Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Back to the Cherokee Nation (with Nicka Sewell-Smith) | Episode 34

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Back to the Cherokee Nation (with Nicka Sewell-Smith) | Episode 34 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:02
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It is such a varied and unique story but one of the things that I will say and I often say this is that if you can show, you know or prove a connection to the five tribes and you are, you know, black, you have probably the biggest treasure trove of records in the United States, probably the biggest treasure trove of records in the United States.
• 0:25
  Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
• 0:33
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:37
  Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
• 0:54
  Crista Cowan: One of my favorite genealogical conferences ever held was the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree.
• 0:57
  Crista Cowan: It used to be held every year at the Burbank Convention Center, literally right across the street from the Burbank airport.
• 1:02
  Crista Cowan: You could walk with your luggage from the hotel or from the airport to the hotel, and I think one of the things that I loved about it was the relaxed nature and the fact that there was always so many people who were so interested in getting to know each other.
• 1:19
  Crista Cowan: It wasn't an academic conference solely.
• 1:22
  Crista Cowan: It wasn't just about going there to learn for yourself or figure things out for yourself.
• 1:26
  Crista Cowan: It was also about meeting people and developing this family history community.
• 1:32
  Crista Cowan: Now, sadly, that conference has trailed off in the last few years, but more than a decade ago I had the opportunity at that conference to meet Nicka Sewell-Smith.
• 1:44
  Crista Cowan: She is vibrant and hard to ignore because she is so passionate about family history and particularly about the family history of her African-American and Indigenous American families.
• 2:01
  Crista Cowan: She and I had the opportunity to meet at that conference year after year and develop a relationship as colleagues, and I so respect the work that she has done with her community called Black ProGen Live.
• 2:16
  Crista Cowan: Now, about seven years ago we had an opening for a contractor position at Ancestry and I recommended Nicka and was thrilled when she was interested and even more thrilled when she got the role, and so we've now been actual colleagues working together at Ancestry for that period of time.
• 2:36
  Crista Cowan: And then, almost two years ago now, she was hired and we've had the privilege of working on the same team and I have watched her make family history discoveries that so many people think are almost impossible to make.
• 2:55
  Crista Cowan: But it's because, first of all, she believes that it is possible that African American families can discover their family history, and she's proven that it is possible.
• 3:07
  Crista Cowan: She also digs into the records in a way that just fascinates me, the things that she finds and the connections that she makes.
• 3:16
  Crista Cowan: So I'm really excited for you to listen in on my conversation with Nicka as we talk about her personal family history discoveries and the stories that make up her life and her family tree.
• 3:30
  Crista Cowan: Well, Nicka, thank you so much for joining me today.
• 3:34
  Crista Cowan: I am so thrilled to have you here.
• 3:35
  Crista Cowan: Tell me, because I was trying to remember how long we've known each other.
• 3:40
  Crista Cowan: Did we meet at?
• 3:43
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Jamboree.
• 3:44
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We did meet at Jamboree, but I feel like it's it's at least 10 years.
• 3:53
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Yeah, I'm thinking we might actually have to go back into our ancestry message history to get the like, the actual date, but I'm thinking that I'm thinking it's at least 10 years, yeah for sure.
• 4:04
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Yeah Right, that went by really fast.
• 4:08
  Crista Cowan: And you've worked now with Ancestry for seven, eight years, six years, right, seven or eight years.
• 4:13
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Yeah, became official official a couple years ago almost, which that again that's like time is flying, but yeah, it's been seven or eight years has been a wild ride.
• 4:25
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Lots, of, lots of things that have happened and lots of things to come too.
• 4:29
  Crista Cowan: Yeah for sure.
• 4:30
  Crista Cowan: Right now, I think I would just like to hear a little bit about your origin story into family history.
• 4:35
  Crista Cowan: What is it that got you interested?
• 4:37
  Crista Cowan: What were some of your earliest memories around you know, climbing your own family tree?
• 4:47
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: memories around.
• 4:47
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know, climbing your own family tree.
