Joined: 31 May 2005 {Posts: 66 } Location: South Carolina
Posted: Mon 12 Sep 2005 16:53 Post subject: US Racial classification according to latino standards
How would the United States be classified in the way race is classified in Latin America? Would there still be a color line and would certain populations be increasing? For example, would a Johnny Depp be considered 'white' or 'mestizo'? Would blacks be classified as 'afromestizos', 'blacks', or 'mulattos'?
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Mon 12 Sep 2005 17:59 Post subject: Re: US Racial classification according to latino standards
gera2561 wrote:
How would the United States be classified in the way race is classified in Latin America? Would there still be a color line and would certain populations be increasing? For example, would a Johnny Depp be considered 'white' or 'mestizo'? Would blacks be classified as 'afromestizos', 'blacks', or 'mulattos'?
Hi,
People won't be classified. They will only be described.
In our country any single family has members of two or more "races" depending on the country you live. So you mom can be one race, and yourself can belong to other "race", then there is not racism possible,
That way it is not possible to be classified.
Only when those people enter to the U.S. they are forced to defined themselves.
In Latin America there are two kinds of countries, though: mestizos, and mulattoes. Sometimes there is racism between peoples of different countries.
Joined: 31 May 2005 {Posts: 66 } Location: South Carolina
Posted: Tue 13 Sep 2005 13:42 Post subject:
How would you classify these celebrities, or at least how would these celebrities be classifed in say, Chile, Puerto Rico, or Mexico? Would they be classified of the same ancestral background or different racial/ethnic category? How would the following North American celebs be classified?
How would you classify these celebrities, or at least how would these celebrities be classifed in say, Chile, Puerto Rico, or Mexico? Would they be classified of the same ancestral background or different racial/ethnic category?
I cannot speak for Chile, Mexico, or anyone else. But in Puerto Rico, if they were Puerto Ricans, they would be classified as "Puerto Ricans." Their ancestral backgrounds are evidently varied. But their "racial/ethnic category" would be "Puerto Rican."
On the other hand, if they were visitors or immigrants from the United States, then they would be classified as "Americans." Again, their ancestral backgrounds are evidently varied, but their "racial/ethnic category" would be "American" (or the derogatory "gringo").
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 12:19 Post subject: US Racial classification according to latino standards
Perhaps Gera means how would these people be described by others in Latin America. Would Alicia Keys be a mulatta, Taye Diggs negro, Heather Locklear blanca, Beyonce triguena, etc.?
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 12:45 Post subject: Re: US Racial classification according to latino standards
G-Man wrote:
Perhaps Gera means how would these people be described by others in Latin America. Would Alicia Keys be a mulatta, Taye Diggs negro, Heather Locklear blanca, Beyonce triguena, etc.?
Again, I can opine only for the folks who live in Puerto Rico. The labels mentioned (along with about a half-dozen others) are skin-tone designations in Puerto Rico today, not "racial/ethnic categories." Since I lack skill in cosmetology, I defer classifiying skin tones to anyone with experience or trainining in this field. Perhaps BlendedBeauty might be able to assign skin-tone labels.
For example, at the lower right of the following Kodak color calibration image are the twelve skin-tone shades used by photographers to adjust tint. I do not know their names (or even if they have names).
Joined: 31 May 2005 {Posts: 66 } Location: South Carolina
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 13:26 Post subject:
G-man is right. I have a hunch that if they were latin american citizens, they would be classified into different categories based on their appearance. Those with African features in this country are considered black regardless of how light or dark they are, though self identification is a part of it. The one drop rule is not a rule written in the books as far as I know. But Alicia Keys and Amanda Marshall, the one with the curly blonde hair, are both mulattas and Taye Diggs, Jill Scott, Queen Latifah, India Arie, and Wesley Snipes are blacks. I think he is Jamaican, I am not sure. Though Queen Latifah, Destiny's Child, and Jill Scott look to have admixture. Heather Locklear, Johnny Depp, Molly Culver, and Chuck Norris are all whites, but they are part Indian as well. Would they be classified as mestizos or of the same racial/ethnic category as Britney Spears? But it is fascinating that they would all be classified as one nationality though, fwsweet.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 14:05 Post subject: opinion
gera2561 wrote:
How would you classify these celebrities, or at least how would these celebrities be classifed in say, Chile, Puerto Rico, or Mexico? Would they be classified of the same ancestral background or different racial/ethnic category? How would the following North American celebs be classified?
