Allowing intermarrieds and freedmen membership (with their many descendants) would destroy the nation.

Q,

The fact is that the Dawes roll segregated those persons of African descent from other members of the Cherokees nation including pure blood Cherokees, Cherokee/Whites and Whites who were adopted into that nation {or paid to be included into that nation}.

Freedmen have been citizens of the Cherokee nation for 100 years or more. Some would think from reading your statement that the Cherokees were considering granting citizenship to folks who had never had it before.

Your statement about the rights of any native group to determine its membership sounds lofty. However, imo, material greed and racism are the two reasons for taking citizenship from Cherokee Freedman whose ancestors were listed on the Dawes roll, and the 'part whites' whose ancestors weren't listed on non-Freedmen Dawes roll.

In case you didn't read it, I'll repost these quotes from my previous posts to this thread:

"Opponents of Freedmen citizenship would have the Cherokee people believe that all Cherokee Freedmen have no Cherokee blood. This too is false. Many Cherokee citizens listed as Freedmen have Dawes testimony or census cards showing they had Cherokee blood or an Indian parent. Numerous Freedmen received the 1908 Guion Miller payment from the U.S. government, which only went to citizens who documented Cherokee blood and whose ancestors had crossed the tragic and now infamous Trail of Tears. A majority of Freedmen have actually documented Cherokee blood, some even doing so in court. The court case "Sango" emphasizes that a Dawes-enrolled Freedmen may have Indian ancestry and Indian parents but was not permitted to record their blood because of their African ancestry and the desire of the Dawes Commission to free up Indian land for sale to whites."

-snip-

"...the people who are being asked to vote on the freedmen citizenship rights are not being told that the freedmen have had rights since at least 1866, have served on the tribal council, generally have Cherokee blood, and voted between 1971 and 1983 (between 1907 and 1971 there were no elections at all). When did Cherokee people ever kick people out of the tribe? And why kick out only freedmen who came before Delaware and Shawnee – all 3 have treaty rights to citizenship? "

-snip

I'll answer Marilyn Vann's question about why kick out Freedman and "others"-greed and racism, that's why.