• 4:48
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: For me, I think I come from a family of storytellers so it was natural for me to move into the space of being a genealogist and a family historian, because details are so important in storytelling and you know you have to be able to know the beginning, the middle and the end of a story.
• 5:02
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And you know, on both sides of my family people are extremely good at telling stories and having good beginnings, middles and ends, and you can't really hit those points unless you have like key, you know, like hallmarks throughout the way.
• 5:15
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So naturally, the most you know ubiquitous thing that people would talk about would be the family history.
• 5:22
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know why were we in this house or why did this event happen?
• 5:26
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You have to collect all the different reasons why those things took place.
• 5:30
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: My mom and both my dad were extremely good storytellers my mom, you know she still is, and you know one of the jokes that I mentioned about her is that no one's house is ever just like my aunt's house or my uncle's house.
• 5:45
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's the address and I think that speaks to just the level of detail that again that I come from with storytellers is.
• 5:53
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's not?
• 5:54
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Oh, it's Uncle King's.
• 5:55
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: No, it's 6131 South Racine.
• 5:57
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I never lived in Chicago a day of my life, but I knew exactly where my uncle's house was and I knew exactly where my aunt's house was in New Orleans.
• 6:05
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's 1931 Tupelo.
• 6:06
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Like I know that and and you know I'm, I'm a by-product of the great migration and it also speaks to that as well.
• 6:13
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Right, because it's how do you have an aunt living in New Orleans and an uncle in Chicago and you're in Chicago or or the other uncle that's at what?
• 6:21
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: 2436 Christian Street in Philadelphia, like everyone's address, was like a central part.
• 6:26
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So, naturally, if you grew up in a family where people are great storytellers and they they know the beginning, middle and the end and they have all the crucial details throughout to, you know, develop a story arc, and I don't think they really thought about it from that vantage point, they just were telling stories.
• 6:41
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But now that it's a solid part of like what I do, I recognize that they had all the elements like they could totally do my job.
• 6:52
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But you know it just, it just felt natural.
• 6:53
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So every two years my entire life we've had a family reunion.
• 6:55
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: On my mom's side of the family it's just second nature and there are a whole generation of us who grew up going to these things and have real, no real idea of cousinship.
• 7:04
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Even those before us had no real idea of cousinship.
• 7:07
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You're just a cousin, you know.
• 7:09
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So it's just innately a part of us.
• 7:12
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So we're just used to gathering, talking about family and I think for me I more in a way formalized what we were doing.
• 7:20
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Like I had cousins who had taken up doing the family history for their respective branches and I brought those together because it didn't make sense to me that we had like it wasn't so much two versions of the family history.
• 7:33
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It was just like OK, well, here's this branch in their side.
• 7:36
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I was like no, that doesn't make sense, it's the same family.
• 7:39
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So I brought those things together and, you know, then I commandeered a research team of four of us that would go and go on these research trips and throughout the Deep South only one of us lived there and we would go into the courthouses, into the state archives, to go and do research and go and find more about our family.
• 8:00
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And then, you know, the other thing is that I had the benefit of the Internet.
• 8:03
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Where my predecessors did not, you know, they were going to the National Archives and you know, going to the courthouses and doing that stuff, they knew the people that they were documenting For me.
• 8:12
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: There were a lot of folks that I did not know but that I learned as a result of doing the research.
• 8:17
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And you know, now the reunions are definitely more about learning about the family history, but it's the number of people who are coming now who had no idea, and it's as a result of us publishing and seeking out people and connecting them back to the family.
• 8:36
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That's what the reunions have turned into.
• 8:39
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So there's a whole old guard which I'm like, reluctantly now part of the old guard.
• 8:47
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Like who wants to be a part of the old guard.
• 8:49
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But now I'm sort of.
• 8:50
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know, we're ascending right to the status of the old guard, and then there's a whole new set of people who are coming.
• 8:58
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know, who are almost.
• 9:00
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know, a lot of them are our age and they've never been to a family reunion before, and it's the first time they've come.
