Why We Are Pursuing Legislation to Protect Treaty Rights and the Cherokee Nation Reservation from Attacks by the UKB

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By Chuck Hoskin Jr

August 10, 2025

Guest Opinion. On August 14, 2019, I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the Cherokee Nation. My oath requires me to defend against the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians’ attacks on our sovereignty and treaty rights with the United States. In seeking an amendment to a federal statute, I am defending our Nation just as Chief Wilma Mankiller once did.

The Cherokee Nation has existed from time immemorial. We have an unbroken relationship with the federal government. We are the exclusive tribe party to every Cherokee treaty with the United States. That includes the Treaty of 1866, the agreement which is the very basis for the Cherokee Nation Reservation.

Although our government was shackled at times by failed federal Indian policy, the Cherokee Nation was never extinguished and continues to thrive today, continuing to invest in our communities across the Cherokee Nation Reservation. Even in 1839 when we were nearly divided beyond repair, our ancestors forged the Act of Union and a new constitution, forever mending our wounded nation so that it could continue on, as set forth in the Act of Union, as “one unbroken body politic.”

In 1946 Congress authorized recognition of “the Keetoowah Indians of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma,” described as “a band of Indians.” The UKB achieved recognition in 1950.

Contrary to the UKB’s claims, they do not trace any governmental authority to the “Old Settlers” which organized before the Trail of Tears and which, in any case, was absorbed into the Cherokee Nation by the 1839 Act of Union. The 20^th century UKB is simply a tribal government formed as a “band” of Cherokees in 1950.

In 1991 Chief Mankiller secured for our nation an extra measure of protection against growing UKB hostilities. Congress passed a law, effective in 1992, requiring Cherokee Nation’s “consent,” before any other tribe could put land into trust within our reservation. The law codified the protection that every other tribe in the country enjoys under federal Indian law.

Chief Mankiller was right. After all, the Treaty of 1866, our last treaty with the United States signed nearly a century before the UKB was created, is the basis for our jurisdictional boundaries, which has consistently been recognized by the federal government and federal courts.

In 1998 UKB lobbyists quietly placed a rider in a federal appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999 that remains on the books. The rider was simple: it changed “consent” to “consultation.” The change led to questions about whether the UKB could place land into trust within a tribal jurisdiction that belonged solely to Cherokee Nation by treaty.

The 1999 rider did nothing to undermine the status of Cherokee Nation as the same tribe today that existed before the founding of the United States or our unbroken relationship with the United States. But it creates uncertainty and undermines our rights.

The UKB uses the 1999 rider to attack the Cherokee Nation sovereignty. Most recently a Biden administration political appointee at the Department of the Interior gave some short-lived credence to some of the UKB’s claims in a legal opinion on his last day and last hours in office. That absurd legal opinion was quickly suspended. Likewise, the Courts and the Congress have never adopted UKB’s claims that it essentially has the same, or even a superior, claim to the 19^th century Cherokee treaties as the Cherokee Nation. Yet, the 1999 rider hangs over us.

Uncertainty over the status and the authority of our two tribes creates chaos and danger. The UKB, lacking any authority to engage in law enforcement activities across the reservation, actively and unlawfully arrests people across the Cherokee Nation Reservation. People’s safety, lives and liberty are at stake. Just as offensive: UKB’s phony claims to our treaty rights and our reservation is the theft of our very history. Those claims are lies.

That is the reason why I have asked Congress to fix the 1999 rider building upon the language secured by Chief Mankiller. As an act of fairness to the UKB, I have asked Congress to allow the 76 acres containing the UKB’s government complex to remain in trust. The legislation does nothing to undermine the authority of the UKB as a band of Indians authorized in 1946. It simply serves as a check on the UKB’s ridiculous claims that, notwithstanding its 20^th century origins, it somehow possesses Cherokee Nation treaty rights and governing authority established in the 19^th century. The truth of history and the rule of law will prevail.

I cannot keep my oath if I stand by and watch the UKB assert authority over the reservation secured by our ancestors in the 19^th century following the Trail of Tears. I cannot do it, and I will not do it. As long as I hold this office, I will keep my oath. I will defend, undeterred, Cherokee Nation against attacks by the UKB and their flawed opportunistic view of history.

Learn more at CherokeeFacts.com

Chuck Hoskin, Jr. is the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

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