why blood quantum is problematic

There is no space for another being to fill, even short term. Under the sovereign immunity doctrine, Native tribes are protected from suit unless they voluntarily waive immunity or Congress abrogates it. If you want to ensure your future children are enrolled, youre often forced to do the math early in your relationship. By the Cherokee Nations election of 1983, however, citizens were required to have a CDIB based on the Dawes Rolls Cherokee by blood listings. Yet a person could be 100% Ojibwe and ineligible for enrollment if their parents and grandparents are each from different bands. Starting in 1884, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) used Census rolls to assign blood quantum amounts to Native people. And, if a parent refuses to sign necessary paperwork, their child may be unable to enroll in the future. Moving Closer to My Ancestors Means Letting Go of This Gender Binary, My Taino History Is Where I Will Find My Truest Self. ), Blood quantum is not an Indigenous concept. The information shared above about the question, 1.Blood Quantum and the White Gatekeeping of Native American , 2.Some Native Americans Fear Blood Quantum is Formula for Paper , 3.Blood Quantum and The Freedmen Controversy: The Implications , 4.Blood Quantum and its role in Native Identity, 5.Real Indians and Fake Indians The Wellian Magazine , TOP 9 why blood quantum is problematic BEST and NEWEST, TOP 8 why blood is dark red BEST and NEWEST, TOP 8 why blood comes from nose BEST and NEWEST, TOP 9 why bloated during period BEST and NEWEST, TOP 8 why blind dates dont work BEST and NEWEST, TOP 9 why bless you after a sneeze BEST and NEWEST, TOP 8 why blend in when i was born to stand out BEST and NEWEST. Russell Means explained that 40% of the natural resources are held on trust land. Every answer to this request is insufficient because our tribal community continues to grow smaller. Whether by requiring a higher blood quantum for federal recognition and benefits, denying Indigenous people U.S. citizenship, or influencing tribes to adopt their own blood quantum requirements, White people have been the gatekeepers of Native American identity. endstream endobj 18 0 obj <>stream The sad thing is if we have a child, they will be 1/32 under the limit to register with my husband's tribe despite being half Native overall. Its not uncommon for Native families to have some children who are enrolled and some who arent. On these rolls, the Dawes Commission assumed three racial categories: freedmen, intermarried Whites, and Indians by blood. Ones racial classification dictated the size and location of their allotment: Full-blood Natives received small parcels of land while mixed-blood Natives received larger, better tracts of land. I try my best to avoid these discussions. Dr. Elizabeth Rule explains, There might be, down the line, a moment when folks are not going to be eligible for citizenship. Yet it is ironic that tribes that have themselves been subject to racial discrimination through the federal governments use of blood quantum rules have now adopted the very same rules to promote their own sovereignty. Ask Dave Epstein: What is freezing rain, anyway? Just like veteran hospitals and clinics. One means of control was defining what it meant to be an Indian. The dominant White society in the United States has changed and manipulated legal and sociological constructions of race to further its goals: to acquire more land, preserve the institution of slavery, prevent certain groups of people from becoming citizens, maintain the White race, and more. Blood Quantum policies are little other than genocidal and will eventually lead to There are 574 federally recognized Native American Tribes without counting Alaska and Hawaii and only a handful have zero blood quantum requirement. She is part of the writing team at TIF and is the article and Instagram content writer. In 1978, a congressional survey found thirty-three separate definitions of Indians in various pieces of federal legislation. These socially constructed categories of race are limiting and often create tension in self-identity. Blood quantum can also make relationships complicated. Now blood quantum was forced on us. She's an amazing scholar. On the other side, those who defend blood quantum requirements also evoke this language of survival, and they look upon those blood quantum minimums as a way to preserve an already existing closed community that's very close and usually very culturally connected. And that ensured that every person who had at least one drop would be considered black and would be covered under these discriminatory laws and, even in the earlier days, enslaved. As we explored blood quantum in this week's episode, we thought a primer of what, exactly, this system is and how it works or doesn't might be useful. You've used the phrase "personal gains" before to refer to some people who might've claimed Indian heritage. Maya Harmon: Membership Development Editor, California Law Review Vol. 2022 Harvard Political Review. Even though they are my direct descendants and I am a tribal member. For instance, for the Cherokee Nation, membership was generally determined by kinship affiliations to one of the nations clans. Ultimately their decision has to be