The Cherokee Nation is on a quest to recover and preserve hundreds of documents related to tribal governance dating back to the 1820s. Earlier this year, Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. formed the Principal Chiefs Records Task Force and has been asking for community support to retrieve lost documents. He spoke with Ozarks at Large reporter Daniel Caruth about the effort late last month.
Caruth: Chief Hoskin, thanks so much for talking with me and for informing us about the task force. To start off, can you just tell us a little bit about the task force, what this is, and what sort of documents and records you guys are looking for?
Hoskin: It's a task force led by former Cherokee Nation Council member Keith Austin, who has a real interest in history, historic preservation. That's really part of what the task force is looking at is history. And what we have to recognize is that since the inception of the office of Principal Chief, which dates back to the early part of the 19th century, our tribe has been through a great deal. We've endured the Trail of Tears, rebuilding, the American Civil War, the suppression by the United States during most of the 20th century. Then another rebuilding. And through all of that, what we find is that the records of our principal chiefs, which are really the people's records in many cases, have gone to other institutions, libraries, universities, museums; in some cases we have some in our own archives.
But we really need to take a survey of where these records are and do everything we can to get them back, because they do rightfully belong to the Cherokee people. And the other issue is looking forward. How do we, in the future, manage the records of principal chiefs, even in contemporary times where we do have control over our own records generally? My observation has been that we don't have really comprehensive and robust laws and policies concerning how principal chief records should be managed and handled, when should they be disclosed for public review, whether to citizens or maybe even future historic researchers? We just don't have a good body of law. So we're looking for a recommendation in that regard.
Caruth: And so far, who all of you reached out to, I know you're working with many of the other chiefs. You have this survey going out to people trying to get information from them. Who are you reaching out to and what are you maybe are there any is there anything you have found that's been surprising? And what are you hoping to get?
Hoskin: In terms of surprises, one of our task force members is a gentleman named Jack Baker, former council member, historian himself. He shared with me just one anecdote about a former chief, John Ross, the great chief of the 19th century for the Cherokee Nation that saw us get through pre-removal, removal and rebuilding. Some of his records are in Tennessee in private hands, maybe, maybe very well cared for, but not within the sort of legal or even physical reach of the Cherokee Nation. And so that small anecdote that some of one chief's records are in private hands is alarming, but it's also underscores why we have to undertake this effort and do the best we can to get these records.
Now, in terms of who we're working with, the task force itself is full of people within our government that really focus on historic preservation or they have some experience in government service. And so those folks are knowledgeable. Every living former principal chief has been invited to be on a serve in an advisory capacity in every chief except one has agreed. So that's really good. And so Chief Ross Swimmer is the one that goes back the furthest and he happens to be the oldest among us. And he's a real joy to talk to. And I think the most important, though, is surveying the Cherokee people. What is their expectations for how we should handle records? What's their understanding of how we handle records? And I think that will help inform us, particularly with the policy going forward.
Caruth: Speaking of that policy, once you've collected these materials and you're able to recover maybe things you didn't know you were even out there, what is the policy that you guys are looking at going forward? How will these be stored? What sort of way will they be made available to tribal members in the future?
Hoskin: The general philosophy that I believe should drive us, and I anticipate the task force will recommend this, is a strategy of transparency and a strategy of public ownership in terms of the Cherokee people own these records, but they're held by their government, but made accessible. Now then you get into very important details. Some documents might be so contemporaneous to current events that perhaps there is, like the federal government, that there's a period of review, there's a period of time before perhaps everything is disclosed, every scrap of paper, as a general matter. But they ought to. There ought to be a process for accessing these documents.
Number one is people ought to know what the government's doing. And the head of the government is the principal chief, similar to the president of the United States. And there's certainly a need for people in the country to have access and see transparency with the president of the United States. And the same should be true with the Cherokee chiefs. So I think it's going to be a body of law and policy and regulation and practices that really favor transparency. And then we have to actually care for these records. We live in a day and age which many of those records now are digital. And so caring for and managing digital records is different than taking care of hard copy records. But there's still a need to have a system and storage for hard copy records, which is why we're glad we have our museums and a new heritage center that will be built within the next few years and a national archive. So we're well equipped to handle these things. We just really need the body of law and policy to execute.
Caruth: What is the significance of doing this? Why go through this? What's the significance of it and why? What value does it add to be able to have this?
