Based of the 2020 Census, Oklahoma’s representation in the United States House of Representatives is supposed to remain unchanged at five. However, there’s a chance the state could soon have an additional representative, based on an agreement more than 180 years old.
In the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which removed the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral home in Georgia, the United States made several promises to the tribe, including representation in Congress.
“The treaty language is very plain,” said Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. in an interview, “it says the Cherokee Nation shall have the right to a delegate in the House of Representatives, when Congress shall make provision for the same. It didn’t say that Cherokee Nation might have a delegate, but it shall have a delegate.”
Chief Hoskin said the time has come for Congress to make that provision.