• 9:06
  Crista Cowan: So who is the focal point for this particular reunion?
• 9:09
  Crista Cowan: Is it a particular couple in your tree?
• 9:13
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Yeah, so for the Atlas's it's King and Rachel Atlas, and as of this year, we've traced their history 200 years in the United States and right.
• 9:25
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And most people, when they hear that, they make an assumption that those ancestors are European and they're not.
• 9:30
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They're, they're black.
• 9:32
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They were enslaved.
• 9:33
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They were in their 60s when slavery ended, you know.
• 9:37
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So the majority of their life they spent as enslaved people, but the last part of it, last maybe quarter of it or so, they spent it as free people.
• 9:45
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And you know, there are so many incredible folks that descend from that one family and until you tell the story and it's summed together, you don't really truly see the impact of, you know, of the particular family group.
• 10:00
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, you talked about the details right of the storytelling.
• 10:03
  Crista Cowan: Now in your family, and as you go back further, sometimes those details become more and more sparse.
• 10:10
  Crista Cowan: But that totality of the story is where you gain the power the further back you go.
• 10:16
  Crista Cowan: So, King and Rachel, how many children of theirs have you been able to identify?
• 10:21
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So the thing that's interesting is there's a tree that my cousin put together in 1985.
• 10:27
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's crazy, it's going to be 40 years that I've been immersed in family history.
• 10:31
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know like it was one of the first things I learned to read, you know like it was one of the first things I learned to read.
• 10:36
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And he had identified both of them, their son, john King Jr, william, stephen, andrew, and then there was potentially a daughter named Sarah, and those were the children that we knew of.
• 10:50
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It wasn't until I found them as enslaved people that I found another daughter that they mentioned, another infant child named Mary.
• 11:03
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And so now when I talk about them and their children, I have to talk about her, because from our vantage point, we didn't know she existed and it doesn't seem like she grew to adulthood.
• 11:10
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But she was there.
• 11:12
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And even with people's thoughts around enslavement and being able to find your ancestors' stories, then we have 11 pages worth of information on them as enslaved people, and it took 20 years to get to that for me.
• 11:29
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That was my journey.
• 11:31
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That wasn't even the people before me who sought it out, who knew the grandchildren of these folks and knew the great grandchildren of these folks, that sought it out.
• 11:41
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It, you know, and in some ways I think that also speaks to technology and why we should embrace it, is because it wasn't for not looking, it wasn't for not having the clues, it's just a lot of it was access.
• 11:52
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So you know, we know a lot about their lives as enslaved people.
• 11:56
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We know that for King he was in Kentucky and then was his slaveholder passed away.
• 12:03
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: The slaveholder's son was in Southern Louisiana so he went from, you know, cotton to sugar, which was extremely dangerous.
• 12:11
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: A lot of enslaved people suffered injury and died as a result of sugar.
• 12:15
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And then, once that slaveholder passed away, he went to that slaveholder's wife.
• 12:20
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Once she passed away, he went to the slaveholding woman's uncle and in all of that moving he goes from Kentucky to southern Louisiana, to Mississippi, to southwest Arkansas, and then that slaveholder dies and they end up in Northeastern Louisiana and that's where my family knows we're from.
• 12:41
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But because of researching them as enslaved people, we know that they went to all of those different places.
• 12:49
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We're now at the point where we're researching King and Rachel as separate people, like no one thought that that was possible.
• 12:56
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We thought we'd always see a couple, but now we're researching them as separate people Like no one thought that that was possible.
• 13:00
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We thought we'd always see a couple, but now we're researching them as separate people.
• 13:02
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: If you would have told me years ago that I would have made it to researching their lives for 200 years of American history, I probably would have thought that you were talking crazy, talk Like I don't know, that I would have thought it was possible.
• 13:14
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But again, I think it's all a perfect storm to say you know, it's being curious, not feeling like you know that no at that time is always going to be a no.
• 13:29
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know it's still continuing to chase it.