respected in order to uphold tribal sovereignty. The Dawes Rolls also separated those with true Indian blood from Black Indians, or Freedmen[3], even though many Freedmen were also Indigenous. There are blood quantum preferences, for example, that seek to promote the property rights of indigenous groups in Alaska, Hawaii and the U.S. territories of American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Yet, as an expression of sovereignty, the Cherokee Nations decision to expel the Freedmen could arguably be viewed as a valid, albeit utterly troubling, exercise of the right of self-determination. Many Native nations, including the Navajo Nation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, still use it as part of their citizenship requirements. Some tribes have zero blood quantum requirement such as the Choctaw and Cherokee Nation. It was not meant to last - it was meant to eliminate us. Some fear that individuals with mixed ancestry self-identify as Indigenous because of a desire to affirm a marginalized ethnic identity and to reap land or health and education benefits. So this is a little long. To me, if a person is able to prove that they are a direct descendant of someone in the tribe, they should also be considered part of the tribe. I totally think we should. 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. Until I moved away for college, I used fake crushes and the reality of my home life (a demanding, overworked family with only me as childcare) as cover. Native nations sovereignty allows them to define their own citizenship criteria; some nations currently using blood quantum are in the process of considering possible alternatives. There wasnt a single self identified queer in our town and suspected ones found regular beatings a part of their life. Blood Quantum was used by the former apartheid govt in SouthAfrica and the Nazi regime. A Progressive Facade: Comparing the U.S. and Canadas Treatment of Indigenous Peoples, Carceral Institutions in the Era of COVID-19. 2021), http://box2539.temp.domains/~califrp0/blood-quantum-and-the-white-gatekeeping-of-native-american-identity. In 1893, the Dawes Commission was created to enforce the provisions of the act for the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogees (Creeks), and Seminole tribes. And honestly I know nothing about South Africa, how, if, did it end? And that's that's one of the major problems with blood quantum today is that a lot of times, the people taking the rolls were federal government officials who were unfamiliar with Native ways of establishing and defining their own communities. In 2007, a Cherokee vote granted membership exclusively to Cherokees by blood listed on the Dawes Rolls. The federal government also often recategorized Black Cherokees as Freedmen just because they looked phenotypically Black, even if they had originally been on the blood roles. And when these original roles were taken, oftentimes these freedmen were not included, even though those individuals may be of mixed heritage: black and Indian. Native Governance Center held a virtual event on blood quantum, Blood Quantum and Sovereignty, in March 2022. Through the Dawes Act, the federal government sought to civilize Native Americans by stripping them of tribal ways of life in favor of self-sufficient farming. The fundamental tenet of kinship was reciprocityreciprocal duty to one another, to your people, your clan, your longhouse. We can still have tribal enrollments without BQ. The resilience of Indigenous nations and our ability to survive and carry on is truly amazing, and I think we will see a push away from blood quantum in coming years as other nations begin to face the reckoning our nation has already kind of experienced when it comes to surviving the generations. Almost all nations around the world have incorporated their former slaves, or colonized people into their societies. African American? When pressed to identify a crush, I often pick a random guy instead of being honest about any sexual attractions I might have. why blood quantum is problematic Does any other ethnicity have to enroll to be a member of their own ethnicity? It requires honest, sustained, and, no doubt, difficult dialogue, not politicking, and the critical reinterpretation of cultural resources in the service of kinship, not the blind reproduction of divisive racial hegemonies-in short, ga-du-gi, all working together.. However, when it came to questions of citizenship, the courts were quick to categorize mixed Native Americans as Indian. Who gets to tell the story, and what story do they get to tell? My first memory of having blood quantum problems happened when I was four. Kylie is a 17-year-old indigenous (Mohawk & Algonquin) girl from Michigan. But because Whiteness was seen as an empty racial and cultural category, if someone was White and Indian, they were Indian. But it does happen and I just want to point it out again to show that there are difficulties on both sides and that there's not a clear-cut answer yet. In order to federally be considered native, you have to be enrolled. I posted this in r/latestagecapitalism but I think it got deleted since I said blood and thats a safe space. As Gabe Galanda explains, Before contact, the great majority of our nations today self-identified as kinship societies. So the quantum is a fraction of blood that is derived going back to the original enrollees of a tribe who were counted on Census rolls, and then their blood quantum was documented, and usually those original enrollees had a full blood quantum. St. Croix requires a 50% blood quantum to be considered for enrollment. 