Climate Driven: A deep dive into Maine's response, one county at a time; Rooting resource allocation in blood politics allowed the federal government to forge a correlation between increased dilution of Indigenous blood and higher socioeconomic status, grounded in the European belief that White blood uplifted Native blood. To address concerns about scarce resources, those exploring alternatives to blood quantum are also emphasizing the importance of differentiating between citizenship and qualification for benefits. During the creation of the Dawes Rolls, those with even a drop of Black blood were categorized as Cherokee Freedmen. Because of this one-drop rule, Freedmen have had trouble proving lineal descent from a Native ancestor. Ask Dave Epstein: What is freezing rain, anyway? You might live there, you might speak the language, but they dont care about you., Eva Garroutte, a sociology professor at Boston College and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, proposes a framework of radical indigenism as a starting point for new definitions of Native identity. For example, the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe requires members to have 14 or more blood quantum from Lower Brule. Others required reservation residency, ownership of land kept in a government trust, or tribal citizenship for federal recognition. But the tribe itself will say that they are not Cherokee enough to be considered Cherokee. Some tribes have zero blood quantum requirement such as the Choctaw and Cherokee Nation. The event featured Megan Hill (Honoring Nations + Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development), Dr. Elizabeth Rule (American University), Dr. Jill Doerfler (University of Minnesota Duluth), and Gabe Galanda (Galanda Broadman PLLC). Since the U.S. government was giving the Seminole Nation a limited amount of money for the seized land, the Nation naturally wanted to limit the number of people who received funds. Blood quantum is a complicated, controversial, and personal topic that has major implications for citizenship and belonging in Indian Country. And so, for example, these officials would mark someone potentially as "full blood" when potentially that person was not. One of my biggest problems with blood quantum is even if you equate Nativeness to how much native blood you have, someone can be more Native than someone else but not be eligible for enrollment. To ensure that only Real Natives are enrolled in tribes. Idk if youve seen him but theres one guy in our tribal group who is always super mad that we dont do blood quantum because per his words Im 100% I should get more. This is particularly evident when investigating the ways that the definitions of Indian have been inconsistent and changed throughout time. Any unallotted surplus land was sold to non-Native buyers. But also the fact of the matter is most east coast tribes are very obviously black natives and the racism in native spaces is real asf. PROTECT CHEROKEE CULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN. Sometimes its relatives or close friends. This effectively excluded Freedmen because they were not recognized as members of Seminole Nation until 1866. 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. If a prospective citizens blood quantum is lower than 14, they are not eligible to become a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. One of the questions that kept coming up is: OK, so why don't tribes just ditch these blood quantum requirements and switch to an enrollment requirement that uses lineal descent? They blame my grandparents for making them too white. The BIA issues Native people a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) that identifies an individuals blood quantum and Native nation affiliation. The majority still do. And first, I want to be clear that I don't intend to speak on behalf of any specific tribes or even on behalf of my own, but I'm happy to walk you through some of those arguments that exist in support of maintaining blood quantum requirements for tribal membership. She was denied on the basis of her Black ancestry. Decades later, Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) began to use blood quantum to release mixed-race Native people of certain blood quantum from restrictions on sales and taxation of their allotmentsmeaning their land could then be sold to White people and subject to taxation. None? These questions suggest the need to have frank conversations about the goals of particular blood quantum rules. This is because if they let too many people enroll, they risk losing federal recognition and tribal property. 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. We need to get tribal governments to do away with it. Blood quantum simply is the amount of "Indian blood" that an individual possesses. Why do tribes use blood quantum? Data projections have shown that some Native nations will experience steep population declines in the near future if they continue with their current blood quantum requirements. The Native nation would cease to exist. Consanguinity, meaning direct family descendance, was not exclusive in determining group membership, however. "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.". ne of the frustrating elements of U.S. recognized tribal community can be summed up in two words: blood quantum. Almost all nations around the world have incorporated their former slaves, or colonized people into their societies. When I became a teenager, my family started requesting grand babies. I nickname them the BQMs (Blood Quantum Mechanics). Many tribes use a 25% blood quantum standard. In 2007, a Cherokee vote granted membership exclusively to Cherokees by blood listed on the Dawes Rolls. Like all the New England tribes on the coast were whalers and fishers that literally travelled the world. This pattern would continue for years to come: people disapprove of my mixed family, our pale skin, low blood quantum, then my grandfather cuts ties. Kids enrolled. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station. 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. FOR OUR DAUGHTER[S] . 