Chief Chadwick Smith

Chief Smith is currently serving in his third term as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. The Principal Chief is the head of the executive branch of the tribal government.  Chadwick "Corntassel" Smith (Cherokee name ugista: derived from Cherokee word for corntassel utsitsata:) was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1999. Smith holds a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Georgia, a master's degree in public administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Juris Doctor from the University of Tulsa. Smith was re-elected to a second term as Chief in 2003 and a third term in June 2007 with 59% of the vote. Prior to being elected Principal Chief, he worked as a lawyer for the tribe and privately.

Chad Smith is a descendant of Redbird Smith, Cherokee Statesman and spiritual leader of the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society.

INTERVIEW with Chief Smith:

Throughout history the Cherokee Nation has survived many ongoing challenges and adversities… and yet the nation continues to thrive as a people dedicated to family, faith, and community.

In 1999 the Cherokee people elected Chadwick “Corntassel” Smith as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.  Through his strong leadership the nation has seen extraordinary financial growth, better healthcare and educational opportunities.

Chief Smith says being a descendent of Senator Redbird Smith, who in 1896 led the fight in standing against the U.S. government’s allotment to take over seven million acres of land from the Cherokees, led him as a teenager to be curiosity about the Cherokee Nation.  He says,

“When I was 15-years-old, I found a Cherokee Bible and Cherokee dictionary, I was going to teach myself Cherokee, of course, I never did.  But it peak my interest in the Cherokee Nation, what it was and what it was doing.”

Because of his commitment to the preservation of the community spirit of ga-du-gi, Chief Smith says his interest in being a part of coming together to work for the greater good stayed with him throughout his adult life. He says…

“Basically, when I was growing up and even working in Georgia I was an iron worker and that’s somebody who puts buildings and bridges together.  I like to see things being built and accomplished.  We get to build people and families, communities, rebuild and entire nation, do everything the Federal Government does except raise an army and print money so, and it’s very challenging.” 

And Chief Smith says while there will always be external challenges for him to face as the leader of the Cherokee Nation… what’s most sobering to him is seeing the internal struggles of his people.  He says,

“The external ones we can predict and forecast because history always repeats itself.  Let’s go back to history and wait for the cycle to come back around. It’s like a pendulum.  A grandfather clock, wait 20-40 years you can see what’s going to happen.  Prosper and excel, we acquire assets.  Then some values the assets, then they try to take them away.  Public sentiment changes…make up policy changes, then we fight that…then pretty soon, when policy fails, and our assets are taken, public pendulum swings back the other way.  And it’s a predictable cycle.  So we can pretty much determine our external challenges.

The internal challenges to some degree are response to the external ones.  The more critical it is how we define ourselves and how we develop our internal leadership so we don’t fall prey to some of the traps people around us fall to.  You can see it in methamphetamine use, diabetes and obesity.  You can se it in child abuse, poor decision making.  You can see it in dependency upon other folks.  Those are all volitive.  They violate our historical values and attributes.  We really need to go back to the beginning to a quality of respect.”

And Chief Smith says that quality of respect means getting back to the basics of the Cherokee culture and learning how not to repeat history.  He says…

“We are integrated with the general community. We don’t have exclusive territory and the methamphetamine has flourished here in Oklahoma, so it has taken its toll on all people.  And it’s interesting that you can go back on history and look we were fighting substance abuse from outsiders some 300 years ago.  We past laws in the early 1880’s prohibiting rum runners, prohibiting alcohol ballgames.  In 1860’s temperance societies for alcohol and now the drug of choice is not alcohol as much not forgetting drug use is meth.  So you really have to go back to what is the cause of the poor choices and we seem to believe that if we revitalize our language and capture the wisdom and practice the wisdom that is embedded there…it will help us make better decisions to handle these kinds of epidemics.” 

He says having a clearer understanding of the epidemic root cause of diabetes will go a long way in finding a better way to control it within the Native population.

“I would love to have a very good medical history of diabetes in Indians.   You see when it really began to peak is when social changes and economic changes influenced its growth.  Generally it’s a lifestyle, it’s a choice of foods, and it’s a choice of becoming like those around us.  Exercising more, turning the television on quicker than getting out and riding a bike or playing stick ball or throwing horseshoes.  So we really have to evaluate what can we do personally to deal with those epidemics, how we can make better choices.”   

As Chief Smith places priorities on tribal and individual self-sufficiency, he is also seeking ways to use the nation’s funds to provide elderly care services and better quality healthcare.  He says investing funds in community education is one of the wisest ways to help make those choices work. 

“Our diabetes expenditures have gone from 1.2 million to 6.8 million.  Education communities, walking track, diabetes sugar blood testing.  You know one strategy is exclusive, and it all comes back around to informed choice in making better choices.” 

