Nation employees: You have known that things were wrong, and even where the bodies were buried. Did you blow the whistle? Did you even make a phone call and inform anyone about it? If not (and you probably didn't or we would know about it) you are worthy of contempt, also.
CHEROKEE WOMEN: Lately there has been another misconception concerning Cherokee women. Our research reveals that women were very powerful in the Cherokee Nation, after all they owned their own homes, raised their own children along with her relatives because her children belonged to her clan, etc. But they were NOT elected to public office, and they did not speak in council (they told their clansmen elders what they wanted, and how they felt about things, BEFORE the matters were brought up in council). There is only one report of a woman ever speaking at, or to, a Cherokee council, and that was the last "beloved woman" Nancy Ward, after she was expressly asked to do so by the last reigning king, Pathkiller, when they had a very special visitor present. Today, too many of the Cherokee women we have encountered have become like white women -- overbearing, loud-mouthed, smart-aleck, and obnoxious.
POLECAT PETE said recently that Cherokees never killed enough people. They spared the life
of that coward, Stand Watie, who lived on to decimate the entire Cherokee country during
the Civil War and had his men kill a lot of Cherokee people (big hero!). And, Polecat says
the "leaders" of the current Cherokee government in Oklahoma ought to be shot down like
the dogs they are. We're not worried about that, because there doesn't seem to be a
Cherokee alive today with enough guts to clean out the wrongdoers. And he asks a good
question: "Does 'Cherokee' mean 'chicken'?"
LACK OF INFORMATION OR UNDERSTANDING: We have never met a Cherokee born and raised in Oklahoma, well educated or not, who did not have a warped mind or a skewed understanding of what is "Cherokee" or the truth of Cherokee history. It seems that they have all been victims of false impressions, old wives tales, and outright atempts to deceive them, or even to deceive themselves.
We received further evidence of that in a recent e-mail. It was from the wife of a prominent man of part-Cherokee blood, a teacher of the Cherokee language. She wrote: "Since Cherokees or any other Indian nation have never adopted the white man's expression of 'king' or royalty as the leader of their nation, there are no kings in the real Indian world..."
We really don't know how one can be more off base...still talking about Indians (a stupid, meaningless word we haven't used in nearly 30 years) but ignorant of the fact that the rulers of North American native nations were always called 'kings' until about 1820 to 1830, when they wrote their own constitutions. Their native words for their rulers (Oukah, for the Cherokee, and Micco for the Muskogeean nations in the Old South area) were ALWAYS translated as 'king'. The word "chief", which came into use much later, which these misguided Cherokees and other natives accept as their own, is also an English word. It is quite foreign to all Native Americans, who have now almost universally adopted it into their vocabulary, but it is still not indigenous to any natives of this country. In fact, early documents and treaties used the terminology: Kings, head men, etc., sometimes later changed to Kings, rulers, chief men, etc. It was not until the 1820's that the word "chief" became a noun instead of an adjective -- it took nearly 300 years.
To illustrate this wrong-headed thinking (rewriting history according to their ignorance) we would have it that Louis Phillippe, for example, was not really the King of France, since the French word "Roi" is translated into 'king' in English, which would make him only the "chief" of the "French tribe".
Comment: with Cherokees like this with their ignorance and weird misunderstandings, we really don't need enemies. They are us.
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GENOCIDE AT WORK: If you are calling yourself a Cherokee "Indian" you are part of the genocide. If you are talking about the Cherokee "tribe" you are part of the genocide. No, sorry, we've suffered too much from this stupidity to care to be nice about it!
It is only necessary to say that you are a Cherokee (there aren't any other people by that name in the world). And the Cherokee Nation is the incorporation of the three ancient Cherokee nations, east of the Mississippi, each having had its own king (called an "Oukah, Uku, Ukuh"-- phonetic spelling).
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