This is my opinion as a Chilean
Quote:
She would be considered a "morena" (moorish) or, in other terms, a Spanish or Latin common women a little bit darker than average
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They would be considered average.
Quote:
She would be considered Black. probably Peruvian or Brasilian.
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She would be considered average.
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He would be considered from outside the region. Probably African or Black American.
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She would be considered Black Peruvian or Brasilian
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He would be considered Northern European.
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North American Black
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Average Latino
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Argentinean
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Argentinean, Chilean or Brasilian of German descent
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Average
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Brazilian Mulatta
Of course perception would change in different countries. This is my particular vision as a Chilean.
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 16:57 Post subject: Re: opinion
oevega wrote:
[regarding Heather Locklear] Argentinean, Chilean or Brasilian of German descent
That IS interesting. Of all the people depicted, she is the only one whose probable genetic admixture is known to me. Her father is a member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of Robeson County, North Carolina (formerly known as the "Croatans"). The Lumbees are a maroon community who were recently tested and found to have about 45 percent African, 15 percent Native American, and 40 percent European genetic admixture. Assuming that Ms. Locklear's father is an "average" Lumbee, and assuming that her mother is 100 percent European, then she may well be the most evenly mixed person shown above (at 23% African, 8% Indian, 69% European).
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 14 Sep 2005 17:42; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 31 May 2005 {Posts: 66 } Location: South Carolina
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 17:08 Post subject:
gera2561 wrote:
How would you classify these celebrities, or at least how would these celebrities be classifed in say, Chile, Puerto Rico, or Mexico? Would they be classified of the same ancestral background or different racial/ethnic category? How would the following North American celebs be classified?
Intereseting enough, Frank is correct about Heather Locklear. She is mostly Scottish, but she is part lumbee indian.
Alicia Keys, mulatta
Destiny's Child, black americans/creole
Queen Latifah, black american
Amanda Marshall, Canadian mulatta
Taye Diggs, black(Jamaican)-American
Jill Scott, black american
[img] http://images.art.com/images/PRODUCTS/large/10043000/10043743.jpg[/img]Chuck Norris, white/Indian
Wesley Snipes, black american
Johnny Depp, white/Indian
Britney Spears, white american
Heather Locklear, white american (scottish and lumbee indian)
Molly Culver, white/indian
india arie, black american
it is fascinating how people are classified around the world. anyone else care to classify?
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 18:24 Post subject: Re: opinion
fwsweet wrote:
oevega wrote:
[regarding Heather Locklear] Argentinean, Chilean or Brasilian of German descent
That IS interesting. Of all the people depicted, she is the only one whose probable genetic admixture is known to me. Her father is a member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of Robeson County, North Carolina (formerly known as the "Croatans"). The Lumbees are a maroon community who were recently tested and found to have about 45 percent African, 15 percent Native American, and 40 percent European genetic admixture. Assuming that Ms. Locklear's father is an "average" Lumbee, and assuming that her mother is 100 percent European, then she may well be the most evenly mixed person shown above (at 23% African, 8% Indian, 69% European).
I've seen a picture of her father. He looks "ethnic". If she is around 23% African, then that would be quite a shock to many whites in this country who equate whiteness with being negro free. She's very Nordic looking.
I've heard that the Lumbees are not too keen on the fact that they have so much African ancestry. They tend to deny it and play up their Indian and European ancestry. Are any of them noticeably African in appearance?
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 18:54 Post subject: Re: opinion
G-Man wrote:
I've heard that the Lumbees are not too keen on the fact that they have so much African ancestry. They tend to deny it and play up their Indian and European ancestry.
