The Cherokee Principal Chief's Records Task Force released a report last week listing the locations of thousands of documents related to the Office of Principal Chief dating back to 1827, when the department was founded. The committee was created through an executive order signed by Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. in April.
Hoskin said those records should be declared property of Cherokee Nation.
"We should seek maximum repatriation," Hoskin said. "That should be our goal."
Some records, like 2,000 documents from the John Ross administration, who served as the first Cherokee principal chief elected under the 1827 Cherokee Constitution, are located near the reservation at Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum.
But the results are not conclusive.
Many of the locations listed by the task force are listed as "low confidence," such as engravings and paintings of Ross and former Principal Chief Lewis Downing that could be located at Yale University in Connecticut. Only five – all in Oklahoma – are listed as certain.
According to the report, this could be due to the lack of an executive records policy for the tribe that led to descendants keeping items or selling them to private parties. Some of the Ross papers, for example, were sold by descendants to Thomas Gilcrease, the founder and namesake of the Tulsa-based museum.
Hoskin said the tribe could develop a policy similar to the federal Presidential Records Act of 1978, in which records related to each U.S. president are preserved and considered public property.
"Our expertise is in a position now where we really are not just the appropriate holders of our own records, that's always been true, but we in many cases, are probably the superior party to be caring for them from a capacity standpoint," Hoskin said.
The task force also consulted five living former chiefs. Hoskin said that's because historical preservation extends beyond political strife.
Hoskin said he hopes the report will begin conversations with institutions nationwide, but added the work will extend beyond his tenure and across generations.
"Honestly, (institutions) should be on notice that we have this interest and this capacity in making really the rest of the century, the century of Cherokee repatriation. That's what the century needs to be," Hoskin said. "And that's not a statement born of any sort of hostility towards institutions. It's to say we want to open a dialogue, but it needs to be a real dialogue, and it needs to produce real results."
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