Members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma are advocating to have a delegate from the tribe seated in Congress in this legislative session.

They point to the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which provided members of the Cherokee Nation with $5 million and land in Oklahoma in exchange for several million acres of their ancestral homeland east of the Mississippi River.

That treaty also included a right to have a delegate from the tribe in the U.S. House of Representatives, a right that so far has never been exercised. In the fall of 2022, the U.S. House Committee on Rules held a hearing on the matter, a sign that Democratic leadership was interested in considering the matter.

“The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties,” Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said during the hearing. “I’m here to ask the United States to do the same.”

In 2019, Hoskin nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to former President Barack Obama, to become the nation’s first delegate. Teehee was later unanimously approved by the tribe’s governing council, which represents roughly 440,000 citizens. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) publicly supported the Cherokee Nation’s call for a delegate.

In a statement, Pelosi indicated that the hearing was a “key first step toward identifying what actions must be taken to honor this long-standing promise.” She further indicated that “the House Democratic Caucus will continue to explore a path toward welcoming a delegate from the Cherokee Nation into the people’s House.”

Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), who led the Rules Committee at the time, agreed and said that not only should the delegate be approved, but action should be taken quickly. “The history of this country is a history of broken promise after broken promise to Native American communities,” McGovern said during the hearing. “This cannot be another broken promise.”

A Cherokee Nation delegate would likely have similar rights as other delegates currently seated in the House from the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa.

Those delegates are able to sit on and vote in committees as well as introduce and debate legislation, but they cannot vote on bills under consideration by the full House. Still, there are several outstanding questions surrounding the issue, including whether other Native American tribes should be afforded the same right and whether the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is the appropriate successor to the tribe that entered the Treaty of Echota.

For example, McGovern said in the hearing that the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina both reached out to his office stating that they should be considered as the successors. McGovern said that representatives from the Delaware Nation and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma have also requested Congressional delegates because of similar treaties.

In a December 2022 op-ed, Delaware Nation President Deborah Dotson argued that a delegate from the Delaware Nation should be seated first as its treaty with the U.S. dates back to 1778. She added that a delegate from the Cherokee Nation would not necessarily represent the interests of all 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.

“The idea that another tribal delegate can represent Delaware Nation falsely assumes that all tribes are the same,” Dotson wrote. “We are not. Delaware Nation does not want a delegate from another tribe making decisions about us.

A Cherokee Nation delegate does not have intimate knowledge of our culture, history or needs. Tribes across the country feel the same.” An additional complication is how to approve the matter through the legislative process.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the chairman of the Rules Committee, has stated that lawmakers would need to draft a bill that would need to move through the committee process. “Until somebody actually submits a bill, it’s a theoretical discussion,” Cole told reporters following the hearing.

With Republicans taking control of the House following the 2022 midterms, Cole said it could be more difficult, “but not impossible,” for such a bill to move.

Congress did not take action on the issue at the end of its session in 2022, but Hoskin is hopeful that lawmakers will resume work on the issue in 2023. “We’ve waited nearly two centuries,” Hoskin said. “We’re not going to let the clock striking midnight at the end of the session slow us down one bit.”

For more background, see the February 2019 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Indian Treaty Rights.”