Yes. The Redbones, Guineas, Seminoles, and most of the maroon communities seem to feel this way also. As far as I can tell, the Melungeons are the one great exception. I discussed this phenomenon with Wayne Winkler, the president of the Melungeon Heritage Association, at the Frankfort meeting. He said that many Melungeons think that it is because the BIA will not recognize "tribes" that embrace their African ancestry. Official "tribal" recognition by the feds is worth millions in gambling revenue. So, anyone who seeks this goal must deny African ancestry. The Melungeons have never particularly wanted to be accepted as an Indian tribe, no matter how lucrative it may be.
As I told Wayne, however, Redbones and Seminoles with whom I have discussed this topic have never brought up gambling. Instead, they just seem to be in psychological denial of their African ancestry, like most non-Black Americans. My own explanation of this phenomenon is in The Triumph of the One-Drop Rule.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 23:01 Post subject: Re: opinion
fwsweet wrote:
G-Man wrote:
I've heard that the Lumbees are not too keen on the fact that they have so much African ancestry. They tend to deny it and play up their Indian and European ancestry.
Yes. The Redbones, Guineas, Seminoles, and most of the maroon communities seem to feel this way also. As far as I can tell, the Melungeons are the one great exception. I discussed this phenomenon with Wayne Winkler, the president of the Melungeon Heritage Association, at the Frankfort meeting. He said that many Melungeons think that it is because the BIA will not recognize "tribes" that embrace their African ancestry. Official "tribal" recognition by the feds is worth millions in gambling revenue. So, anyone who seeks this goal must deny African ancestry. The Melungeons have never particularly wanted to be accepted as an Indian tribe, no matter how lucrative it may be.
As I told Wayne, however, Redbones and Seminoles with whom I have discussed this topic have never brought up gambling. Instead, they just seem to be in psychological denial of their African ancestry, like most non-Black Americans. My own explanation of this phenomenon is in The Triumph of the One-Drop Rule.
G-Man wrote:
Are any of them noticeably African in appearance?
You will have to decide this for yourself, since I am not the best judge of appearance.
Hi Frank,
I look at the pictures carefully and I wonder if the lumbee really have Native American blood in them. As far as I can see they vary from African to Northern European continuously. However, I don't see the native phenotypes in them.
Are they really tri-racial with strong Native American roots? It seems to me they are bi-racial African European only, in a population similar to the one we see in Cuba, for example.
Posted: Wed 14 Sep 2005 23:43 Post subject: Re: opinion
oevega wrote:
I wonder if the lumbee really have Native American blood in them. As far as I can see they vary from African to Northern European continuously. However, I don't see the native phenotypes in them. Are they really tri-racial with strong Native American roots? It seems to me they are bi-racial African European only, in a population similar to the one we see in Cuba, for example.
Your perception is accurate. The Lumbees run only about 15% Native American DNA, which is a bit less than most U.S. "tribes." As I am sure you have grasped by now, in the United States there are serious discrepancies between ethnic self-identity on the one hand and genetic ancestry on the other.
Although many U.S. Indians take their ethnic self-identity very seriously, members of virtually all U.S. tribes, even the famous tribes, have relatively little aboriginal DNA. You can visit any tribal meeting in the United States and make the same observation.
When I first began studying this, I believed the lack of Amerind DNA was because 95% of the aboriginal population had been killed within a few generations after Columbus, by the pandemic European and African diseases to which they lacked resistance. But this 95% mortality also happened in Central and South America, and yet the Central and South American Indian survivors of the pandemics gradually replenished themselves. Unlike in North America, Indians in South America today have mostly aboriginal DNA. And so the pandemics do not explain the absence of aboriginal DNA in the United States.
Having looked more carefully at the history of colonist/Amerind interaction after the Revolution, I now believe that the explanation is quite different.
European colonists in Central and South America stumbled across two huge, stratified, stable, well-organized military empires. It was to their advantage to preserve the imperial infrastructure in New Spain and Peru. This meant infiltrating and taking over the ruling class, and preserving the laboring class in order to exploit them (via the encomienda and the mita). Far from deliberately trying to exterminate the Indians, the colonists tried to preserve them as forced laborers.
In North America, on the other hand, the colonists found fragmented independent tribes of hunter-gatherers along with a few scattered city-less, illiterate, disorganized sedentary farmers. These primitive natives were of no use to the colonists, and so they set out to exterminate them. Genetically at least, they succeeded.
