A Kituwah Punk Commentary: A PROMISE TO A PEOPLE

The treaties say “Cherokee people.” Politicians keep hearing “Cherokee government.” That difference has a cost — and Cherokee people are the ones paying it.

Erik Terwey did the reading. That deserves to be said first, and it deserves to be meant.

The former public school teacher from Bartlesville wrote something most non-Native candidates running for Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District never bother to write: a careful, researched argument for honoring a treaty promise made to the Cherokee people 190 years ago. He named all three governments. He acknowledged complexity. He said Washington should not decide which Cherokee government speaks for the Cherokee people.

For a non-Native candidate in this district, that clears a bar most never attempt.

This piece is not an attack on that work. It is an invitation to go further — because the gap between where Terwey’s piece ends and where the actual record begins is exactly where Cherokee people keep getting left behind. Not by bad actors. By people who learned the vocabulary of sovereignty without learning the disputes living inside it.

READ THE TREATY AGAIN

Terwey quotes Article 7 of the Treaty of New Echota correctly. The operative clause reads: “The Cherokee Nation shall also be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.”

Cherokee Nation. Two words. Named entity.

Cherokee Nation’s legal team leads with that language and calls the delegate right unique to their government. The text gives them ground to stand on.

But the treaty does not end at Article 7. The 1835 treaty’s own preamble states it was entered into “with a view to reuniting their people in one body.” The signatories — however disputed their authority — claimed to act on behalf of the Cherokee people rather than solely as isolated individuals. Read the treaty. It says so.

The 1846 Treaty of Washington, signed to settle the divisions removal had created, declared that the Cherokee reservation lands “shall be and remain the common property of the whole Cherokee people.” Interior Solicitor Robert T. Anderson’s 57-page legal analysis, M-37084, issued Jan. 17, 2025, confirmed that Article I of the 1846 Treaty proclaimed the lands “shall be secured to the whole Cherokee people for their common use and benefit.” Not to a government. To a people.

M-37084 concluded — following more than two years of legal, historical, and genealogical analysis of submissions from both the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma (UKB) and Cherokee Nation — that the UKB is a successor in interest to the tribal signatory of the 1846 Treaty. That the Cherokee Reservation is UKB’s reservation for purposes of federal land-into-trust regulations. That UKB has exclusive tribal jurisdiction over its trust lands. And critically: the opinion concluded that the Treaty of 1835 guarantees exclusive Cherokee jurisdiction over the reservation — not exclusive Cherokee Nation jurisdiction. Those are different things, and the opinion says so plainly on page 49.

On Feb. 28, 2025, Interior Senior Advisor Gregory Zerzan, exercising delegated Solicitor authority, placed M-37084 under “Suspension Review.” Every M-opinion issued between Jan. 20, 2021, and Jan. 20, 2025 was suspended pending individual review to determine whether each should be reinstated, modified, or revoked. During the suspension period, no Interior unit may rely on covered opinions as “authoritative and binding without first consulting with the Office of the Solicitor.”

Suspended is not repealed. Suspended is not wrong. The legal reasoning in M-37084 remains in the federal record. The history it documents did not change when the administration did. The 57 pages of analysis did not disappear because a new Solicitor’s office wants to review them. What is paused is the binding force on Interior decisions — not the conclusions themselves.

The record may support an interpretation that treaty obligations extend beyond a narrow government-only reading. That is not a settled conclusion — it is a contested legal and historical question. But it is the question. Any candidate serious about Cherokee delegate legislation needs to grapple with it directly, because the question of who holds treaty rights under New Echota cannot be answered by reading Article 7 alone. You have to read the whole treaty. Then the 1846 Treaty. Then M-37084. Then the suspension memo. Then you understand why the question is hard — and why pretending it is simple does a disservice to every Cherokee person who has waited on the answer.

WHAT THE FRAMEWORK MISSES

Terwey’s piece, read carefully, operates on the assumption that all three Cherokee governments begin as live claimants to the Article 7 right — that Congress should create a mechanism and let the Cherokee people resolve the internal question among themselves. That destination is sound. The problem is the foundation beneath it.

M-37084, even under suspension, appears to provide a legal framework that may affect how successor-interest claims are analyzed — an architecture that any legislation on this topic needs to account for before the mechanism gets designed. Without that accounting, legislation built on Terwey’s framework embeds a contested legal assumption inside a neutrality argument. It sounds like staying out of the question. It is actually answering it — quietly, and without the work the record requires.