“And Chief Smith says making better choices about lifestyle is only a part of the internal changes he would like to see take place.  He says revitalizing economic growth through a range of business development will allow a stagnant financial system to come to life.   He says…

“Bring talents that you can make the economy grow and become more vibrant.  You finish school as an engineer go work for IBM for a couple of years…you can come back and work for one of our growing businesses.  So we have to create challenging fulfilling productive jobs, so our kids will stay here and other folks will come back.  And the reason that they come back is that pride in being Cherokee.  Wanting the better quality of life being in your own community and among your own family.

There are the simpler things that make people happier, healthier people.  You don’t have to have a six digit job living in Dallas so you can go fly fishing in Alaska to have a quality of life.  You work at something that pays substantially less and be at John’s creek and pick crawdads with your kids and have a great quality of life.”

But Chief Smith says the external challenge is finding teachers in higher education who will teach the truth about Native history and this great quality of life. He says…

“Is it a responsibility for teachers to teach the truth? That should be a question that shouldn’t have to asked, much less answered.  Every teacher has that duty and responsibility.  And every academician, every university.  Beginning question with our educational institutions, are still embracing things like Indian mascots, where Florida State, how could we ever believe that Florida State is serious about historic education when they have a buffoon on the football field.”

He says to combat these many stereotypes the Nation has taken it upon themselves to teach the true history of the Cherokee Nation to all who what to learn.  

“Internally what we’ve done is taught a 40 hour history class 300 pages thick turns into a leadership discussion class. We’ve had seven thousand people complete it.  And every one of our employees are required to take it.  We’ve taught it in urban areas, where there is  concentrations of Cherokees.  We try to work wit h the state to require our history to be integrated into certain sections of the curriculum.  A lot can be learned from just going to our web site and looking about it and finding out that Cherokees didn’t live in Tee Pees and we had the first institution of higher education west of the Mississippi in 1951. And that Georgia prohibited Indians from being competent witness in their courtrooms until 1980.  Even when I graduated from Georgia I was deemed as an incompetent witness in Georgia.  That’s when they repealed it.”

But Chief Smith says even though the Cherokees and other Natives are now allowed to be competent witnesses in court, the Cherokee are still fighting an uphill battle to hold a delegate seat in the U.S. congress.  He says…

“Basically in 1785 when you had a constitutional, a continental congress.  We negotiated our first treaty, we sent a deputy from our choice that whenever we deemed fit and at that time representatives from the continental congress.  We renegotiated that position in the infamous Trail of Tears Treaty at New Echota in 1835.  We, the Cherokee Nation, the only Tribe in the country that has that position, I can send a representative, a deputy, a delegate to the House of Representatives whenever congress makes provision.  And the language of it was that it was an entitlement a negotiated right because we had just given up all our lands in the southeast.  And so we tried over the last 200 years just to have congress acknowledge that treaty right and it’s still on the table.  And we’ve done in over the last two years advanced scholarly research to show that what the treaty said, was what the treaty meant.  That we  like Guam, American Samoa, could have a seat, a delegate in the House of Representatives.  That’s an institutional relationship that we negotiated but that has not occurred.”

But Chief Smith says for all Cherokee Nation’s efforts to prove the validity of the negotiated seat in congress…there is still a great hesitancy in fulfilling what was mutually agreed upon over 200 years ago.

“Indian Treaties are sort of like the checks in the mail.  You can have a right, but unless you have a remedy or a way to enforce that right, that right becomes academic.  And there is no way to leverage congress to have to keep their word.” 

Although the Cherokee Nation maybe finding it difficult to have the U.S. Congress keep its word… Chief Smith says he’s focusing his leadership skills in a more productive direction.

“The bench mark was struck in 1887 when Senator Dawes came to the Cherokee Nation.  Reportedly, there was not a pauper in the entire nation. Every family owned his own home and owed the Tribe not one dollar. He went on to say that the fallacy of our system is apparent, and there is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization and can we agree to give up our land to be held individually, rather than in common. We’d make no greater progress and so basically, we knew what we had 100 years ago and we want to continue to strive for 100 years from now.

Be happy and healthy people.  This strategy is a pretty simple one. Job, language and community.  Jobs to become economically self-reliant. Language is to revitalize the language, think and act with wisdom that is embedded in our language and last is community.  Bind yourselves together in the great Cherokee culture, which is the Ga-du-gi, which is come together to work for the betterment of the community. And there is cohesive communities we can stand up in public sentiment.  We can hold ourselves together, regardless of what everybody else is doing on the outside.  We believe with that simple strategy we can develop close to that position of being a happier, healthier people.”

As Principal Chief Smith and his administration continue to focus on the three internal essentials of jobs, language and community… he says he would also like to externally have good neighbors who will support the interest of the Cherokee Nation by standing with them when hostile situations appear in congress and by opening up more educational and financial opportunities for the Cherokee in other parts of the world.