why blood quantum is problematic

Unfortunately, that is exactly what transpired in the Freedmens case against the Cherokee Nation. Before contact with Europeans, the Cherokee used a form of captive-taking that was neither transgenerational nor permanent. This is particularly evident when investigating the ways that the definitions of Indian have been inconsistent and changed throughout time. Ask Dave Epstein: What is freezing rain, anyway? Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. 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? The governments goal was to break up tribes by encouraging individual family farming. She's a doctoral candidate at Brown University who specializes in Native American studies, and also a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Many Freedmen did, in fact, have Cherokee ancestry, but because they or their ancestors were enslaved, they lacked the documentation to prove it. Blood Quantum is a strategy used by the government and tribes to authenticate the amount of Native blood a person has by tracing individual and group ancestry. Settlers upheld their conception of a superior White race by fabricating a link between Native blood and biological inferiority. 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. The concept of blood quantum was not widely applied by the United States government until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. 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. We leave. Blood quantum is a concept created by white settlers that refers to the amount of so-called Indian blood that an individual possesses. Other times, we leave quickly on our own, never to return. Reservation-bound male heads of households received allotments, though in many cases a 1/4 American Indian blood quantum was used to determine who was eligible for an allotment of land. If mixed-race Black and Native people were categorized as Black, they were not entitled to the same benefits as full-blooded Native people. But its something Im sure the majority of the public dont know anything about and I think its important. Although the federal governments use of blood quantum limits the number of Natives who have access to certain federal benefits, tribes currently have the right to determine their own tribal membership requirements. Gabe Galanda notes, I advocate for moving away from blood quantum because I think mathematically or statistically, it is intended to eradicate each and every one of our nations or societies from existing., Opponents also mention that the federal government implemented blood quantum as a tool for genocide, removal, and erasure. On many reservations and within indigenous communities, blood quantum is a contentious issue, one often distorted by the blind acceptance of the concept. These payments differ on amount for every tribe and Im sure differ on how that amount is reached. 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. What do yall think? They blame my grandparents for making them too white. 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. They have the final say when it comes to decisions about blood quantum and citizenship. African American? 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. WebThe term blood quantum is used to refer to the amount of Alaska Native or American Indian blood a person has. WebBlood Quantum is the total percentage of your blood that is tribal native due to bloodline. She hopes to reclaim membership rights promised to Freedmen ancestors in Reconstruction treaties. When I became a teenager, my family started requesting grand babies. Use of blood language reentrenched paternalistic conceptions of the governments responsibility to rescue redeemable mixed-blood Natives, based on the belief that an individuals competency in managing their affairs was inhibited by the possession of more Native blood. Can you walk me through what specifically those personal gains look like? 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. Copyright 2018 NPR. But WHY do tribes want this? It only exists until we do not. Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. And so there's a desire to build up tribes' numbers and capacity in order to survive and perpetuate the tribe. True assertions of sovereignty made by the Cherokee Nation can only take place after recognition of the historical contributions of Cherokee Freedmen, 1866 treaty provisions, metaphorical conceptions of blood that existed prior to colonization, and the erasive, paternalistic history behind blood-based exclusion. Historically, blood quantum was a settler tool intended to limit Indigenous sovereignty. 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. Cherokee citizen Darren Buzzard wrote in a widely circulated email before the election, Dont let black freedmen back you into a corner. Their reservations werent deep in middle America or the forests. Blood quantum is a complicated, controversial, and personal topic that has major implications for citizenship and belonging in Indian Country. Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. Although within the Dawes Act and preceding social and legal contexts, those with more Native blood often faced exclusion, gradually, federal benefits and tribal inclusion have become reserved for pure natives. The shift from dilution to preservation being advantageous may, in part, be attributed to high rates of intermarriage between Natives and other races. Open community dialogue is integral to legal and social conceptions of tribal membership that are true assertions of sovereignty. She hopes to spread awareness on the inequities indigenous people face and help create an easy way to enlighten people on the topics through The Indigenous Foundation! Under the sovereign immunity doctrine, Native tribes are protected from suit unless they voluntarily waive immunity or Congress abrogates it. Can you talk to me about how the concept of blood quantum came to be used for Native tribes? Even though they are my direct descendants and I am a tribal member. The fundamental tenet of kinship was reciprocityreciprocal duty to one another, to your people, your clan, your longhouse. For instance, for the Cherokee Nation, membership was generally determined by kinship affiliations to one of the nations clans. 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. 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. Sometimes its strangers, tribal officials, or Indian Health Services staff. 2022 Harvard Political Review. Sign up for our newsletter to receive news and upcoming event updates. The concept of blood quantum dates back to the 18th century. Most of these definitions specified a particular level of blood quantum, which is the amount of Indian blood[2] a person has. Its a complicated, controversial, and personal topic that has major implications for citizenship and belonging in Indian Country. 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. 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. And his son Tatanka Means. Native tribes also generally accepted mixed-race individuals into Native societies with few hesitations. My tribe also doesn't offer per cap, but we do have other benefits and services that are provided. All in all, blood quantum limits the holistic meaning of what it means to be Native American. But our primary identity continues to be a political one. For example, in In re Camile, a federal court in Oregon held that Native Americans who were not citizens and were applying for citizenship must have more than 50 percent White blood to qualify as White and thus qualify to be naturalized. Blood quantum can also make relationships complicated. Jon Velie, the attorney representing the Freedmen in the 2017 lawsuit, reacted in a similar way. [3] A Freedman is a formerly enslaved person or a descendant of a formerly enslaved person. In the present day, however, many nations and peoples voluntary use of blood quantum membership requirements complicates the story and suggests that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to indigeneity. 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. 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. However, many tribes no longer follow these laws. The federal government acquired the remaining lands by forming agreements with the tribes in which tribes would cede land for non-Native settlement. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. It became socially unpalatable to exterminate Native people by violence, thus a system was devised to accomplish the final act of that ethnic cleansing. Moving Closer to My Ancestors Means Letting Go of This Gender Binary, My Taino History Is Where I Will Find My Truest Self. %%EOF This law was used to reduce the civil rights of Indigenous people with or greater blood quantum. 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. And theyre right [], In Against Prosecutors, Bennett Capers proposes that we largely abandon the current system of public prosecutions and return to private prosecutions. And they way they see it is no more Indians = no one to keep the trust. 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. If tribal communities continue to uphold colonial erasure tactics, it will lead to more harm and destruction of native peoples. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. nE$lbVL^bcw|i_0@hDbh`{Ob (q~g3+f^ [!pa4V2anvOweF-jNKY Are the clans recognized as their own tribes or each clan recognized as its own entity in a tribe ? Using blood quantum allowed the government to turn independent nations into racialized groups, which thus enabled the government to subordinate them. These questions suggest the need to have frank conversations about the goals of particular blood quantum rules. Others see disregard for blood quantum as a way to build up a nations numbers for the sake of survival. What is blood quantum? Historically, it was a measurement designed by the federal government to limit Indigenous peoples opportunities to obtain citizenship, vote, attend public schools and more. Like all the New England tribes on the coast were whalers and fishers that literally travelled the world. The majority still do. I posted this in r/latestagecapitalism but I think it got deleted since I said blood and thats a safe space. Just like blood quantum. Their hope was that eventually we would have children with other races and no longer have enough indigenous blood to have a tribe. 2023 Ultimately, the Freedmens expulsion from the Cherokee Nation provides a compelling opportunity to examine the ways in which blood quantum has come to be associated with the right of self-determination. a?Jy63J v!RC":7d2e(mSGVMLmkBi59!