Last edited by fwsweet on Thu 15 Sep 2005 12:54; edited 5 times in total
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Thu 15 Sep 2005 02:33 Post subject: Genocide ?
fwsweet wrote:
Although U.S. Indians take their ethnic self-identity very seriously, members of virtually all U.S. tribes, even the famous tribes, have relatively little aboriginal DNA. You can visit any tribal meeting in the United States and make the same observation.
When I first began studying this, I believed the lack of Amerind DNA was because 95% of the aboriginal population had been killed within a few generations after Columbus, by the pandemic European and African diseases to which they lacked resistance. But this 95% mortality also happened in Central and South America, and yet the Central and South American Indian survivors of the pandemics gradually replenished themselves. Unlike in North America, Indians in South America today have mostly aboriginal DNA. And so the pandemics do not explain the absence of aboriginal DNA in the United States.
Having looked more carefully at the history of colonist/Amerind interaction after the Revolution, I now believe that the explanation is quite different.
European colonists in Central and South America stumbled across two huge, stratified, stable, well-organized military empires. It was to their advantage to preserve the imperial infrastructure in New Spain and Peru. This meant infiltrating and taking over the ruling class, and preserving the laboring class in order to exploit them (via the encomienda). Far from deliberately trying to exterminate the Indians, the colonists tried to preserve them as forced laborers.
In North America, on the other hand, the colonists found fragmented independent tribes of hunter-gatherers along with a few scattered city-less, illiterate, disorganized sedentary farmers. These primitive natives were of no use to the colonists, and so they set out to exterminate them. Genetically at least, they succeeded.
Hi Frank,
I believe your appreciation is right in several points. In fact, the highest densities of Native American heritage are precisely in those countries were the Aztec, Inca and neighbouring civilizations existed. However, I believe that does not explain all.
(1) In the rest of Hispanic America there were not advanced empires but Natives survived anyways. In Southern South America is around 10% of pure blood Natives. And the have above the 20% of the genetic pool with Native American contribution, for instance.
(2) In Argentina and the Hispanic Caribbean the percentage of Native mtDNA is above the 50%.
(3) In Brazil, a non-hispanic country, there are about 20 million of Native descendents and the percentage of the Native DNA in the genetic pool is about 25%.
(4) In Canada, an anglo-saxon and French country, there are 1 million pure Native Americans. I saw them in person and they are real Natives. There are also large number of Metis. The percentage of Native blood in Canada must be around the 10%, I believe.
So in Brazil and Canada, two non-hispanic countries, with Natives that have a basic livestyle of hunting and gathering, there was a high rate of survival.
This lead me to a conclusion. One of these two alternatives is the correct for the U.S.:
(a) Either the Natives assimilated to the white and black populations, and then they were "whitewashed" by large scale European immigration. or
(b) The United States was the only country in the hemisphere that practised a methodic and systematic extermination of the Native Americans. In that case it was, perhaps, the largest genocide in history, besides the holocaust.
I believe the alternative (a) is the correct. However, it seems there is no good genetic study in the U.S. about the degree of Native admixture in White Americas. If so, one could develop a model that could prove what really happened.
(1) In the rest of Hispanic America there were not advanced empires but Natives survived anyways. In Southern South America is around 10% of pure blood Natives. And the have above the 20% of the genetic pool with Native American contribution, for instance.
But Latin American colonization was centered on the Aztec and Inca empires for centuries. By the time that southern Chile and Argentina were colonized, the pattern of exploitation (rather than extermination) was set.
oevega wrote:
(2) In Argentina and the Hispanic Caribbean the percentage of Native mtDNA is above the 50%.
Yes, but we were talking about the amount of aboriginal DNA in people who self-identify as members of an extant Indian tribe. The number of people in the Hispanic Caribbean who self-identify as members of an extant Indian tribe is negligible.
oevega wrote:
(3) In Brazil, a non-hispanic country, there are about 20 million of Native descendents and the percentage of the Native DNA in the genetic pool is about 25%.