That line — “embeds a contested legal assumption inside a neutrality argument” — is the core of this critique. It is not a criticism of intent. Terwey is asking the right question. The argument here is that the answer requires more foundation than the piece currently provides.

As of publication, no public record reviewed by Candy Mink Springs Media LLC establishes whether the Terwey campaign has contacted UKB Chief Jeff Wacoche or Congressional Delegate Victoria Holland. That gap matters because the piece calls for consultation while the author’s own consultation with the affected government remains unconfirmed. The record does not establish contact occurred. It does not establish it did not.

That is not a character flaw. It is a gap. Good-faith candidates fill gaps when someone points them out. Terwey has time — and the door is open.

WHAT WE DON’T NEED MORE OF

Indian Country has seen this pattern before. A candidate learns the language of sovereignty. Posts about it. Builds a platform around it. The people the platform is supposed to serve are still waiting on a phone call.

It has happened with candidates who praised one Cherokee chief in June and called another tribe’s land fight “abstract” by September — then made a video about tribal sovereignty in January without ever contacting the tribe at the center of the dispute. The written record documenting that sequence is retained by Candy Mink Springs Media LLC.

The point is not to relitigate that. The point is that Cherokee people — Keetoowah Cherokee members, Cherokee Nation citizens, Eastern Band citizens — have watched this pattern long enough to recognize it on approach. A candidate who writes about treaty rights without reading the treaties in full. A candidate who calls for consultation without consulting. A candidate who finds the language of Indian Country without doing the work Indian Country actually requires.

Terwey is not that candidate yet. His piece is evidence of genuine effort. The question is whether the effort continues past the writing — into the documents, into the phone calls, into the hard conversations that don’t make for clean campaign posts.

WHO THIS IS FOR — AND WHERE THEY LIVE

If you are reading this in Tahlequah, you already know what the UKB’s 76 acres means. The UKB has federal recognition. It has members. What it does not have is the land-into-trust status that would allow gaming — and the revenue gaming produces funds the human services, healthcare access, and tribal programs that members depend on. Other tribes generate that revenue. The UKB cannot, yet. That gap shows up in what does and does not get funded for the people on the other end of it.

If you are reading this in Washington, D.C., or Portland, or Phoenix, or anywhere else in Indian Country — the structure of what happened here is not unique to northeastern Oklahoma. Questions involving land status, jurisdiction, and federal recognition carry practical consequences for housing, development, and access to services. When those questions go unresolved, the consequences land on specific people, in specific communities, on specific mornings.

A federal promise made to a people, administered through governments, contested by governments, suspended by administrations, while the people wait. That is not a Cherokee story. That is an Indian Country story. It plays out from the Dakotas to Nova Scotia to the Illinois River.

The UKB member waiting on an application approval for services is not waiting on a legal opinion. He is waiting on a roof. The elder who drove to Okmulgee on Aug. 23, 2025, to watch the Muscogee (Creek) Nation National Council vote on a resolution supporting the UKB — and went home without allies after a 9-4 tabling vote — did not go home to a policy debate. She went home to the same situation she woke up to that morning.

That is not abstract. That is a Tuesday.

THE DOOR IS OPEN

Terwey has time. His piece is a starting point, not a closing argument. If he reads M-37084 in full — suspended or not — he will encounter a legal framework that his legislation will likely need to confront. If he reads the suspension memo, he will understand exactly what is paused and what is not. If he calls UKB Chief Jeff Wacoche and Victoria Holland before the bill language gets written, he will understand what the consultation needs to resolve and why it has not resolved in 190 years.

The 1846 Treaty said “the whole Cherokee people.” That phrase is still in the federal record. M-37084 devoted substantial legal analysis to the historical and treaty questions surrounding those claims. None of that went away on Feb. 28.

The conversation does not have to begin in Washington. The phone numbers already exist.

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Troy Littledeer is a journalist, reporter, photographer and researcher from Candy Mink Springs in Adair County, Oklahoma, and a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. His work has included Cherokee Nation Communications, the Cherokee Phoenix, contributions to the Stilwell Democrat Journal, NDNSports.com, and Osage News, with reporting focused on tribal sovereignty, government accountability, education, community issues, and Indigenous affairs. A longtime supporter of Oklahoma high school athletics and NCAA sports, he also has a strong interest in women’s basketball and broader sports coverage. He received the 2025 Tim Giago Free Press Award from the Indigenous Journalists Association for defending tribal press independence.