From the New York Times: House Panel Weighs Whether to Seat a Cherokee Delegate in Congress

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A House committee on Wednesday weighed a proposal to seat a delegate from the Cherokee Nation in Congress, holding a historic hearing that grappled with how to uphold a promise made in a nearly 200-year-old treaty that has yet to be fulfilled.

The hearing, held by the House Rules Committee, was part of a push to allow Kim Teehee, a veteran policy aide and a longtime Cherokee Nation official, to be seated in the coming months as a nonvoting delegate in the House, which would add the first delegate from a tribal nation ever to serve there.

The effort has prompted members of Congress to publicly confront some of the darkest moments in American history and the string of broken promises to Indigenous people across the nation.

If it granted the position to Ms. Teehee, 54, the House would fulfill a once-overlooked stipulation in the Treaty of New Echota, which forced the nation to relinquish its ancestral lands in the South. The treaty led the U.S. government to force 16,000 members of the Cherokee Nation on the Trail of Tears, a deadly trek to land in what is now Oklahoma. A quarter of those forced to leave — about 4,000 — died before they arrived, as a result of harsh conditions, starvation and disease.

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- Click here for the treaty.

- From Britannica: Treaty of New Echota.

- In 1835, the Cherokee were promised a seat in Congress. They're still waiting.

- Wikipedia: Indian Removal Act.