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. Blood quantum is a concept created by white settlers that refers to the amount of so-called Indian blood that an individual possesses. There is power in Color Bloqs storytelling work, and we are grateful for all of your continued support. What do yall think? Federal officials used blood quantum to decide who was entitled to specific property or benefits. During the Treaty Periodthe time from 18171871 when the United States had a policy of negotiating treaties with tribes as sovereign political entitiesfederal officials used the language of blood to describe Native American ancestry, specifically those who were mixed with non-Native ancestry. 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. Blood quantum, like so many other factors, seemed an arbitrary barrier in sex concerns. My first memory of having blood quantum problems happened when I was four. 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. Blood Quantum is so effective because it expertly combines ingredients from the horror genre (in this case zombie horror) with a real-life horror story that needs to be toldthe ne of the frustrating elements of U.S. recognized tribal community can be summed up in two words: blood quantum. Blood quantum is a colonizer idea. Ultimately their decision has to be respected in order to uphold tribal sovereignty. It also hoped to assimilate Indigenous people, reduce their land base, and open the rest of the land for White settlement. And that assumption was based on their appearance, on their level of cultural involvement with their community. Simply Blood Quantum was created by federal governments to eradicate Indigenous peoples. Current and historical constructions of race, citizenship, and identity have primarily been shaped by White people in order to uphold White supremacy and domination. The Cherokee Nation is not the only American Indian tribe that uses blood distinctions to restrict tribal citizenship, privileges and benefits. They find me obstinate. Even though they're using what a lot of people say is a "Colonialist construct"? Further, some people who had no Indian ancestry managed to acquire places on the rolls through dishonest means in order to receive land allotments. Many Native nations also had ways of granting citizenship to non-kin, such as adoption and marriage. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. Throughout the 18th to 21st centuries, Freedmen have been active participants in Cherokee civic life, serving on the Cherokee National Council and speaking the Cherokee language. Also, unlike any other ethnic group, Native Americans have to continuously prove their identity. Blood Quantum is so effective because it expertly combines ingredients from the horror genre (in this case zombie horror) with a real-life horror story that needs to be toldthe story of the very human horrors that marginalized peoples like the First Nations have experienced for centuries, which continues to this day. 2022 Harvard Political Review. That system is the blood quantum Many Native nations, including the Navajo Nation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, still use it as part of their citizenship requirements. Blood quantum minimums really restrict who can be a citizen of a tribe. Please direct all mail to the following address: This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. 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. 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. Native tribes also generally accepted mixed-race individuals into Native societies with few hesitations. Blood quantum is a stand-in device for lineage imposed by the U.S. federal government to disempower Indigenous people and separate them from their lands, resources, culture, identities, languages, and futures. She is part of the writing team at TIF and is the article and Instagram content writer. Sure, I could control whether or not to act based on my desires, but the interest itself was uncontrollable. Surplus reservation land was then open to homesteaders and corporations for purchase, creating patchwork quilt-like reservations with both American Indian and non-American Indian landholdings. They specifically enroll based on that tribe's quantum, not the total Indian blood of the person. The distinction between the racial and political use of blood quantum rules and its connection to sovereignty offer an important backdrop to the Cherokee Nations actions against the Freedmen. Experiences like these raise questions about the meaning of indigeneity, including the use of historical blood-based classifications of people. Thank you for sharing your powerful words. The question, its need, is ever constant. That history is very clear. Was the Cherokee Nation's expulsion of black Freedmen an act of tribal sovereignty or of racial discrimination? Spending the first half of my life without tribal citizenship, only to gain this distinction once our tribe lowered the blood quantum minimum, Ive experienced both sides of the divide. For example, some nations are lowering blood quantum requirements and/or allowing prospective citizens to count blood from other Native nations in their calculations. 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. Specifically, Freedmen, the descendants of Black slaves of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogees (Creeks), and Seminole tribes, have faced significant exclusion. Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. Go off! It only exists until we do not. [1] His goal is to empower the victims of crime to make decisions currently made by public prosecutorswhether to bring charges, what the charges should be, and how the cases should be resolved. Blood Quantum in the modern sense was first officially used by the BIA after the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, better known as the Indian Welfare Act. (Lineal descent basically means that, if your ancestors were enrolled in a tribe, you can be, too.). As we mentioned at the start of this guide, blood quantum is controversial, with many different arguments for and against. 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