Many Native nations, including the Navajo Nation All in all, blood quantum limits the holistic meaning of what it means to be Native American. Many Native nations, including the Navajo Nation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, still use it as part of their citizenship requirements. And, every Native nation has a different approach to defining citizenship and setting goals for the future. The programs that most nations run have a host of requirementsthey might be living within a certain boundary or having a certain income or age requirement, for example., Continued use of blood quantum requirements has major implications for Tribal sovereignty. [2] I have put references to type or amount of blood in quotation marks because they denote social constructs, not biological realities. Cherokee slavery was a product of warfare between tribes, sometimes to repopulate a community after intertribal conflict or disease. Blood quantum, a means of quantifying a persons Indigenous ancestry in the United States, has a bleak history as an erasive tool used by the federal government. Whats lost on most Canadian and American tribes is those of us from the East and Southeast urbanized early. As we mentioned at the start of this guide, blood quantum is controversial, with many different arguments for and against. A consequential piece of federal legislation in which blood quantum was particularly relevant was the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act. They say that I will never amount to anything because Im even whiter, and how stupid my mother and grandfather were for marrying worthless whites. The adoption of non-blood individuals into clans highlights that blood quantum is foreign to traditional Cherokee practices. And howtribes use blood quantum varies from tribe to tribe. The federal government, and specifically the Department of the Interior, issues what is called a "Certified Degree of Indian Blood," and that is a card similar to an ID card. More Comanche babies meant a stronger tribe, and while I was told I had this responsibility both before and after gaining tribal citizenship, Ive never seen it effect my sexual desires or actions. Its the percentage of how native a person is. Because Cherokee society was matrilineal, children became part of their mothers clan, regardless of paternal lineage. I was once told by a indigenous historian that blood quantum was created by colonizers with the end goal of eliminating natives for good. Safe space my ass, if you silence native voices. And today, the ramification is that they do not have that original enrollee [in their past]. We couldn't do it without you. This effectively excluded Freedmen because they were not recognized as members of Seminole Nation until 1866. Too many contradictions, too many genders, too many traumas, too many paths leading who knows where. PROTECT CHEROKEE CULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN. hTmo0+i~wBZZR [ ,RwJ[Z|/D2HN *$_.5#R g+1yQ&tp2&=}gO=*CXx D9*`_!t=xS_nazs(Y BFjQQGl6@A>+%4i#&q7p'.]6y5L atMagCrN8pLQvy?~joZ}2d=U:w}~w%t~[7X{-}QBx{+b\Ldbm\,-_d@aGic(c16ABElem~BJ)D%^)b1*ZrF2B35X;$P!%RHH(h*QVA9 We encourage readers to stay up to date on conversations happening around blood quantum and citizenship within the Native nations and communities closest to them. So the way that blood quantum is calculated is by using tribal documents, and usually it's a tribal official or a government official that calculates it. Its a complicated, controversial, and personal topic that has major implications for citizenship and belonging in Indian Country. Can you talk to me about how the concept of blood quantum came to be used for Native tribes? 0 Certainly, American Indians have been racialized. Lol. The governments goal was to break up tribes by encouraging individual family farming. Duh. Its very important that Native nations consider their power as sovereign nations and their ability to write their own laws and to self-govern., Gabe Galanda sums it up well: Anyone who cares about this country, loves this country, and respects and honors the history of this countrywhether thats an ugly history, a beautiful history, or a combination of bothshould want the Indigenous peoples of these lands to exist in perpetuity. Got a Pendleton jacket as a gift and they really got our My brother got featured on the official 7/11 page rocking One of my favourite pieces I've made called "Dancer". I would argue that in this regard, tribes were influenced by European-Americans to at least some degree. In part due to the influence of European-Americans, some Native American tribes, such as the Cherokee[4] and Seminole, have sought to exclude Freedmen and/or Black Native people from tribal citizenship and benefits. Articles Podcast About Donate Contact. . Co-founder of Embrace Boston on mixed reviews for King