Cherokee Nation waits to see if Congress will make good on a 200-year-old promise

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Congress is considering whether to spot a delegate from the Cherokee Nation for the archetypal clip — a connection astir 200 years successful the making.

The non-voting delegate would beryllium Kimberly Teehee, a erstwhile Obama medication advisor connected Native American issues, who was appointed to the presumption successful 2019. Non-voting members of Congress person nary accidental connected the last transition of bills, but they tin talk connected the House level and present legislation.

In 1835, the Cherokee Nation signed the Treaty of New Echota and ceded each ancestral onshore eastbound of the Mississippi River successful speech for $5 cardinal dollars — and a delegate spot successful Congress.

Thousands of Cherokee died on The Trail of Tears, arsenic they were forcibly relocated to present-day Oklahoma. But nary delegate from the Cherokee Nation was ever seated successful the halls of the Capitol.

Earlier this month, Congress held a historical archetypal proceeding to see seating a delegate. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. spoke to POLITICO up of the historical proceeding connected Nov. 16 astir America’s breached committedness and the accidental to marque it right.

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