• 13:31
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I often talk about fashioning and ice sculpture and with researching the enslaved.
• 13:35
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's very much that you, you get an ice sculpture, you come and show up to the party and it's beautiful, it's whatever the thing is, but it took somebody time to shave that down and to fashion it and to use all types of tools to get it into the place that you see it when it's done, and researching the enslaved is like that.
• 13:54
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So one of the things I'm very grateful for is that I did not give up, you know, because had I had I done so, I would not have been able to make it as far as I have.
• 14:03
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, I love this and I think we could probably you could probably share stories for days about the things you've discovered about King and Rachel and their ancestors.
• 14:13
  Crista Cowan: Thinking back to this group of descendants, now you've got all of these children named.
• 14:18
  Crista Cowan: Do you have any idea, like how many total descendants they have now?
• 14:24
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's more than 4,000.
• 14:25
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And in addition to that, this side of the family has been extremely open to DNA testing.
• 14:34
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So we have close to about 175 family members on this side tested.
• 14:38
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So when new people show up as matches in common, we automatically know how they're related because we just, it's just very structured.
• 14:49
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's like oh, here's this person, there's this person, all right, you're Atlas, like you know.
• 14:52
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And for some people it's funny in the genealogy community like they are consistently looking for me or for us in their matches because they want to be related to us, which is funny because and I'm just like really, but people really do they're constantly looking and they want some sort of a connection again, which is, to me, it speaks to the power of the narrative and the fact that we've been able to tell that story, and to tell it on our own terms and to continue to find more things out about it.
• 15:22
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, I love this idea of you know one couple 165 years ago came out of enslavement with this family of children and that has perpetuated and now we have thousands of descendants that you've identified that's not counting the ones maybe that are still out there and and the fact that you know how many of them really even know the story of this couple or the story of this family and the expanse of things that these people have been able to do in the world today.
• 15:55
  Crista Cowan: And I just like that's what gets me so excited about family history is the idea that I'm gathering those family members and introducing them to our story.
• 16:07
  Crista Cowan: And I love when I get to work with you and I see that same passion and fire in you that has kind of come to light as you've dug into this information and really put this story together.
• 16:20
  Crista Cowan: I think it's a really beautiful testament to your tenacity and persistence and patience along the way.
• 16:27
  Crista Cowan: So that was your introduction to family history, was these reunions and this storytelling.
• 16:32
  Crista Cowan: You have a unique part of your story that I love, which is not only are you the descendant of enslaved people, but you are also connected to the Cherokee Nation.
• 16:45
  Crista Cowan: So tell me a little bit about when that information came to light, or was it always kind of a pervasive part of your family narrative?
• 16:53
  Crista Cowan: And then what inspired you to pursue the connection?
• 16:59
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So the thing that's interesting is that I grew up hearing about connections to the Cherokee Nation, but when I started digging into the family, you know, in terms of research, I questioned it and you know, if we go by the quote, unquote hallmarks, my grandmother had beautiful, long hair.
• 17:16
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: My grandmother had high cheekbones, like what you know like, but she was born in Veneta, oklahoma.
• 17:24
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That should have been my first clue that there was something to what was being said, because most people in the world don't know where Veneta, oklahoma, is.
• 17:35
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's in the extreme northeastern corner of Oklahoma and I knew my grandmother was born there.
• 17:42
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I knew I had a ton of family in Kansas City, kansas.
• 17:45
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And now that I'm immersed in this, those should have been my first clues, because, especially when you're talking about Freedmen of the Five Tribes, clues because, especially when you're talking about freedmen of the five tribes the five tribes being the Cherokee, choctaw, muskogee Creek, chickasaw and Seminole Nations those folks are in the eastern portion of Oklahoma and if they leave there nine times out of 10, the first place they go is Kansas City or they're in Texas, like Dallas.
• 18:16
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Attend.
• 18:17
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: The first place they go is Kansas City or they're in Texas, like Dallas.
• 18:20
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And again, that's all I had.