sculpture, Neo-Nazi group and its leaders charged with civil rights violations in NH, Faulkner workers accuse Mass General Brigham of keeping them at 'desperately' low wages. Diversity of experience within and among tribes suggests that there is no one-size fits all approach to defining a Native person. Looking forward, sustained, open community dialogues can foster recognition of these complexities by considering the legacy of colonization, lived realities, and pre-colonial practices from a time when Indigenous Peoples had ultimate authority over their land. In some tribes, people could gain tribal citizenship if they were born in, married or were adopted into, or had long-term residence within the tribal community, or if they assumed cultural norms such as religion and language. [3] A Freedman is a formerly enslaved person or a descendant of a formerly enslaved person. Starting in 1884, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) used Census rolls to assign blood quantum amounts to Native people. Wayne Ducheneaux II and Sally Fineday speak with the Counter Stories team about blood quantum. Sure, I could control whether or not to act based on my desires, but the interest itself was uncontrollable. Under this federal law, many Native nations adopted boilerplate constitutions developed by the federal government that included using blood quantum as a basis for citizenship. But like I said, its not a reality, Fletcher said. It was not meant to last - it was meant to eliminate us. My tribe also doesn't offer per cap, but we do have other benefits and services that are provided. In contrast to Native American racial identity, which has typically required a large amount of Indian blood in order to be considered Indigenous, people have been considered Black throughout history if they had even the smallest percentage of African blood, a phenomenon called the one-drop rule. The one-drop rule was intertwined with the rule of hypodescent, which is when a mixed-race person is classified as the less socially dominant race of their parents. In Cherokee origin stories like the legend of Corn Mother Selu, ceremonial adoption practices were seen as sacred acts of creating new blood. nE$lbVL^bcw|i_0@hDbh`{Ob (q~g3+f^ [!pa4V2anvOweF-jNKY Blood quantum proponents state that their nation has had these particular rules in place for a certain period of time, and theyd prefer to stick with the status quo. In the 2006 case Marilyn Vann v. Dirk Kempthorne, regarding Cherokee Freedmen citizenship, the Cherokee Nation asserted that they could not be sued in a U.S. court because of sovereign immunity. Sometimes this happens with a shake of his head. Such unresolved questions continue to plague tribes today and underscore the importance of sustained community dialogue as a starting point to acknowledge the complexities of tribal identity. Many tribes use a 25% blood quantum standard. The framework through which federal benefits are allocated to Indigenous communities is inherently paternalistic, which helps contextualize the erasive history of blood quantum. Even though they're using what a lot of people say is a "Colonialist construct"? Bennett Caperss article Against Prosecutors challenges us to imagine a world where we turn away from prosecution as we know it, and shift power from prosecutors to the people they purport to represent.[1] In this world, crime victims decide whether to prosecute their own cases, and public prosecutors play a subsidiary role, taking primary responsibility [], When I was a prosecutor, I relished closing arguments, especially standing in front of the jury to deliver my rebuttal to defense attorney summationsplural since many of my trials involved multiple co-defendants and hence multiple defense summations. [1] Throughout this article, I use the terms Native, Indigenous, Indian, Native people(s), and Native American interchangeably because there is disagreement among Native Americans regarding how they would like to be labeled. And so there's a desire to build up tribes' numbers and capacity in order to survive and perpetuate the tribe. ne of the frustrating elements of U.S. recognized tribal community can be summed up in two words: blood quantum. Using blood quantum allowed the government to turn independent nations into racialized groups, which thus enabled the government to subordinate them. "The systems are so complicated," she explains, "but it's all part of tribes deciding on their own terms, in their own ways, utilizing their own sovereignty [to decide] what approach is best for them.". They base citizenship on culture, liniage, and roll numbers. Besides, honesty about attraction could be dangerous. Thats why defending blood quantum has Indigenous people sounding like white supremacists products of white supremacy will ALWAYS align with white supremacy. "I use the term 'Colonial Catch 22' to say that there is no clear answer, and that one way or another, people are hurt," says Elizabeth Rule. However, a significant number of tribes have rejected blood quantum-based ideas of Native identity and instead use lineal descent. Because of their black appearance, they were listed on a separate roll. According to the Court, the adoption of the blood quantum rule was not racially discriminatory. