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Notes -
To add to this, I regularly visit now-technically-Cherokee territory in northeastern Oklahoma(a major rad trad religious site is built there, and the locals- both tribal and white[not that you can really tell the difference]- are totally OK with it). It's just... rural Oklahoma. There's no added racial tensions. There's probably some legal weirdness in the event of a felony but we're not committing those, or dealing with them against us. Not a lot of people really care.
I have relatives living near the only reservation in Louisiana. The locals are grateful for the casino money(there aren't enough working-age Indians left on the reservation to staff it) but the Indians aren't different enough from the locals for anyone to care about. The white/black(and on top of it, the creole black/economic migrant black) distinction dominates the local racial division to the exclusion of all else.
There's a pop culture portrayal of Indians as these brown-skinned sages with long hair, who may or may not be oppressed but probably have special powers. Lol. They look whiter than your average Mexican(who looks whiter than you'd think) and work normal jobs. Some of them have unusual superstitions(when I worked construction I had a Cherokee coworker who wouldn't pick up sharp objects unless he knew who owned them) but they're pretty average.
In the Tulsa area? Connected to St. Mary’s up in Kansas, I presume?
To be fair, this is mostly because they’ve intermarried with white people at high rates, particularly the Cherokee. Basically every white Oklahoman has some story about how great-aunt somebody or other was Cherokee and great-uncle sonofabitch didn’t let her sign up for the tribal roll.
I’m convinced this is mostly grifting — wouldn’t it be so nice if we could get some of that sweet
oilcasino money? But when Elizabeth Warren’s claims started to come under scrutiny, I never believed them, and I also thought it was really funny how she believed the grifting family legend enough to humiliate herself by taking a DNA test. Her pretendian thing isn’t weird, or unique — she’s just a white lady from Oklahoma.I have cousins through adoption and marriage who are on tribal rolls. They’re ahem rednecks same as any rural white people.
Clear Creek Monastery(https://infogalactic.com/info/Clear_Creek_Abbey). No official connection; it's a daughterhouse of Fontgombault which isn't technically affiliated with apostolic work.
My words are chosen carefully and not subject to elaboration.
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