Cherokee Chief Recruits Execs, Ponders Holiday

Columbus Day weekend brought to town America’s newest Indian chief, but he didn’t come for the holiday. Indeed, he makes it a point to not celebrate the day at all.

“Columbus didn’t discover America,” said Joe Byrd, 40, a former educator who on Aug. 5 was elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

“For us, it’s like any other day. We go to work, do our business.”

The business of his tribe--which has 170,000 registered members, including about 5,000 in Southern California--was the reason for his visit to the Los Angeles area. In addition to thanking local tribe members who voted for him, Byrd came to recruit Cherokee professionals for executive jobs with the tribe’s administration. He also stopped by the home of Cherokee community leader Virginia Kerry of Glendale.

Native Americans may be known for their strong ties to the natural world, but that image doesn’t mean the tribes don’t need to be concerned with the more mundane aspects of life. The administration of the Cherokee Nation, which has a reputation of being among the most business-minded tribes, has to manage an annual budget of $150 million.

Members of President Clinton’s transition team found out just how business-minded when they invited Byrd and other Oklahoma Cherokees to attend inauguration ceremonies in 1992 in traditional Indian dress.

“I said I’d put on my pin-striped suit,” Byrd said. “That’s my traditional dress.”

Byrd has the daunting task of following the charismatic Wilma Mankiller, a nationally renowned Native American, feminist spokeswoman and best-selling author, who for the previous 10 years was the popular Cherokee leader.

To make his job even tougher, Byrd, a public school teacher and administrator before entering tribal politics, said that the battle in Washington over Native American issues has gotten increasingly acrimonious.

Last month, he joined more than 200 Native American leaders in lobbying against a proposal to cut $256 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget. (As it stands now, Byrd said, the cuts will amount to $176 million.) He found it exasperating dealing with congressional leaders.

“With the Republicans getting in, we’ve had to go back and educate them all over again about what we, as Native Americans, are all about,” Byrd said. “When you talk sovereignty and you talk about treaty rights and contracts, they sit there like they have never heard these words before.”

Although in recent years Columbus Day has been an occasion for protest--culminating in numerous demonstrations in 1992 during the 500th anniversary of the Spanish explorer’s voyage--Byrd said he feels the message bears repeating.

“A lot of people celebrate it because it’s a day off,” he said. “They get to have a good time whether it’s Columbus Day or whether it’s Pocahontas day. The idea that you get a day off and you get paid for it--people get excited about that.”

Some Native American officials take a far more militant stance. “Asking us to celebrate Columbus Day is like asking people of the Jewish faith to . . . celebrate Hitler’s birthday,” said Tania McMasters, 31, president of the Native American Student Council at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster.

Last year, her group set up a booth and sold chances to shoot toy arrows at a picture of Columbus.

“He was a genocidal maniac . . . a rapist, a murderer, a torturer,” McMasters said. “We’re going to totally trash the myth of Columbus.”

Byrd approaches the situation in the mode of the teacher he was. Better than protesting, he said, is “to teach our children the facts and let them know and understand the difference on why other people may want to celebrate Columbus Day and we, as Native Americans, do not.

“We need to do a better job educating our people on what Columbus Day is all about,” he continued. “We need to get everybody to know what it is they’re celebrating. Maybe that will take care of Columbus Day.

“Maybe we need to have a national Native American day instead.”