• 18:24
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And then when I started looking at the census and you know, finding my great grandparents, and then finding my great grandfather on a DOS card for me I was like okay, so the stories they were telling weren't crazy lies.
• 18:33
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And then, you know, finding the book with Ike Rogers in it and asking my dad who is this guy, and you know, understanding he was a relative, not knowing that was my great great grandfather.
• 18:45
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And then going into the history of enslavement within the Cherokee Nation and the fact that these Native American groups they're citizens of their nations were slaveholding.
• 18:58
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I never learned that in school, like I had no idea.
• 19:02
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So for me, it took me a bit to just process that information, like what you know, realizing that there were enslaved people on the Trail of Tears and not just there were enslaved people, that some of my ancestors walked the Trail of Tears and not just there were enslaved people, that some of my ancestors walked the Trail of Tears with their slaveholders and that some of my ancestors themselves walked the trail.
• 19:22
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So it is such a varied and unique story.
• 19:26
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But one of the things that I will say and I often say this is that if you can show, you know or prove a connection to the five tribes and you are, you know, black.
• 19:38
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You have probably the biggest treasure trove of records in the United States and it is not even a question.
• 19:47
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And I think if someone says, oh well, you know, maybe if they're known, it's the number of first person accounts that you just cannot get anywhere else in the country where people are actually asking these folks what's your name, how old are you, who are your parents, who are your grandparents, who are your aunts and uncles?
• 20:10
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Who was going around handing out family group sheets in the early 1900s?
• 20:14
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But for freedmen we basically have that equivalent, in particular Cherokee, and so it's been an incredible journey, just again to sort of do the same thing that I did with the Atlases, which is reconnect the family, in particular from Ike Rogers and the children that he had.
• 20:34
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Yeah, it's so funny because I always have thought like Louisiana always has a special place in my heart, but Oklahoma is really, really I won't even call it second, it's like 1A and 1B.
• 20:49
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Every time I'm there, I have to start off in Fort Gibson and then, once I go there, kind of pay my respects where Ike died, I go out and do whatever else I need to do and it's just yeah, it's been.
• 21:04
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's been an interesting journey for me.
• 21:07
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 21:07
  Crista Cowan: So on your mom's side you have King and Rachel and on your dad's side you have Ike, and, and you know, and were you raised with stories about Ike, or is that something that came?
• 21:19
  Crista Cowan: Was his identity, something that came to light as you started looking into that particular branch of your family tree?
• 21:27
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Ike's story came out as I started researching and once I talked to people outside of my immediate family he just became this larger than life figure, like he still is.
• 21:39
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Often say that if I spend time researching other branches of my family for too long, ike Rogers is going to surface somewhere.
• 21:48
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Whether it is a new descendant emailing me, someone from a library, a television production, it never fails.
• 21:57
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: If I was focused on my mama's side too long, he is gonna pop.
• 22:01
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He pocks up and and and folks laugh and I'm like I'm so serious.
• 22:05
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It always like literally last week happened to me, wasn't there?
• 22:09
  Crista Cowan: wasn't there a photo in a bathroom in a hotel?
• 22:13
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: yes, see, now you, now you know what I'm saying.
• 22:15
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So I, I was randomly in Dallas going to a wedding and I walked in it's like in a loft or something, you know, like it's like a random hotel, and I'm like, why is Will Rogers over the toilet?
• 22:29
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Now the average person would be like, okay, it's just a picture of Will Rogers.
• 22:33
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But here's the thing Will Rogers' father, clement Van Rogers, was a slaveholder.
• 22:37
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He was gifted enslaved people from his father, robert Rogers.
• 22:40
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Two of those individuals that we know for sure were Houston and Charles Rabb Rogers.
• 22:46
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Based off of oral history and DNA, it looks like Charles and Rabb were Ike's uncles.
• 22:52
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So I, you know everything around Will Rogers, all of that, like I'm starting to research it.
• 23:00
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That's, who reached out to me was the curator at his at his Memorial Museum last week.
