If you read the BS regarding the upcoming Cherokee Nation Holiday with any understanding of what they are saying, you the reader will learn the truth. They cannot celebrate the signing of the 1839 Constitution  without actually telling the truth about what it is and means, and they never do, they outright lie or skirt around the truth, and always bring up the 1906 Act, for semblance of legitimacy for CNOT.

People if you will, note that the CNO never brings up the fact or  provide proof positive that the constitutional government of the Cherokee people created in 1839 continued on after Oklahoma statehood.  and the signing of that historical Document is what they profess to be celebrating...And if the reader can achieve this understanding, then the logical question then becomes, By what authority did Ross Swimmer create a new constitution, in 1975?

And if the answer to that question is, as we contend, he had no authority; Therefore the government he created with the bogus 1975 Constitution  is not the Cherokee Nation...And yet the claim of Chad Smith always is, The Cherokee Nation continues in "full force and effect" as it existed in 1906.  Folks he can NOT have it both ways.

Smith  makes it clear that the government of the Cherokee people, styled The Cherokee Nation, was created by the Constitution of 1839, and; Smith makes it clear that the constitutional government of the Cherokee Nation was continued in full force and effect by the 1906 Five Civilized Tribes Act, and we most assuredly agree, and; Smith makes it clear that the Cherokee National Holiday, begun in 1953, was developed to celebrate the signing of the 1839 Constitution.  And we most assuredly agree, BUT CNOT did not come in to existence until 1975.

If the 1906 Five Civilized Tribes Act continued the "constitutional governments" of the Five Civilized Tribes, then where did those governments go? Three of those tribes, the Creeks, Choctaws and Chickasaws, operate under revised constitutions in accordance with the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. Only the Seminole Nation and Cherokee Nation remain unreorganized and under the same disabilities imposed by the Curtis Act (no courts, laws unenforceable), Five Tribes Act (government continues on, President to appoint Principal Chief) and the Principal Chiefs Act (Cherokee people get to popularly select Principal Chief, who is authorized to 'promulgate rules').

We saw from an article by Mildred Mellowbug in 1973, that the Cherokee people were in the process of revising the 1839 Constitution to create a real representative government, when that process was hijacked by Ross O. Swimmer when he created the organization known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma by ignoring the Cherokee people's revisions and created his own constitution of 1975.

He claimed, as has every chief since him, that the authority to create this constitutional government is derived from the 1970 Principal Chiefs Act. Yet, any reasonably intelligent reader can simply look at the wording of that act, which provides for the Principal Chief to "promulgate rules" for an election and nothing more, and ascertain that Swimmer had no authority to create a new constitution.

These are not revelations unknown to the leadership of the CNO. The evidence of their efforts to cover up and validate the CNO government is evident in the language inserted into the Delaware Recognition Bill which states that the United States recognize the CNO and its 1975/99 constitution as the only valid governing document.

We have said this before and offer it again: if the CNO is the legitimate government of the Cherokee Nation, then why would such language be necessary? The traditional language in most bills proposed to Congress merely state that the tribe, "from time immemorial" and does not seek to have Congress, in a sideways manner, give some kind of lefthanded recognition to a government that supposedly is already recognized.              

The Cherokee Nation was organized as a government under the terms of the 1839 Constitution by a delegation of the inherent sovereign authority of the Cherokee people to govern themselves. That right has been reaffirmed time and again by the courts and Congress.

The U.S. Congress restricted the sovereign authority of the Cherokee people's government in 1898 by passing the Curtis Act, which stripped the Cherokee government of its courts and made its laws unenforceable in the state and federal courts.

Following major efforts on the part of Congress to dismantle the Cherokee Nation, a bill was passed in 1906 continuing the Cherokee Nation "in full force and effect" according to law, but completely removed the legislative branch and took democracy away from the Cherokee people by providing that the principal chief would be appointed by the President.