The Cherokee Nation is looking for Congress to make good on a provision of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota guaranteeing them a non-voting delegate seat in the US House, similar to the delegates sent by Washington DC and insular territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico, Axios reports. The Nation’s scholars did not even realize they’d been screwed out of something resembling representation in the treaty until a few decades ago – a treaty in which their forebears fulfilled their end of the bargain by marching from their ancestral homeland in Georgia and Alabama to present-day Oklahoma (historians estimate more than 4,000 died on the “Trail of Tears”).
To that end, in 2019 the Tribe Principal Chuck Hoskins appointed Kim Teehee to be the Nation’s delegate-in-waiting. House leadership say they’re working on getting her seated, chalking the delay up to administrative questions and fortifying the appointment from legal challenges.