Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky
The Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky is an unrecognized tribe based in Kentucky, United States. The SCNK said it had an estimated one thousand members as of 2009, living in several US states, and that it is "not affiliated with any other group calling themselves Southern Cherokee" or any officially recognized Cherokee nations.
State recognition status
While the State of Kentucky has a Native American Heritage Commission, Kentucky has no state-recognized tribes and "the state doesn’t have a process for them to apply for formal recognition." In 2011, a bill to establish a process for state recognition of Indian tribes passed the Kentucky House of Representatives, but did not make it to the Kentucky Senate floor for a vote, and thus failed to pass.Amy Den Ouden and Jean O'Brien wrote in 2013 that "Kentucky's recognition of the Southern Cherokee nation proved even more tenuous: while Governor John Young Brown sent a letter to the Southern Cherokee nation in 1893 welcoming the tribe to the Commonwealth's state fair and noting that the Commonwealth 'regonize the Southern Cherokee Nation as a Indian tribe'. Kentucky currently claims to have no state-recognized tribes and disputes that any kind of government-to-government relationship was established. Thus, even those recognitions that did occur during this period were more ambiguous and uncertain than many that took place during earlier and later periods."