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I feel like the conditions under which the treaties were signed don’t justify the continued denial of citizenship rights to the Freedmen. Their group is also focused on more than just slave catching, its focused on the 5 Tribes that owned slaves. How can you justify that? Did the settler-colonizers have a gun to their head the whole time saying “You need to use the labor of these slaves or we will kill you?” idk maybe that is the case but it seems very unlikely.
I think that the calls should be directed at tribal leadership because they are the ones who have the power to legally acknowledge the Freedmen’s citizenship right?
Nah, not a gun to the head moment for slave owners. My (limited understanding) is that these 5 tribes adopted slavery and other settler practices/customs in order to appeal to the idea that they were “civilized” and should be left alone, as well as turning to slavery to support themselves after settlers disrupted their territory or hunting grounds. Not an excuse, just loosely explaining, I just think it’s important to remember these tribes didn’t just turn to slavery on their own.
Is slavery okay? Nope. And I agree with you/the OP that the inclusion of Freedmen/descendants into these tribes is important, should be discussed, and no one should assume that all natives were anti-slavery, we should push back on slave owning tribes portraying themselves as allies to slaves, etc. I think I got caught off guard by this discussion (and others the OP had) completely leaving out the role of settlers in the discussion and overcorrected here
I think I assumed that most people would understand that slavery was brought to the tribes by settlers, but that is maybe too optimistic for Amerikkka. I haven’t really spent much time looking into their other resources but maybe they have a deeper discussion of that history somewhere else?
Something on my reading list is Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South by Barbara Krauthamer. I haven’t read it yet but someone recommended it to me. Most of my knowledge on the topic comes from Settlers or The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. and a few other sources but I haven’t done a true dive into native/slave relations
