Photo: Alamance County Courthouse in Graham, NC, the home territory of the OBSN, by Warren LeMay, Wikimedia
The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation (OBSN) has issued a tribal statement regarding a lawsuit against their Tribe.
The suit alleges that changes made to the OBSN Tribal constitution in 2024 harms the plaintiff, Dr. Crystal Cavalier, due to irregularities in the voting process.
Dr. Cavalier is a professor and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2020.
The OBSN states that the changes are necessary to keep the Tribe functioning. Among the changes is dropping the requirement that a potential enrollee must have at least one grandparent who resided in the North Carolina counties of Alamance, Orange and Caswell.
OBSN says that this past requirement was too restrictive, and would have kept tribal enrollment to a level that will cause tribal extinction in 20 years.
Sources:
OBSN Tribal Council, “Official Statement from the OBSN Tribal Council Regarding the Constitutional Amendment and Related Legal Matter,” 2025.
“Dr. Crystal Cavalier v. Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation,” legal document filed in Superior Court of North Carolina, found on Trellis
Kristy Bailey, “Mebane Activist Suing Occaneechi Band Over Vote to Expand Tribe’s Membership,” The Alamance News, April 17, 2025, https://alamancenews.com/mebane-activist-suing-occaneechi-band-over-vote-to-expand-tribes-membership/
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