The Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes is an organization that unites the tribal governments of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole nations.
An announcement made on Tuesday by the Indian Health Service, or IHS, acknowledges that Freedmen citizens of the Seminole Nation were being denied services at the clinic in Wewoka, Okla.
Black Freedmen struggle for recognition as tribal citizens
200 years later, many of the descendants of Black slaves, known as Freedmen, are still fighting to be recognized by tribes that once owned their ancestors. Author: Associated Press Updated: 6:35 AM PDT May 1, 2021
As the U.S. faces a reckoning over its history of racism, some Native American tribal nations that once owned slaves also are grappling with their own mistreatment of Black people.
When Native American tribes were forced from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern United States to what is now Oklahoma in the 1800s known as the Trail of Tears thousands of Black slaves owned by tribal members also were removed and forced to provide manual labor along the way. Once in Oklahoma, slaves often toiled on plantation-style farms or were servants in tribal members homes.
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