There are currently six non-voting members in the House. Washington D.C. and four permanently inhabited US territories – American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands – are represented by a delegate, who serves a two-year term. Puerto Rico is served by a resident commissioner, who is elected every four years.
AND Trump et al envisions Greenland to be the 51st state instead! So unfair!
“The tribe’s right to a congressional delegate is enshrined in the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell from 1785, the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, and the Treaty of 1866.”
Marmalade Mugabe toilet-tweet-trolls Elizabeth Warren in 3, 2, 1…
Good move. Now we need a new treaty that confers actual Congressional seats on the Nations. They need proper representation. Also give the vote to delegates from Guam, etc… Time to fix our so-called democracy.
The tribe’s right to a congressional delegate is enshrined in the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell from 1785, the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, and the Treaty of 1866.
This is fascinating to me, though I’ll cop to ignorance of these facts. While I can easily understand why the Cherokee Nation is invoking this right to semi-representation now, I wonder why they didn’t do so earlier? It would be quite the irony if Trump’s “Pocahontas” slur against Warren spurred this decision.
They took the whole Cherokee nation
Put us on this reservation
Took away our ways of life
The tomahawk and the bow and knife
Took away our native tongue
And taught their English to our young
And all the beads we made by hand
Are nowadays made in Japan
Cherokee people
Cherokee tribe
So proud to live
So proud to die
They took the whole Indian nation
Locked us on this reservation
Though I wear a shirt and tie
I’m still part redman deep inside
Cherokee people
Cherokee tribe
So proud to live
So proud to die
But maybe someday when they learn
Cherokee nation will return, will return
Will return, will return, will return
Well past time. A century past time.
The fact that DC, Gaum, PR, VI, Marianas are unrepresented today is ridiculous. Whatever happened to the Teabaggers and “taxation without representation”? DC would vote for full representation, probably Guam, others uncertain.
Repubs argue that First Nations can vote locally, then pull massive voter suppression before the 2016 and 2018 vote, especially in the upper midwest. I don’t know if delegates are the answer or a perpetuity, but First Nations have to do something.
Warren has some plans. Maybe she should get on this.
THere was a negative article on Warren written by a Cherokee activist who claims that Elizabeth is lying about her Native American heritage and claims to have traced Warren’s ancestry back many generations and how the family essentially squatted on NA lands. However, she had nothing to say about the DNA test which proved EW’s Native ancestry.
While the author may be sincere, she is an activist and advocate for Native issues, it’s strange that this comes up now and was promoted by RW media and picked up by Huffington (all without comment about the DNA test) just as it is becoming clearer that Elizabeth Warren is the one they have to fear the most. This trope may well become the 2020 equivalent of HRC’s emails as they try to paint Warren as a fake and a liar and they are using someone who speaks for legitimate Native issues as a useful tool for their propaganda. I do hope, and don’t believe, it won’t have the legs this time especially in the face of cheatolini wrecking the country from the WH.
" Women’s History at Yale University: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, delegate to the United States Congress representing the District of Columbia."