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Blood quantum is a measure of the amount of Indian blood, expressed as a fraction such as one-half or one-fourth. Blood Quantum, as a way to ascribe Native American membership, has dire consequences. If you follow blood quantum, you can trace every native line to its extinction. Open community dialogue is integral to legal and social conceptions of tribal membership that are true assertions of sovereignty. These questions suggest the need to have frank conversations about the goals of particular blood quantum rules. Within these barriers of classification, come issues, specifically in the medical aspect. Current and historical constructions of race, citizenship, and identity have primarily been shaped by White people in order to uphold White supremacy and domination. This is because if they let too many people enroll, they risk losing federal recognition and tribal property. Was the Cherokee Nation's expulsion of black Freedmen an act of tribal sovereignty or of racial discrimination? And how tribes use blood quantum varies from tribe to tribe. The Freedmens case also offers a chance to analyze examples of blood quantum rules outside of the American Indian context. Who gets to tell the story, and what story do they get to tell? Follow us so you don't miss a thing! If someone was Black and Native American, they were Black (unless they were seeking U.S. citizenship), no matter how much Native American blood they had. Kim Tallbear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) has some amazing work about this subject if you're interested. Blood quantum is just that a number a sterile, inhuman way of calculating authenticity. When a person asks, What part Cherokee are you? they are trying to quantify your authenticity. If the answer given is a small percentage or an incomprehensible fraction, the answerers Cherokeeness is called into question. Similarly, tribes that have land tend to be more exclusive than tribes that do not. i&nEiQ|,7z%Fveg%1{i,Jb/sal>Kb(}a9-NrcaGq.tNG\u:1cck6F>6 GQT/C"=b/|zZq);p QLm.NH1/An3| zpqUX\6NEj['8 nwI+{sP:7M2hjpvZ(+^rh(.BQwfeA?5P!JVL`@?B_hT'F=PzN }'^ ,k@UcMt`d5 Ie8E&A7[5tQ#d'e^-W%w"*bb#Cot]E6MmP~{)39]p}q,'X,MHa Remote work 'man camps' in Canada linked to violence Press J to jump to the feed. So, lineal descendant supporters think about high memberships through the lens of existence as a resistance right. The government decided who would and would not receive land allotments by referencing the Dawes Rolls, the original lists of Native Americans compiled by the U.S. government. why blood quantum is problematic The economic implications of this categorization were on display in the 1990s, for example, when the federal government decided to pay the Seminole tribe for land the government seized in 1823. Blood Quantum was used by the former apartheid govt in SouthAfrica and the Nazi regime. %%EOF You've used the phrase "personal gains" before to refer to some people who might've claimed Indian heritage. Today, the BIA primarily uses the Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) to determine enrollment in tribes and eligibility for federal social services. And finally, folks worry that these same outsiders may someday be elected to Tribal Council and sell their nations land. Indian Freedmen or their ancestors were formerly enslaved by Indian tribes. We encourage you to take action to meaningfully support Native nations in strengthening their sovereignty. Today, about 70% of the federally recognized Native nations that share geography with the United States use blood quantum as a metric for citizenship. Native girls spend their lunches adding up blood quantum fractions, trying to figure out whether any babies will make the requirements for their tribe or their new boyfriends tribe. All rights reserved. (Well say more about why the amounts were usually incorrect later.) Blood quantum emerged as a way to measure "Indian-ness" through a construct of race. Should it be? The blood quantum policy was first implemented by the federal government within tribes to limit native citizenship. Dr. Elizabeth Rule explains, There might be, down the line, a moment when folks are not going to be eligible for citizenship. My first memory of having blood quantum problems happened when I was four. We need to get tribal governments to do away with it. 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