Indigenous Citizenship Investigations | Part V | November 2, 2026
By the Khemetic News Investigative Research Desk
After forced removal and the Civil War, the Creek Nation signed a treaty that abolished slavery and recognized citizenship rights for qualifying people of African descent and their descendants. A century and a half later, the meaning and implementation of that promise remain the subject of tribal court decisions and federal litigation.
A promise written into a treaty
The June 14, 1866 Treaty with the Creeks, ratified July 19 and proclaimed August 11, was negotiated after the Civil War, when the United States demanded new agreements from several nations in Indian Territory. Its Article 2 abolished slavery within the Creek Nation and addressed the rights of people of African descent who met the treaty’s residence or admission conditions, together with their descendants.
The treaty provided that qualifying people would enjoy “all the rights and privileges of native citizens”, including an equal interest in the soil and national funds. Those words concern citizenship in the Creek Nation. They should not be mistaken for a grant of United States citizenship or an automatic federal or state voting entitlement.
The same agreement carried a territorial cost. Under Article 3, the Creek Nation ceded the western half of its then-domain, estimated in the treaty at 3,250,560 acres, in exchange for stipulated payments. The document thus joined emancipation and citizenship provisions to a major land cession, illustrating the unequal political conditions under which Reconstruction treaties were made.
From a treaty right to a federal enrollment category
More than thirty years later, federal officials sought to create rolls of citizens and Freedmen for the Five Tribes as part of the allotment system. The Curtis Act of June 28, 1898 (30 Stat. 495), section 21, specifically confirmed a Creek Freedmen roll made by J. W. Dunn before March 14, 1867, and directed the Dawes Commission to enroll surviving persons on that roll, their descendants, and certain other people of African descent lawfully admitted by Creek authorities.
This provision is significant: the federal statute did not simply invent a Creek Freedmen population in 1898. It referred to an earlier roll and to citizenship decisions already made under Creek law. At the same time, the federal process converted complex family and political histories into separate administrative categories used to distribute individual land allotments.
The National Archives explains that Dawes enrollment cards were organized by nation and category, including citizens classified “by blood” and Freedmen. Some Freedmen cards recorded information about the people who had enslaved an applicant or an applicant’s parents. The existence of these categories reflects federal recordkeeping; it does not establish that all ancestry or kinship relationships can be inferred from a single category label.
Researchers should consult the enrollment cards, associated application jackets, earlier tribal rolls, and testimony together. A roll can be critical evidence in a particular legal enrollment process without being a complete history of a person’s ancestry or cultural identity.
What the Muscogee Nation’s Supreme Court decided in 2025
In Citizenship Board of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation v. Rhonda K. Grayson and Jeffrey D. Kennedy, No. SC-2023-10, the Nation’s Supreme Court issued an opinion on July 23, 2025 affirming a lower-court judgment.
The court held that Article 2 of the 1866 treaty extends citizenship rights to Creek Freedmen descendants and that citizenship restrictions based exclusively on descent from the Creek “by blood” Dawes Roll conflict with the treaty. It directed the Citizenship Board to apply the treaty to Grayson, Kennedy, and future applicants who establish qualifying lineal descent through the Creek By Blood or Creek Freedmen Dawes Rolls.
The court also examined the Nation’s own legal history and rules of treaty interpretation. This was a decision of a sovereign Indigenous nation’s judiciary interpreting the Nation’s constitution and treaty obligations—not a federal court simply imposing a new tribal identity.
That distinction is essential. Tribal nations possess governmental authority over citizenship, but the Nation’s Supreme Court concluded that its treaty obligations were part of the law governing the exercise of that authority.
Why the court decision did not immediately end the dispute
Implementation became contested. In August 2025, Principal Chief David Hill directed the Citizenship Board to continue accepting Freedmen-descendant applications but to pause issuance of citizenship cards while legal and policy changes were reviewed. The Nation’s leadership argued that implementation required attention to its constitution and governmental processes; Freedmen descendants argued that delayed documentation withheld rights the court had recognized.
On May 12, 2026, the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court denied additional contempt and injunction motions and closed that particular appeal. According to reporting by Mvskoke Media, the court said the separate enforcement questions required the proper parties and procedures. Closing that appeal did not reverse the July 2025 citizenship ruling.