Until the last few centuries, Indians of the Brazilian interior were neither exploited nor exterminated because the interior was never colonized.
oevega wrote:
(4) In Canada, an anglo-saxon and French country, there are 1 million pure Native Americans. I saw them in person and they are real Natives. There are also large number of Metis. The percentage of Native blood in Canada must be around the 10%, I believe.
Canada had a different history. England's monarchy (like Spain's) strove with some success to protect the Indians, who were seen as subjects. It was the colonists who wanted to exterminate them. The United States rebelled against England in 1776. By 1790, the new republic began formulating genocidal policies. By 1830 they were well underway. Canada remained under the monarchy until much later.
oevega wrote:
(a) Either the Natives assimilated to the white and black populations, and then they were "whitewashed" by large scale European immigration. or (b) The United States was the only country in the hemisphere that practised a methodic and systematic extermination of the Native Americans. In that case it was, perhaps, the largest genocide in history, besides the holocaust. I believe the alternative (a) is the correct.
Well, we are both guessing, of course, since sufficient evidence has not yet been colllected either way. But I tend to go with (b). U.S. historians are only now starting to investigate the breadth and depth of the deliberate extermination of the Native Americans in the early 19th century.
oevega wrote:
However, it seems there is no good genetic study in the U.S. about the degree of Native admixture in White Americas. If so, one could develop a model that could prove what really happened.
I disagree. Not that we need more admixture studies, of course! (Although I am eagerly looking forward to William's bibliographical compilation of journal sources.) But I think that the extent of aboriginal DNA in White Americans is beside the point. The issue was the lack of aboriginal DNA in self-identified "Indian tribes."
Posted: Thu 15 Sep 2005 22:17 Post subject: Native American DNA
It appears that federally recognized "American Indian" tribes (especially the Southern "Five Civilized Tribes") are mostly full of predominately European "Indians" trying to claim that American Indian descendants of African ancestry have no "Indian blood."
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Even by the pancake-flat standards of Middle America, Stick Ross Mountain is an unimpressive peak. It's more of a gentle hill, really, poking out from behind the Wal-Mart just west of Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
But to the Cherokee, the 900-foot crest was remarkable enough to be named for a revered 19th-century member of the tribal council. Stick Ross is thought to be the illegitimate grandson of Chief John Ross, who led the tribe along the Trail of Tears. Ross the younger was a respected Native American and a skilled diplomat who acted as a liaison between tribes and local townsfolk. "He knew sign language and spoke Cherokee and Seminole. He was a trapper and a farmer and a rancher," says Stick's great-grandson, Leslie Ross, a 56-year-old retired civil servant whose greatest joy is recounting the Stick trivia he learned from his family in Muskogee. "And he was sheriff at one time, too. He was pretty renowned in Tahlequah."
Stick may have died an exemplary citizen of the Cherokee Nation, but he was born into slavery. The Cherokee kept black slaves until 1866, when an emancipation treaty freed them from bondage and granted them full tribal citizenship. Known as the Freedmen, these men and women were embraced by the Cherokee as equals, and often married the offspring of their former masters. Like Stick, they identified with local cultures, spoke tribal languages, and took part in tribal religious rites.
And yet, three-quarters of a century after the death of Cherokee legend Stick Ross, there's no room for his great-grandson in the Cherokee Nation. Leslie Ross has been denied citizenship in the tribe on the grounds that he is not truly Indian. "They said I don't have any Indian blood. They say blacks have never had a part in the Cherokee Nation," says Ross, his usually calm voice swelling with anger. "The thing is, there wouldn't be a Cherokee Nation if it weren't for my great-grandfather. Jesus, he was more Indian than the Indians!"
Ross is just one of at least 25,000 direct descendants of Freedmen who cannot join Oklahoma's largest tribes. Once paragons of racial inclusion and assimilation, the Native American sovereign nations have done an about-face and systematically pushed out people of African descent. "There's never been any stigma about intermarriage," says Stu Phillips, editor of The Seminole Producer, a local newspaper in central Oklahoma. "You've got Indians marrying whites, Indians marrying blacks. It was never a problem until they got some money."
