ADA (Oklahoma): The American Indian Seminole tribe, a people who honour their ancient ties to the land, today find themselves riven by a modern case of racial strife.

A fight over the status of blacks who first joined the tribe in the early 1800s is at the centre of a struggle between two Seminole chiefs competing for the leadership — and a hefty sum of money from the US government earmarked for the tribe.

The split is over the Freedmen Bands, a group descended from escaped and former slaves as well as free people of African heritage whose ancestors joined the Seminole Nation in the early 19th century in Florida.

Former tribal chief Jerry Haney lost an election last year in which the Freedmen were barred from voting after they were excluded from the tribe over doubts of their Seminole ties.

Haney supports including Freedmen into the Seminole Nation as equal members and claims the election was invalid and that he is still chief.

But Ken Chambers won the July 2001 poll and said it was a mandate for the view that the Seminole people should decide who is of Seminole blood.

The federal government does not recognize Chambers as the Seminole leader because the Freedmen were barred from voting. Without federal recognition for the sitting leader, hundreds of thousands of dollars for health care, education and social welfare programmes were put on hold.

Some of that money was released last spring after a tribal court ruling allowed money for basic services to be used.

At that hearing in the small Oklahoma town of Ada, members of each camp shouted insults at each other, with Haney beating a hasty retreat.

Money and blood started to come into conflict in the early 1990s, when the US Congress granted $75 million to the Seminoles in reparation for lands seized in Florida generations ago.

The infusion of the money into a trust fund for the tribe was followed by a move by some Seminole council members to question the Freedmen’s affiliation with the tribe.

With the 2,000 or so Freedmen out, the remaining members of the tribe, who number about 15,000 in Oklahoma, would have a larger slice of the pie.

In August 2000, the tribe removed the Freedmen by amending its constitution, which stipulates who is a member of the Seminole Nation and the rules they live by in Oklahoma.

FROZEN FUNDS: The conflict led the government to freeze the $75 million and call for a full reinstatement of Freedmen tribe members and a new election in which they may vote.