I’M TIRED.
- Michael Lane
- Aug 8
- 5 min read
I’m tired of fake historians assuming that every dark-skinned person in early America must have been African—and then forcing every tribe, document and family into that conclusion.
I’m tired of Black Indigenous people being told that our existence requires African admixture. A Black Indian does not need an African ancestor to explain why that Indian is Black.
I’m tired of people Africanizing the Gullah Geechee while ignoring their roots among Black Indigenous peoples of the coastal Southeast—including Yamasee communities and peoples connected to the Hitchiti, Muscogee and Mikasuki-speaking world. If Africans later entered some of those communities, that did not Africanize the entire people. Intermarriage is not ethnic replacement.
And I’m tired of that same false logic being applied to my tribe, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
I’m tired of hearing “Creek Freedmen” treated as though it were a DNA result proving African ancestry. It is not. “Freedmen” was a legal and administrative classification. It cannot tell you whether an individual had African ancestry, Creek ancestry or both.
The Dawes Rolls were not created as a neutral genealogy project.
Congress established the Dawes Commission in 1893 to pressure the Five Tribes into abandoning communal land ownership. Its mission was to divide tribal land into individual allotments, decide who would receive land and open the territory to non-Native settlement and development.
The Oklahoma Historical Society describes allotment as an effort to destroy tribal governments, divide communally held land and open Indian land to settlers and railroads—a necessary prelude to Oklahoma statehood.
The Muscogee held land collectively through the Nation and tribal towns. The federal government wanted individual parcels that could be surveyed, taxed, leased, sold and transferred. To divide the land, it first had to divide the people into individuals and federal categories.
The timeline matters. The commission began in 1893. Oklahoma’s first commercial oil well was drilled in Indian Territory in 1897. The enormous Glenn Pool discovery followed on a Creek allotment in 1905. Oklahoma statehood came in 1907.
The allotment machine existed before the major oil boom, but oil made Indian parcels even more valuable to outsiders. Communal land was difficult to acquire. Individually allotted land was far easier to target.
This was not simply: “Let’s document the Indians.”
It was: determine who counted, divide the people, divide the land, weaken tribal government, prepare Indian Territory for statehood and make Native resources accessible to outside interests.
Racial classification served that land policy.
The Dawes Commission separated Muscogee citizens into “Creek by Blood,” “Creek Freedmen” and other categories. Those labels created a false racial binary that Creek family history did not necessarily support.
The Oklahoma Historical Society acknowledges that the commission typically enrolled people of mixed Native and Black heritage as Freedmen and recorded them as having no Indian blood. People with Native ancestry could be placed on the Freedmen Roll while their Native blood disappeared from the official column.
Research on Creek enrollment goes further: formerly enslaved people were placed in the Freedmen category even when they possessed Indian blood through their parents. Other applicants who probably had Indian blood were rejected because the commission followed narrow technical rules instead of deciding their cases on genealogical merit.
That is not an ancestry test.
That is administrative reclassification.
For dark-skinned applicants, perceived Blackness could become a shortcut. Instead of reconstructing maternal lines, paternal lines, clans, tribal towns and earlier Creek records, officials could assign a person to the Freedmen category—or reject the application—and later records would repeat “Negro” as though that settled the question.
Once the government wrote “Freedmen” or “Negro,” Native ancestry could disappear from the paperwork even when it remained in the family.
A person placed on the “by blood” roll could pass a documented blood quantum to descendants. A relative placed on the Freedmen Roll could be recorded as having no Creek blood. Federal classifications could divide relatives into different racial futures.
Then later generations were told to treat those categories as sacred.
That is paperwork worship.
The roll is a source. It is not the source of a person’s ancestry.
A Dawes card documents what a federal commission decided during an allotment program. It is not a complete family tree. It is not a genetic test. It does not prove every Creek Freedman was African. It does not prove every rejected applicant lacked Creek ancestry.
The National Archives preserves approved, doubtful and rejected enrollment records because the process was contested. Serious researchers must examine the complete file, earlier tribal rolls, parents, grandparents, town affiliations, witnesses and surrounding records.
Yet commentators look at one word—“Freedmen”—and announce that an entire population descended from African slaves.
No family reconstruction. No investigation of earlier Creek records. No consideration of the racial assumptions guiding federal officials. Just a label created during a program designed to dissolve communal Native land.
That is not history.
The 1866 Creek Treaty acknowledged that persons of African descent lived among the Creeks. It did not declare every dark-skinned Creek African or everyone later placed on the Freedmen Roll African. It did not erase the Creek ancestry, citizenship, towns, language or kinship of Black Creeks.
The existence of some African-descended people within the Nation does not Africanize every Black Creek—just as Africans joining Seminole communities did not transform the Seminoles into an African people.
Some Creek Freedmen descendants have no detectable African admixture. Some do have African admixture. A federal category cannot answer that question. Each family must be researched on its own evidence.
“Freedmen” is not a race.
“Freedmen” is not a phenotype.
“Freedmen” is not a DNA result.
And “Freedmen” does not mean “not Indian.”
I’m tired of people without tribal citizenship, archival experience, serious genealogy work or community relationships becoming spokespersons for my Nation’s history.
Popularity is not proof. Academic repetition is not proof. A government checkbox is not proof. If your argument is “They were Black, therefore they were African,” you have repeated the racial assumption that made paper genocide possible.
If you are tired too, get equipped with evidence.
Visit nativeblackancestry.com and enter the Native Black Ancestry Digital Archive. Membership is $14. The archive contains primary historical documents we can use to challenge anyone committed to rewriting Black Indigeneity across the Americas.
We need Dawes cards, enrollment cases, rejected applications, allotment files, Creek town rolls, treaties, court decisions and family-level genealogy.
We do not need another spokesperson repeating a federal label. We need researchers willing to investigate how that label was created, what land interests it served and which ancestors it erased.
This is not about asking permission to be Indigenous.
It is about exposing the system that turned Native people into paperwork—and then used that paperwork to take Native land.
I’m tired.
But I’m not silent.
And I’m not giving up.
I’m tired too…..Our people have forgotten who we are, where we come from, and what belongs to us. This land carries the history of our ancestors, and it’s time we reconnect with what was taken and reclaim our voice, our culture, and our power.
It starts with awareness. Dad always says, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” And thanks to Michael, that’s no longer the case.
Thank you, bro, for the work you do. The world needs leaders like you people willing to fight, sacrifice, educate, and lead their people back toward justice, resilience, and honor. ✊🏽🪶
When it all comes down to what's next let's make it good🐢🏝️🏹🦃🪓🪶🗿🐉👑😎
Well said, Mike. Love & Light, 💚✨💜
I help people with this embedded lie as often as it comes out. It’s a systematic miseducation by the
Kabal.
Thanks you did a great job showing the Americans Indians and our history.
GC