These are boom times for the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma - the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole - due in no small part to the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that allowed the tribes to construct their own casinos. The Chickasaw's net assets have more than doubled to $315 million in the two years since it opened the mammoth WinStar Casinos complex in Thackerville. The corporate arm of the Cherokee Nation, Cherokee Nation Enterprises, is on track to make nearly $70 million this year thanks to a new casino in Catoosa. Then there's the government reparations fund. In 1990, the Seminoles received a $56 million settlement as compensation for the seizure of the tribe's ancestral lands in Florida almost 200 years ago.
The casino profits and make-good money have increased the standard of living for the recognized members of the tribes who make their homes in some of the poorest areas in the US. Cherokee Nation Enterprises allocates 25 percent of profits to the Cherokee government, which distributes the money in ways designed to help end the cycle of poverty - college scholarships, health care, and low-interest home loans. And the Seminole Nation offers grants for home repairs, which many of the ramshackle structures in Seminole County can sorely use. On the outskirts of Wewoka, the county seat, families loll on wooden porches that seem one gust of wind away from collapse.
And so, in recent years, a rush of Indians has come forward to claim tribal citizenship and get their share of the benefits. In 1980, there were 50,000 members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma; today, there are more than a quarter million. But even as the official ranks of the Five Civilized Tribes have swelled, they've revised membership guidelines to exclude the Freedmen.
For the better part of the 20th century, black Indians were permitted to vote in elections, sit on tribal councils, and receive benefits. Tribal leaders now insist that the Freedmen were never actually citizens and that they will never attain the honor of membership because they don't have Native American blood. In 1983, the Cherokee tribe established a rule requiring citizens to carry a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. This federal document is available to anyone whose ancestors are listed on the Dawes Roll - a 1906 Indian census that excludes Freedmen. In 2000, the Seminoles expelled all 2,000 black members and denied their families a cut of the reparations money - never mind that their ancestors joined the tribe in the 18th century, endured the march from Florida to Oklahoma in the 1830s, and have considered themselves Indian for generations.
Outraged, numerous Freedmen have turned to the courts for help. In the most celebrated case, a black tribal leader named Sylvia Davis filed suit against the Seminole tribe in 1994 to get her son a $125 clothing stipend from the Seminole reparations money. But US courts have repeatedly refused to meddle in Indian affairs, noting that the sovereign nations determine their own membership criteria. Davis suffered a serious - and perhaps final - setback last year, when the Supreme Court refused to consider her appeal of a lower court's ruling that the Seminoles could not be sued in federal court. (The Bush administration filed a brief on behalf of the tribe.)
Now, just as the Freedmen's struggle appears all but lost, new hope is emerging from an unlikely place - the front lines of genetic science. Last year, several Freedmen leaders were approached by a molecular biology professor named Rick Kittles. As head of African Ancestry, a company he had recently founded to sell DNA testing services to amateur genealogists, Kittles promised to reveal any customer's preslavery roots, whether they stretch to the Tikar of Cameroon or the Mende of Sierra Leone.
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Kittles heard about the Freedmen's plight from a friend at the University of Oklahoma and wondered how the black Indians' genetic makeup would compare to other subsets of the African-American population, such as the isolated residents of South Carolina's Gullah Islands. He visited the 2004 conference of the Descendants of the Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, an organization dedicated to ending "discrimination against people of mixed Indian African descent," and offered free DNA tests. There are many light-skinned tribal citizens with less than 1 percent Indian genetic material; most Freedmen claim to have at least that much. So they began taking Kittles' test in hopes that science would succeed where rhetoric, litigation, and historical documents have failed.
"It's important that we be able to establish that we are Indian people, not just African people who were adopted into the tribe," says Marilyn Vann, who is suing the Cherokee Nation for citizenship. "If you're the average tribal member, you don't want to be discriminated against because you look Indian. So how can you discriminate against other people just because they have some African features?"
"I have something for you."
A linebacker-sized man with a shaved head and a disarming smile, Ron Graham is holding a manila envelope stuffed with hundreds of fuzzy photocopies bearing lists of names and numbers in chicken-scratch script. He ushers me to an empty table in Dale Hall, on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman. We're here for the third annual meeting of the Descendants, the highlight of which will be Kittles' presentation on the results of last year's DNA tests.