On July 23, 2026, Grayson and Kennedy filed a new lawsuit in federal court seeking enforcement of the recognized citizenship rights and issuance of cards. The lawsuit alleged that delays prevented their participation in tribal affairs, including voting. Those allegations are claims by the plaintiffs, not a finding that the defendants violated federal law.
The Muscogee Nation responded that questions of its law and governance should be handled through its own governmental institutions and emphasized the need for consistent constitutional procedures. We found no verified final disposition of the separate July 2026 federal action in the sources reviewed for this article; its ultimate outcome should not be presumed.
Four legal questions that must not be confused
Tribal citizenship: Membership in a sovereign nation, governed by that nation’s laws, treaties, and relevant judicial decisions. The 1866 Creek treaty and the 2025 Muscogee Supreme Court ruling directly concern this status.
United States citizenship: A separate legal status. The Indian Citizenship Act of June 2, 1924 extended U.S. citizenship to Indigenous people born within the territorial United States who were not already citizens. It did not itself determine who belonged to the Creek Nation.
Voting rights: Tribal elections and U.S. federal or state elections operate under different legal systems. A tribal enrollment card may be important to participation in tribal elections; U.S. citizenship and applicable election law govern federal and state voting. The 1924 law did not immediately end discriminatory state barriers to Indigenous voting.
Land title and allotment: The Dawes-era records were also created to allocate land and administer property interests. A person’s enrollment category, tribal citizenship, and ownership of a specific allotment are related historical questions, but not identical legal facts.
What the federal government’s own review found
A Government Accountability Office report, published December 15, 2025 and publicly released January 14, 2026, examined Freedmen descendants across the Five Tribes. It cautioned that the treaties and judicial histories differ from nation to nation. Its population estimate of 146,400–395,400 Freedmen descendants in 2022 covers all five nations combined, not the Muscogee Nation alone, and is a modeled range rather than a count of enrolled citizens.
The GAO described the Muscogee enrollment question as evolving as of November 2025. Later reporting documents additional litigation in 2026. Neither the GAO estimate nor an attorney’s separate estimate of descendants should be represented as a verified number of currently eligible Creek applicants.
Names, languages and the limits of federal labels
Mvskoke names both a language and a people’s self-designation; Muskogean refers to a broader language family. Creek is a historical English political designation used in treaties and federal records. Yamasee or Yamassee identifies historically distinct southeastern Indigenous communities with documented connections to neighboring peoples. Their histories should be investigated without assuming these terms were universally interchangeable.
The Dawes categories and the 1866 treaty show why this care matters: government records can define legal categories for particular purposes without exhaustively defining the identities of the people described.
The unanswered questions
The original 1866 treaty, the 1898 Curtis Act, the Dawes enrollment records and the Muscogee Nation’s 2025 judicial opinion are available for public examination. Together, they document both a treaty-based citizenship promise and the later systems used to interpret and administer it.
Questions remain about implementation, the status of pending litigation, how eligible descendants will receive documentation, and what steps the Nation’s governing institutions will take. Those questions should be answered through records, direct interviews with affected families and officials, and careful attention to Indigenous sovereignty.
A treaty promise is not the same thing as a card in someone’s hand. The history of Creek Freedmen citizenship is also a history of how legal recognition becomes—or fails to become—practical participation in government.
Primary documents and reporting
- Treaty with the Creeks, June 14, 1866, Articles 2–3, 14 Stat. 785 (Oklahoma State University, digitized treaty text).
- Curtis Act, June 28, 1898, § 21, 30 Stat. 495 (Government Publishing Office).
- National Archives, Dawes Records, enrollment cards and applications.
- Muscogee (Creek) Nation Supreme Court, Citizenship Board v. Grayson and Kennedy, July 23, 2025 (National Indian Law Library).
- Mvskoke Media, May 15, 2026, reporting the Nation’s May 12 enforcement order.
- GAO-26-107118, Tribal Programs: Information on Freedmen Descendants of the Five Tribes, released January 14, 2026.
- Associated Press, July 23–24, 2026, federal enforcement lawsuit and responses.
- U.S. Department of the Interior testimony, July 27, 2022, explaining distinctions among the Five Tribes’ Reconstruction treaties.
Featured image: “Home of Creek Freedmen,” historical photograph attributed to the U.S. National Archives, circa 1900. National Archives catalog identifier 516396; unrestricted use as recorded in the archival description. The image is historical context, not a photograph of the contemporary litigants. Image record and rights statement.