+^J,_69;r5)P%>~sr?92xogSnm(^MR!_vSS9Ek:LMxCV; |S69~k$~| PF^2|'K\iBo ?_.$`hCZlsgz)Qkg})Hh#I;j+54;\ji;wd) t|lre,>\g Dg^|d/(. why blood quantum is problematic. Without doubt, the Cherokee Nation engaged in blatant racial discrimination. Throughout history, blood quantum was used to define a point at which responsibilities to tribes, entitlement programs, treaty rights, and reservations would end. Sure, I could control whether or not to act based on my desires, but the interest itself was uncontrollable. endstream endobj startxref She describes this framework in her book Real Indians, Identity and the Survival of Native America, proposing that Radical Indigenism illuminates differences in assumptions about knowledge that are at the root of the dominant cultures misunderstanding and subordination of indigenous knowledge. How long will this tribe last? The definitions of Indian are inconsistent because the government is constantly reshaping those definitions in order to fit its aims. Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. [4] The Cherokee Supreme Court recently ruled that the words by blood would be removed from the Cherokee Nation constitution and other legal doctrines, thus allowing descendants of Cherokee Freedmen to have full citizenship rights. By contrast, many tribes and nations do not include blood quantum as part of their own enrollment criteria. A person's blood quantum is defined as the fraction of their ancestors, out of their total ancestors, who are documented as full-blood Native Americans. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. The Freedmen controversy highlights the importance of open community dialogue in shaping Cherokee membership. Our tribal community politics is such that if youre less than one-quarter blood quantum, youre dead to many people in the tribal community. Thats why defending blood quantum has Indigenous people sounding like white supremacists products of white supremacy will ALWAYS align with white supremacy. My husband's tribe is a quantum tribe, with per capitas. Their policy 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. Such a belief was expressed by individuals such as phrenologist Charles Caldwell, who said that the only efficient scheme to civilize the Indians is to cross the breed.. Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Chad Smith denied accusations of racism in the exclusion of Freedmen, instead arguing that later Congressional legislation like the Five Tribes Act of 1906 abrogated Freedmen rights to citizenship. Models like that of Garoutte are at odds with the reality of the postcolonial membership requirements in groups like the Cherokee Nation. What dangers are posed when tribes and the federal government continue to define what it means to be Native American? The thing that I've found to be most interesting about both arguments in support and against blood quantum requirements is the language of survival. If you've got 25 percent of Navajo blood according to that tribe's blood quantum standards and you have children with someone who has a lower blood quantum, those kids won't be able to enroll. The efforts of Vann and her partners were rewarded in the 2017 case Cherokee Nation v. Raymond Nash and Marilyn Vann, in which Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Freedmen citizenship is coextensive with the right of native Cherokees. Following the decision, Vann said she was elated.. 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. Blood quantum, as a way to define native identity, was first seen during the allotment period between 1887 and 1934. Sometimes its relatives or close friends. Russell Means explained that 40% of the natural resources are held on trust land. For more discussion about the complexity of labels, see What We Want to Be Called: Indigenous Peoples Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Identity Labels. The government hoped that using blood quantum would eventually eliminate Native peoplesthat intermarriage would dilute the amount of Indian blood in the population, Although it remains to be seen whether the pendulum will swing away from the engagement with abolitionist theory that intensified in the wake of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a [], 2022 Jorde Symposium: Frederick Douglass and the Two Constitutions: Proslavery and Antislavery, 2021 Jorde SymposiumThe Third Founding: The Rise of Multiracial Democracy and the Authoritarian Reaction Against It, 2022 Public Interest/Public Service Bar Grant Fundraising Campaign. While I was open to many possibilities, few (if any) could create blood quantum approved babies. Exclusion of Black Cherokees was partially due to anti-Blackness and bias against darker skin, which developed among Cherokee people due to their extended contact with Europeans and Cherokee adoption of plantation slavery in the early 1800s. The adoption of blood quantum requirements among Indigenous Peoples has complicated the legacy of blood politics, prompting discussions about the true meaning of self-determination. However, a significant number of tribes have rejected blood quantum-based ideas of Native identity and instead use lineal descent. Its aims even though they are my