When he's not working in a nearby xanthan gum factory, Graham moonlights as a genealogist-for-hire and vice president of the Descendants. He specializes in helping African-Americans who believe their Native American roots have been obscured by a combination of government racism and tribal avarice. Like Vann, Ross, and Davis, Graham took a DNA test to help prove his heritage and is in the midst of suing the Creeks to gain membership. In the final days of August, just as this issue of Wired hits newsstands, he will present his case, complete with DNA test results, to the tribal council. Graham believes that, in the face of scientific evidence, the Creeks will return his birthright.
Graham admits that money is a factor in his crusade: His three college-age sons could benefit from federal scholarships reserved for Native Americans. But he's not just looking for a handout. He seeks recognition as a Creek because that's how he has always identified himself. Graham fondly remembers his late father, Theodore "Blue" Graham, dancing at the stomp grounds near the town of Arbeka, where Creeks in traditional dress would gather for sacred ceremonies. Blue spoke Creek fluently and handed down some knowledge of the language to his son. During one of his citizenship hearings with Creek Nation officials, Ron was shocked to learn that he was one of the only people in the room who could recognize the word for girl written in the tribe's ancestral language. "My nation won't accept me because of skin color," he says, shaking his head.
Graham leafs through documents that he believes will demonstrate his ancestors had considerable Creek blood. He shows me a handwritten testimonial from Keeper Johnson, a full-blooded Creek and member of the Creek National Council, recognizing Blue as a fellow citizen. "I have known Theodore Graham since 1946 as a Creek Indian," the note reads. "He was traditional and spoke our language fluently. I always assumed he was Creek decent [sic]." Graham also dredged up documents known as Proofs of Death and Heirship, which list his father as one-eighth Indian - 12.5 percent.
Then he flips to his trump card. It reads, "Creek Nation, Creek Roll, Card No. 191." The date stamp: Approved by the Secretary of the Interior March 3, 1902. Above the seal is the name Rose McGilbray. When it was completed, likely by a clerk working for the Department of the Interior, McGilbray was 35 years old. In a column headed "Blood," the notation says "Full." "See, this is my great-great-grandmother on my mother's side," Graham says.
It's official recognition of McGilbray as a member of the Dawes Roll, a 1906 tally of Oklahoma Indians that is, according to the tribes, the only acceptable way to document Native American heritage. The Dawes Roll was the brainchild of a patrician Massachusetts senator, Henry Laurens Dawes, who wanted to "civilize" Indian territory by ending communal land ownership and allotting 160-acre plots to individual members of each tribe. At first, the tribes resisted the white man's efforts to destroy a centuries-old way of life. One Creek official compared the Dawes Commission, which oversaw the roll's creation, to the plague of locusts the Egyptians faced in the Bible. But the tribes relented, if only to avoid a conflict with the US government.
The task of enrolling the Indians was assigned to white clerks dispatched from Washington. They set up vast tent villages in Oklahoma towns and sent word through tribal officials that anyone interested in claiming their land had to register. Once the news spread, the tents were deluged with applicants, including scores of Caucasians claiming to have a sliver of Indian blood. More surprising for the clerks were the thousands of African-Americans who showed up. The 1890 census counted 18,636 people "of Negro descent in the Five Tribes." With no ability to speak any Native American language, the clerks often relied on the eyeball test. Those who fit the stereotype - ruddy skin, straight hair, high cheekbones - were placed on the "blood roll." The roll noted each person's "blood quantum," the fraction of their parentage that was ostensibly Native American. That number was sometimes based on documentation, but often, given the lack of accurate records and the language barrier, it was nothing more than crude guesswork.
Those with obvious African roots were sent to a different set of tents. There, they were added to the Freedmen Roll, which had no listing of blood quantum. Contemporary Freedmen believe the segregation was part of a government conspiracy to steal Indian land. Freedmen, unlike their peers on the blood roll, were permitted to sell their land without clearing the transaction through the Indian Bureau. That made the poorly educated Freedmen easy marks for white settlers migrating from the Deep South. Stories abound of Freedmen, unable to read the contracts they were signing, selling their 160-acre plots for as little as $15.