• 23:05
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That to reach out to me and I'm like, how do I know more?
• 23:08
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But that's the thing, that's the beauty of just research.
• 23:13
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So, yes, I resurfaces always he's going to.
• 23:16
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 23:16
  Crista Cowan: So you have these connections to these places in Oklahoma and you mentioned earlier the Dawes Rolls.
• 23:23
  Crista Cowan: Just briefly explain to people what those are, because I think that's something that people may hear about but don't always really understand the significance of that when they are trying to make those connections to some of those indigenous tribes.
• 23:38
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Yeah.
• 23:38
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So with the Dawes Act, what happened is you have the territory of Oklahoma, which is gonna become a state by 1907.
• 23:46
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And for the five tribes they in particular for the Cherokee we held our land in common.
• 23:53
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So, like now, if I go to where you are, I can go to the clerk's office and pull up the deed for the house that you have, right, and it says Krista Cowan on there, and you can come here and do the same thing.
• 24:06
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And mine is the same thing.
• 24:07
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We didn't that.
• 24:09
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We didn't have it like that.
• 24:10
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I could live right next to you.
• 24:12
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That's my land, ok, I put a fence up, blah, blah, blah.
• 24:14
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Ok, that's your land too.
• 24:15
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It was, it was all held in common.
• 24:17
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Your land too.
• 24:20
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It was all held in common.
• 24:20
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But when we moved into statehood in Oklahoma, we could not do that.
• 24:22
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: The American system works differently.
• 24:23
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You have a deed to your stuff, I have a deed to mine.
• 24:25
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So in order for them to apportion the land appropriately, people had to go through the vetting process of their citizenship, and that's where the Dawes Commission comes in.
• 24:35
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And unfortunately, the Dawes process was segregated If you were identified as a freedman, which that term has a lot of connotation.
• 24:47
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Freedmen are people who descend from people who were formerly enslaved by citizens of the Cherokee Nation.
• 24:52
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But in my experience and in talking with and researching other people, many of us who have been deemed freedmen also have a degree of Indian blood, because we are sharing ancestry with people who were considered to be quote by blood.
• 25:07
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And so with the segregation of the cards, the quote by blood, they have a blood quantum on them.
• 25:13
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They list a parent's name, the person who's applying, mother, father, all of that.
• 25:18
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But for the freedmen they do not have a blood quantum.
• 25:21
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They list the person's name, they list their slaveholder along with the name of their parents you know mother and father and their parents slaveholder.
• 25:30
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And once you, you know, went to Dodge, you appear to the court, gave your basic details.
• 25:36
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They would look to see if you were on previous roles.
• 25:40
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Remember I talked about our amazing sets of records Before 1880, there's the 1880 roll, there's the 1883 roll, there's the 1890 roll, the 1896.
• 25:51
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And those are all censuses, whereas when I'm researching outside in the US I'm like dang, we don't have anything from 1881 to 1899.
• 25:58
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Not in the Cherokee Nation.
• 25:58
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: We got a ton of stuff so they had to prove that you were on those previous roles If they didn't need to provide witnesses that stated that you came back to the Cherokee Nation within the terms that were defined by the Treaty of 1866.
• 26:15
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And people spent a lot of time.
• 26:17
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I mean, these files are huge and if you made it through that process, which was for my great grandfather his file was so short gave his basic details.
• 26:26
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Here's my mom, here's my dad.
• 26:27
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Okay, his mother was on 1880.
• 26:30
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Boom, that's it.
• 26:31
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And then he moved on to a land allotment and that's how he got land and then later he applied for my two oldest great aunts.
• 26:39
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They got land and then later he applied for my two oldest great aunts.
• 26:42
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They got land allotments as well.
• 26:43
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And now those Dawes cards are what are used to determine whether or not someone can get citizenship today.
• 26:48
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I actually was just talking to my niece yesterday because I've been on a.
• 26:52
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know, since I got approved for citizenship, it's been my goal to get every single one of my aunts and uncles and descendants from Ike Rogers everyone's lines validated so that when it came time for them to submit their documents it was much easier.
