Happy #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth. Everyday this month I am sharing a history lesson with the hashtag #WeAreStillHere.
Today’s lesson is BLOOD QUANTUM.
Today’s lesson is BLOOD QUANTUM.
As a mixed, Native woman I am constantly asked “What part Native are you?”. As someone who passes as white, I get some version of that question I would estimate about 95% of the time a non-Native person “finds out” I’m Native American.
As a card-carrying Indian, I have a piece of paper from the US Department of Interior called a “Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood”. It’s kind of like the paperwork that comes with poodles & German Shepherds. It’s the governments measurement of my pedigree, of how native I am
In the early 20th Century, The US government no longer wanted to fulfill its treaty obligations to tribes that included health services, education and land protection. So they invented blood quantum. The goal was for American Indians to breed ourselves out.
At the time, US lawmakers estimated it would take 3 generations. Through the Dawes Acts, the Indian Reorganization Act and the Termination Era the US forced blood quantum onto tribal Nations. Tribes that did not have strict blood quantum policies were threatened with termination
In the mid 1970’s the Supreme Court ruled that only tribes can determine who is eligible for enrollment. Some tribes still use blood quantum while others use lineal descent, residency, or other factors. My tribe, Cherokee Nation, uses lineal descent.
Even though I don't agree with blood quantum, it's not my place to tell other Tribes how they should determine enrollment. Self governance is self governance. Allowing self governance when you agree with a tribe and intervening when you don't agree is called colonialism.
For some tribes it’s one way to measure how connected that person or family is to the tribe and culture. And having BQ then prioritizes those families for both tribal services and representation in tribal elections.
Like most creepy beliefs about race that have no grounding in reality, the idea of blood purity comes from Europe. It first appears during the Spanish inquisition as a way to measure Christian purity. The idea of blood marking Indignity was foreign to us prior to colonization
Even though BQ is not from us, it is deeply ingrained. I remember vividly as a kid my relatives sitting around and talking about the BQ of each generation of our family. This is what blood quantum was designed to do, over time for us to see ourselves as less and less Native.