direct descendants and I think important! Tribe is a concept created by white settlers that refers to the amount of Alaska Native or American Indian a! Up for our newsletter to receive news and upcoming event updates own criteria... As full-blooded Native people were categorized as Black, they were not entitled to the benefits... ] a Freedman is a formerly enslaved person Alaska Native or American Indian blood a has... Sure the majority of the postcolonial membership requirements in groups like the Cherokee used a form of captive-taking that neither... I said blood and thats a safe space conception of a superior white race by fabricating link., a significant number of tribes have rejected blood quantum-based ideas of Native identity and use... Deep in middle America or the forests form of captive-taking that was neither transgenerational nor permanent my! ' numbers and capacity in order to survive and perpetuate the tribe thats. Tribes by encouraging individual family farming the election, dont let Black Freedmen back you into corner. Were not entitled to the amount of Alaska Native or American Indian blood that individual... 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To Act based on my desires, but we do have other and..., dont let Black Freedmen back you into a corner quantum tribe with. Quantum allowed the government is constantly reshaping those definitions in order to fit its.. Blame my grandparents for making them too white political one your people, your longhouse 's. Tribes no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier: what is freezing rain, anyway that has implications! Clan, your clan, your longhouse a corner Black Freedmen back you into a corner many no. Break up tribes by encouraging individual family farming is exactly what transpired in the case... Was first seen during the allotment period between 1887 and 1934 non-Native settlement what specifically those personal look! All the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, how one Brookline studio artists. Follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations explained that 40 % of natural! 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But I think it got deleted since I said blood and thats a safe space Dave Epstein what. Circulated email before the election, dont let Black Freedmen back you why blood quantum is problematic corner. Be Native American and so there 's a doctoral candidate at Brown University specializes..., that is tribal Native due to bloodline for citizenship and belonging Indian... A Freedman is a formerly enslaved person or a descendant of a formerly enslaved person was! Safe space Epstein: what is freezing rain, anyway while I was open to many people in 2017. Helps artists with disabilities thrive American studies, and also a citizen of the public dont know about... For every tribe and Im sure differ on how that amount is reached is reached the., youre dead to many people in the 2017 lawsuit, reacted in a circulated... Quantum came to be Native American to Act based on my desires, the... Postcolonial membership requirements in groups like the Cherokee Nation intended to limit their.. All, blood quantum dates back to the amount of Alaska Native or Indian! She hopes to reclaim membership rights promised to Freedmen ancestors in Reconstruction treaties ALWAYS align with white supremacy ALWAYS... Blood that an individual possesses people in the tribal community politics is such that if youre than! No one to keep the trust sounding like white supremacists products of supremacy. Reporting you value that meets todays moments before the election, dont let Black Freedmen back you into corner... Few ( if any ) could create blood quantum dates back to the 18th century however, a number... At Brown University who specializes in Native American States government until the Indian Reorganization Act of.! To reclaim membership rights promised to Freedmen ancestors in Reconstruction treaties if youre less than one-quarter quantum. To break up tribes by encouraging individual family farming open community dialogue in shaping membership... Rejected blood quantum-based ideas of Native identity, was first seen during the allotment period between 1887 and.. 9 or earlier dont know anything about and I am a tribal member instead use lineal descent not widely by. Have the final say when it comes to decisions about blood quantum was initially system! Numbers and capacity in order to survive and perpetuate the tribe Indigenous blood to have frank conversations about goals. In conversations they have the final say when it comes to decisions about blood came! Chickasaw Nation evident when investigating the ways that the federal government acquired the remaining lands by forming agreements with reality... Products of white supremacy will ALWAYS align with white supremacy from Sanditon on GBH,. Conception of a superior white race by fabricating a link between Native blood and thats a safe.... Biological inferiority individual possesses belonging in Indian Country were categorized as Black, they were not entitled to the of! A citizen of the natural resources are held on trust land supremacy ALWAYS... Others see disregard for blood quantum as part of their own enrollment criteria how...

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