• 27:10
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So I'm on my last one of my grandmother's siblings.
• 27:14
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I've been able to bear out my siblings and get my brother and you know several other family members.
• 27:22
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I mean I think I'm close to about 30 family members I've helped get their citizenship.
• 27:27
  Crista Cowan: Wow, that's amazing.
• 27:28
  Crista Cowan: Tell me why that was important to you to become a member of the nation, and then also why you're pursuing so vigorously this citizenship for your family.
• 27:42
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So the history between the Cherokee Nation and its freedmen has been, you know it's been very just, challenging.
• 27:51
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Right now we're in an incredible time.
• 27:54
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But even after the Treaty of 1866, which that is what truly ended slavery in the Indian territory for the Cherokee Nation, my ancestors were not under the Emancipation Proclamation, they were not under the 13th Amendment, because the Cherokee Nation was its own country.
• 28:09
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And so Treaty of 1866 abolished slavery.
• 28:12
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It also granted citizenship to the descendants, the enslaved descendants and their people.
• 28:19
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And from the very beginning we had to consistently fight for our rights.
• 28:23
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And there have been, you know, a multitude of times where you know it's been put up to a vote.
• 28:29
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: A very small minority of people will vote and they will disenroll us.
• 28:33
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And so I waited for years, literally held on to my documents for years, and one of my cousins filed one of the last suits that happened and she's like send your stuff in.
• 28:45
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And I'm like are you sure?
• 28:46
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: She's like yes, send it in, like, send it in.
• 28:48
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And so I sent it in and I was the first person in my family that was enrolled in more than a hundred years.
• 28:54
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And again, this is not because I have this far off relation.
• 28:58
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: No, my great grandfather was on the Dawes roll, my two great aunts.
• 29:01
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They were enrolled, they voted.
• 29:03
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I found out later that my grandmother's brothers, they did the same thing, but they all got disenrolled.
• 29:09
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And my aunt, who was the oldest child, she had this letter from when they disenrolled her because I guess she had written to the nation about something and they're like oh, in order for you to get enrolled, you have to have this and that.
• 29:26
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And she wrote important, take care of this on the envelope.
• 29:27
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: But she died and then my grandmother got that envelope from her sister.
• 29:28
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: My grandmother couldn't take care of it and then it rolled to my father and then my father couldn't take care of it because he died.
• 29:34
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So then it ended up in my hands, which is why I consider it my responsibility to help my family get enrolled, because now I'm the one taking care of it.
• 29:44
  Crista Cowan: So really, it's about a restoration of rights and of recognition, and is there more to it than that for you?
• 29:55
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I definitely think it's that.
• 29:56
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I mean, you know the last election, I walked into the you know the voter's office and I just presented my information and I voted.
• 30:04
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know what I mean.
• 30:05
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Like it was like you know, because for me it's more than just, oh, I have this card.
• 30:10
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's the fact that you know, it's honoring my ancestors who survived the trail.
• 30:16
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's honoring my ancestors who lived long enough to see freedom and those who could not.
• 30:20
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's the fact that Ike was writing letters to the editor in the 1880s and 1890s advocating for my citizenship today.
• 30:29
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And so what do I look like?
• 30:31
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Not acting that out and acting at like just passing it up and not helping other people in my family achieve the same.
• 30:39
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It just doesn't make any sense.
• 30:41
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: There's a line he says.
• 30:42
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He said it would be a shame for the Cherokee to deny one of their own.
• 30:47
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: And he said if you have all the rights of native Cherokee, so do I.
• 30:54
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It would be a hard matter for a Cherokee to adopt their own child.
• 30:59
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: That doesn't make any sense.
• 31:00
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: They're already your kid, and so you know.
• 31:03
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He said my children have Cherokee blood in their veins.
• 31:05
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He knew this wasn't someone else writing on his behalf.
• 31:09
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He was literate.
