Saturday, September 24, 2005

Ten Commandments for Cherokees

I find it hard to motive myself to any interest, let alone outrage, in the public display of the Ten Commandments debate, but this is amusing:

The tribal council is making plans to mount a copy of the Ten Commandments in the council house where government meetings are held, and possibly display them throughout other public buildings in the Cherokee Nation of western North Carolina.

[snip]

There is no First Amendment issue involved, and even if the American Civil Liberties Union wanted to make one, it can't. The U.S. Constitution does not apply to Cherokee, nor to any other Native American tribe for that matter, according to Cherokee's Attorney General David Nash.

"We are a sovereign nation and we can pretty much post anything we want in our council chambers," said Kephart. "For once the federal government is not going to tell us what to do. We can feel good about it because we are standing up for God. The more it becomes controversial, the more we need to stand firm."

Hat tip.

4 comments:

tom said...

I hope my band, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, follows suit. We've already dealt with an ACLU lawsuit about prayer at football games at our tribal high school, because our tribe (and nearly every other tribe) receives Federal money. It didn't matter, thank God.

Anonymous said...

I'm with you on this one. Don't Care. At All.

OTOH- the comments on the blog you linked to were amuseing, in a stupid kind of way.

Anonymous said...

Incidentally, I'd guess that this is part of a conflict between Christianized and traditional members of the tribe. Not that I have much experiance with either.

John said...

Agreed, Methotaku. Having been an athiest, I can completely understand why some people occasionally feel intruded upon by Dobsonites.