Hoskin: First and foremost, it is an act of sovereignty for people to organize themselves in a government and then understand what that government does. And that takes the form in any good democracy of a body of record, some of them will be quite monumental. It could be treaties, could be drafts of treaties in modern times, could be records relating to really important public policy initiatives. And so it's an act of sovereignty. It's also about transparency for our people. People need to have confidence in their government. And you can't have confidence in a government that is secretive.
Now, I don't believe we're purposefully secretive, but I think we have to acknowledge as Cherokee leaders that if we don't know where all our past records are, and if we don't have a good system for managing current records and in the future, then people should not be as confident as we want. And so we want to build that confidence. I think lastly, there's really a matter of posterity and history and future researchers. We're the Cherokee Nation, largest tribe in the United States. There is a need and a desire to research what has gone on in the Cherokee Nation in the past. Obviously I live in what I consider to be the modern times now. But a century from now, maybe they want to go back and see what Chief Hoskin was doing or Chief Baker or Chief Swimmer. And so there ought to be records that are accessible, it seems to me.
Caruth: Have you talked with other tribes about this, about how they've managed records or been able to keep that? I mean, you guys are the largest in the nation, but I know maybe there's some contemporary tribes that have done a good job of this or I don't know.
Hoskin: I haven't personally, but it would not surprise me, given the direction that we gave our task force, that it wouldn't surprise me if they did that. And I think that they should do that. I think what people will find that tribes have in common is that we have this long history of how we keep records of who we are. Went into written form, particularly with the Cherokee Nation. People should also understand that we had a written language that we used to write a constitution and a body of laws and form a government, on the basis of the rule of law in the early 19th century.
So we're talking about, for us, a long period of a written tradition and written records. But other tribes have a similar history. And I think what we all have in common is that the oppression and dispossession at the hands of federal Indian policy came at a cost of a lot of things that are important, one of which is our own stories where we came from, and some of that is governmental records. And I think what we're finding ourselves in is in a situation where we don't have all of our records, and I would suspect many tribes could relate to that. And perhaps they have figured out a way to repatriate, and maybe we could learn something from them.
Caruth: And I want to go back a little bit to that issue of safeguarding the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation. And I know it's been a battle for the past few years with the governor there in Oklahoma. And this process of, because you guys have done so much work in getting more people on the rolls and get more people, I guess, centralized within the tribe. How has that process been? And I guess, how does this effort also help to do that?
Hoskin: I think the process of citizenship has been even more effective as time has gone by. Part of it is outreach, notoriety in a way that we drive it. In other words, we're telling our own story, communicating with our citizens directly rather than them learning about it, because many of them live across the country, rather than learning about it from other sources that may not be reliable. So I think there's increased confidence in the Cherokee Nation and an interest in becoming citizens, and we've adapted technology in a way that allows us to take a body of nearly 480,000 citizens that has grown exponentially just in the time I've been in office, and make sure we process those.
I think where the relationship is is one technological, the technology we have used to access our citizens and let them access us in the government, and some things as basic as changing an address to things more complicated, like applying for a program that takes technology. And I think the technological piece is going to be important prospectively to managing records. So we have that invested. But I think as a general matter, it's a sign of our strength that we're growing. But I do get concerned that what may lag our growth is taking care of things like historic records and current chief records, because we have so much going on with the Cherokee Nation, it's very easy to keep singular focus on programs and services and language and culture. Those are all important. What we need to do is to occasionally take a breath and say, okay, where are we in the management of things that might seem mundane, like records, but are very important to the Cherokee people?
Caruth: What is the timeline for this process? I know your survey closes June 30. And then what's the timeline for, I guess, getting those recommendations in and moving this down the line?
Hoskin: The task force is moving along. Of course, they'll need to absorb the survey, which coincides actually with the deadline that I set. It won't be unreasonable if the task force needs a little bit more time. But I think the other thing is how long will it take us to implement their recommendations. And obviously they're just a set of recommendations. They're not necessarily things that will become law. I think that is the thing that's going to take at least the rest of the time that I'm in this office. I will leave office in August 2027. So I want to make sure that we implement as much as possible that the task force has recommended, but I think it's really going to be the work of years ahead. The repatriation piece of it is going to take, I think, even longer, but I want to make sure that before I leave office, that we have a strategy and kind of a methodology for how we are going to find these records that we have identified, where they are. Let's go have conversations with institutions about repatriation. And I think that's also going to take years to fully realize the goal there of repatriation.
That was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Chuck Hoskin Jr. speaking with reporter Daniel Caruth. The task force is expected to release their findings to the public later this year.
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