• 31:10
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So he was very clear and I'm like, if he is saying this, think about this Formerly enslaved, then fought a whole civil war.
• 31:18
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Okay, us Deputy Mars Marshall that's who we're talking about is writing this and he is saying that his kids have Cherokee blood in their veins.
• 31:26
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Who am I to question that?
• 31:28
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He's the one.
• 31:31
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: His grandparents walked the trail or were forcibly removed, like I can't know, like that's an open and shut case.
• 31:39
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So I definitely think I am him and he recognizes that I am him today and that's why I'm so steadfast on it.
• 31:51
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know, I literally there's a couple.
• 31:53
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Last week I was like, okay, I'm checking documents before they send them, let me see them, let me make sure they're good.
• 31:59
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Okay, if they give you this, here's this and, yeah, that cousin DNA testing is how I found him.
• 32:07
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So you know.
• 32:09
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So I think if there's anything to like summarize some of this, especially for the people who've been doing genealogy for a while, it's the fact that you need technology.
• 32:18
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So definitely be open to new things, because I think if I hadn't half the stuff that I know and that I'm able to do, I wouldn't be able to do.
• 32:28
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely Right.
• 32:30
  Crista Cowan: Our family members for so long kept those little written pieces of information, the envelope right, that was passed down one generation after the other.
• 32:39
  Crista Cowan: And now we can cast such a wider net because of the digitization of records, because of DNA, we're able to gather that family so much easier.
• 32:50
  Crista Cowan: As you think about kind of your hope for the future with, specifically around your citizenship in the Cherokee Nation and and the next and up and coming generations, what is it that you hope for?
• 33:01
  Crista Cowan: What is it that you want them to know?
• 33:04
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I think right now we're in such a beautiful place.
• 33:08
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know we have an exhibit that is specifically talking about the history of freedmen in the Cherokee Nation.
• 33:13
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It has been up for two years.
• 33:16
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: It's at the US Marshall's Museum in Fort Smith right now and Ike is in it.
• 33:21
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He's part of it and like the fact that the nation is even acknowledging us in that way, it was very big, it was a huge deal.
• 33:30
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: The fact that there has been a report made about where we all live, and like the fact that there are efforts being made to acknowledge our historical sites within the Cherokee Nation, like all these steps are incredible and it's because of our chief Chief Hoskin has.
• 33:45
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: He's just so good at recognizing that, like, the more diverse we are, the better we are, and that's what I hope we go into the future with.
• 33:53
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Is not this?
• 33:54
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Oh, this is a shame and a stain and we should never talk about it.
• 33:57
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: No, it's a part of our history and we're, you know, really ignoring and dismissing a whole segment of our populace when we choose not to address these things, and not just a segment of our populace.
• 34:10
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So many of us are interrelated and are only finding out as a result of DNA testing or, you know, going through genealogy.
• 34:17
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So that's what my hope is for is just for us to continue to be just embracing, you know, going through genealogy.
• 34:19
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: So that's what my hope is for is just for us to continue to be just embracing.
• 34:23
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: You know of everyone and everyone's journey and story to the nation.
• 34:28
  Crista Cowan: It's interesting to me that you know for so many years so many people from all backgrounds have had this mental block around whether or not family history is really for them or whether it's possible whether they can uncover those stories, whether they can make those connections.
• 34:44
  Crista Cowan: And one of the things I love about hearing about your journey is just how you just make it seem so possible.
• 34:51
  Crista Cowan: And it's not without hard work and a ton of effort, because I know how much effort you put into it.
• 34:56
  Crista Cowan: But the fact that you've been able to make these connections into and through enslavement and into the Cherokee Nation and the richness of the stories that are available there, I think it's just so impressive and I hope that it's inspiring to people, that people recognize that it is possible to make these connections and it is possible to find these stories and that the advancement of technology will only make it more possible in the future.
• 35:26
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: I definitely agree.
• 35:28
  Crista Cowan: Well, thank you so much for being here.
• 35:31
  Nicka Sewell-Smith: Thanks so much for having me.