NEWS OF THE SOUTHERN CHEROKEE NATION

Southern Cherokee is based upon the service of Cherokees under the Confederacy during the Civil War. We are Cherokee by blood located in the Canadian District as was designated for the Southern Cherokees in the Treaty of 1866. Our enrollment criteria is the 1867 Tompkins roll and/or service in the Stand Watie regiments. There were no Southern Cherokee until the Civil War. We will not enroll anyone who has chosen to enroll in any other tribe or band. 

Gary W. Ridge, an admitted non-Indian, started the Southern Cherokee con in 1988 along with the First Nation campground. This con is being run in every state, as stated by one of Ridge's own judges with his Neetribe in North Carolina, by at least 260 so-called bands or branch offices. An investigation was started in 2004 by Principal Chief Andrew D. Light who worked with Paul Boyd, US Postal Service investigator, beginning in 2005. During the investigation, he met twice here in Oklahoma with Ken Voghts of the US Treasury Department and Linda Sweet, an IRS agent specializing in tribal government affairs. He also worked closely with Assistant US District Attorney Linda Epperly in Muskogee and furnished her with boxes of evidence for possible prosecutions in all the wrongdoing uncovered during his investigation. Epperly ended up refusing to pursue these criminals. Mr. Light was later told by Paul Boyd that all evidence gathered by Mr. Light, instead of being used as was intended or returned to him, was handed over to one of these cons out of Missouri, run by Johnny Gray and Stevie Matthews, on the order of a County Judge. They also received evidence seized by Boyd under the execution of a federal warrant on the office of Gary W. Ridge here in Oklahoma and a "branch office" in Louisiana. Gray and Matthews had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation. There are phony cards being issued in the name of the Southern Cherokee nationwide. These cons have become a multi-million dollar industry and the federal government is fully aware of it.