The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB) of Oklahoma is calling for the urgent removal of a Senate draft clause that would prevent them from launching casino operations or purchasing additional trust land on the Cherokee Nation Reservation.

The action is referred to as "a targeted act of tribal termination" by the UKB.

The proposed amendment, which was only obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, was purportedly written by US Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-2nd Dist.), a member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and a Cherokee Nation citizen.  A future federal spending bill might include it.

Part of the proposed clause states: "Without the Cherokee Nation's written consent, no funds appropriated under this or any other Act may be used to take land into trust within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation Reservation in Oklahoma."

It further states that any existing trust land purchased by another tribe "must be for non-gaming purposes only" and that "no other Indian tribe other than the Cherokee Nation shall possess tribal jurisdiction over such Reservation."

An old feud

With about 15,000 enrolled residents, the majority of whom live in northeastern Oklahoma, the UKB is a separate sovereign government that shares overlapping territory with the Cherokee Nation.

Both tribes, which have their headquarters in Tahlequah and can trace their ancestry back to the old Cherokee people, have fought over geographical sovereignty.  For a long time, the Cherokee Nation has maintained that it has sole authority over Cherokee territory in the state.

In Oklahoma, the UKB has no casinos, but the Nation has ten.  Its 1986-opened class II bingo facility was closed in 2013 as a result of a Nation lawsuit and pressure from state and federal authorities.

A legal prerequisite for tribal gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) was the UKB's absence of federally designated trust territory.

Now, it is different.  After the Nation filed a lawsuit to stop the US Interior Department's (DOI) decision to take a 76-acre parcel of land into trust for the tribe, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the DOI's decision in 2019.

A gaming agreement between the UKB and the state of Oklahoma was struck in April of this year; it is currently awaiting DOI final approval.

‘Secret Pen in a Senate Office’

“This is not a policy disagreement. This is a deliberate, targeted act of tribal termination by … Senator Mullin,” UKB Chief Jeff Wacoche told Casino.org of Mullin’s draft amendment. “The … language is a blatant betrayal of the US government’s trust responsibility, a violation of federal law, and an attack on tribal sovereignty.”

Wacoche even went so far as to refer to the terminology as "genocide by redline."

 "It is being carried out with a secret pen in a Senate office, not with muskets or manifest destiny," he stated.

Now, the tribe is calling on the public, other tribal nations, and members of Congress to put pressure on Mullin and the Cherokee Nation to revoke the planned amendment.

"We are a federally recognized Tribe with our own government-to-government relationship with the United States,” Wacoche said. “To suggest otherwise is to willfully ignore history, federal law, and the truth.”

As of the time of publication, Casino.org has not received a response from Mullin's office on their request for comment.