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. Blood Quantum and the White Gatekeeping of Native American Identity, Some Native Americans Fear Blood Quantum is Formula for Paper Genocide, Blood quantum influences Native American identity, Beyond Blood Quantum: The Legal and Political Implications of Expanding Tribal Enrollment, Jill Doerfler: Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy. Throughout history, blood quantum was used to define a point at which responsibilities to tribes, entitlement programs, treaty rights, and reservations would end. Lol. Federal officials used blood quantum to decide who was entitled to specific property or benefits. In an 1886 Reconstruction treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the United States, Freedmen were given the opportunity to define themselves as tribal citizens within six months of ratification of the treaty. Others see disregard for blood quantum as a way to build up a nations numbers for the sake of survival. Garrouttes framework would nurture a counter-hegemonic narrative based in a sacred logic to which notions of genealogical distance and blood quantum are foreign and even irrelevant. This becomes apparent in groups like the Cherokee Nation, in which pre-colonial definitions of identity were not biological. If a prospective citizens blood quantum is lower than 14, they are not eligible to become a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. These amounts, often incorrect, continue to affect blood quantum determinations. Simply Blood Quantum was created by federal governments to eradicate Indigenous peoples. The attorneys representing the Cherokee Nation in the lawsuit did not respond to requests for comment. Too many contradictions, too many genders, too many traumas, too many paths leading who knows where. If you're Native American, there's a good chance that you've thought a lot about blood quantum a highly controversial measurement of the amount of "Indian blood" you have. Few friends believe me when I say that I dont have an interest in having babies or finding a sexual partner. Other laws did not provide any definition of Indian identity, leaving it up to the courts to decide. And, every Native nation has a different approach to defining citizenship and setting goals for the future. The use of Euro-American definitions of identity is outdated, as is blood quantum. Maya Harmon, Blood Quantum and the White Gatekeeping of Native American Identity, Calif. L. Rev. Blood quantum, like so many other factors, seemed an arbitrary barrier in sex concerns. Blood quantum is a concept created by white settlers that refers to the amount of so-called Indian blood that an individual possesses. Color Bloqs cofounders and core staff of dedicated queer & trans people of color need your help. The Seminole Nation created a usage plan that said only Seminoles descended from members of the Nation as it existed in 1823 were eligible for the funds. In which case, what would happen, right? I'm glad my tribe is based on lineage and not percentage. For tribes (like mine) who hold strict requirements for citizenship, the According to the Court, the adoption of the blood quantum rule was not racially discriminatory. It's an extremely progressive and interesting move, and they're really changing the game. Consanguinity, meaning direct family descendance, was not exclusive in determining group membership, however. But basically, the more people in the tribe the less your per cap amount will be and we mustve caught that capitalist bug with the blankets and dont want less money. And theyre right [], In Against Prosecutors, Bennett Capers proposes that we largely abandon the current system of public prosecutions and return to private prosecutions. We need to get tribal governments to do away with it. This explains why, for example, biracial people who are Black and White have historically been viewed as Black instead of White. As we mentioned at the start of this guide, blood quantum is controversial, with many different arguments for and against. Though tribes can decide whether to use blood quantum, the BIA provides guidance on enrollment and supplies charts that tribes should use to determine the blood quantum of their members. In In re Cruz, a Native American who had one-fourth African blood applied for citizenship on the basis of his part-African ancestry, but a New York federal court ruled that he was not Black and thus was not entitled to citizenship. Specifically, in the 1974 case of Morton v. Mancari, the Supreme Court held that a federal agencys hiring preferences of American Indians who met particular blood quantum requirements did not violate equal protection principles. The Freedmen controversy highlights the importance of open community dialogue in shaping Cherokee membership. a?Jy63J v!RC":7d2e(mSGVMLmkBi59!+^J,_69;r5)P%>~sr?92xogSnm(^MR!_vSS9Ek:LMxCV; |S69~k$~| PF^2|'K\iBo ?_.$`hCZlsgz)Qkg})Hh#I;j+54;\ji;wd) t|lre,>\g Dg^|d/(.