Interesting ethical dilemma on racial identity

http://news.yahoo.com/second-largest-u-indian-tribe-expels-slave-descendants-011650136.html

I confess I never realized the tribes had such a sizeable slave population to begin with.

But back in the early 1800s, the Cherokees attempted to assimilate. Sequoya developed a Cherokee alphabet, and many Cherokees adopted the ways of living of the whites who had moved in and surrounded them. That included owning slaves on the parts of better-off Cherokees. Rather than accept the assimilation, whites pressured for expulsion of Cherokees, along with other tribes, so their lands could be stolen -- and this was done with the connivance of Andrew Jackson's administration. After the Civil War, the Cherokees' slaves were accepted as members of the tribe -- until 2007, when they were expelled. Just think of it as a new Trail of Tears.