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Blood Feud
Plus:
Testing Bloodlines
Even when a man had an Indian grandparent and should have been assigned a blood quantum of one-fourth, he might well have been placed on the Freedmen Roll. The eyeball test sometimes assigned siblings to separate rolls simply because one was born with less melanin. Full-blooded women married to black males suddenly became Freedmen with no blood quantum. It was a wholly arbitrary process, but it didn't matter much. Freedmen and Indians continued to live in relative harmony - until money and politics entered the picture.
Now the Oklahoma Freedmen find themselves haunted by a 99-year-old clerical error motivated by racism or incompetence, or both. "To this day, in Oklahoma, we don't exist, our history doesn't exist. Everyone should have the right to reclaim their heritage," says Anissia Vo. Her grandfather, a Creek Freedman, said his dying wish was for his entire family to become recognized members of the tribe. Vo, who lives in Muskogee, has spent the last four years documenting her heritage and struggling to get recognition from the Creek government. "My great-grandfather was born Creek, his birth certificate says he was Creek. But when he died, he died a black man. It's upsetting to deal with someone telling you, 'We don't care what you were yesterday - from now on you're going to have to be someone else.' We want them to acknowledge our existence."
Even in the rare case that a Freedman can trace an ancestor to the Dawes Roll, as with Ron Graham and his great-great-grandmother Rose McGilbray, the tribes find a new way to ensure that the Freedmen are always the odd men out. The Creek tribal council has so far refused to believe that Graham is related to McGilbray. Which is why Graham turned to science in search of irrefutable evidence. His test reveals that he's genetically 9 percent Native American. If the tribes insist that they'll only accept members who are Indian by blood, he'll show them what's in his blood.
Searching for obscure ancestors once meant combing through the bowels of the National Archives or sending shot-in-the-dark letters to strangers who share a last name. Now anyone with a budding interest in their family tree can order a DNA test kit. Swab the inside of your cheek, mail the sample to a lab, which searches for variations that appear in certain ethnicities, and in a few weeks you'll receive a CD telling you your great-great-grandmother was born in Senegal. For those who obsess over matters such as whether their heavy tooth enamel indicates Creole roots, genetic tests are a quick way to separate scientific fact from family fiction.
Many of the early adopters shell out a few hundred dollars just to prove to themselves that their cells are more exotic than their faces. "Ninety percent of the people interested in Native American ancestry are people who look as European as could be," says Tony Frudakis, chief scientific officer of DNAPrint Genomics, a Sarasota, Florida, genetic testing company. "They think they might have a Native American ancestor three or four generations back. We call it the American Indian Great-Grandmother Princess."
DNA tests works fine for amateur genealogists, but they're hardly foolproof. Two of the three on the market - Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA - are limited in scope. The Y chromosome test looks for variations on just 1.5 percent of a male's genes. The mtDNA test reads a mere 0.005 percent of the subject's genome. While these tests have shown an ability to identify Native American gene lines, false negatives are a big problem.
The third type, known as the genome-wide test, has proven more useful to the Freedmen. DNAPrint's AncestryByDNA looks across all 23 pairs of chromosomes for mutations that seem to indicate one ancestry or another. The company uses proprietary statistical software to estimate what percentage of a person's genetic material originated where - 85 percent European and 15 percent East Asian, say, or 60 percent African, 20 percent Native American, and 20 percent European. "Chief John Ross was between one-eighth and one-sixteenth Cherokee [12.5 and 6.25 percent]," Leslie Ross says, "and my DNA test said I'm 3 or 4 percent."
But even the best tests have large margins of error. "If you show a positive result of 4 or 5 or 6 percentage points, there's a possibility that it isn't indicating Native American ancestry," Frudakis says. People with these levels of Indian blood may simply have genetic roots in places like Greece or Turkey, whose natives can convey Indian-ness in their DNA. Pakistanis, meanwhile, typically show 30 percent Native American heritage, for reasons that are not yet totally clear to scientists.
The more tests that DNA companies conduct, the more data they'll have for comparison, which should lead to more accurate results. As the DNA databases grow, it may be possible to identify ancestry by region - say, a Southwestern Navajo or a New England Pequot. Kittles' database can already name the African tribes an African-American customer descends from. Still, linking Freedmen to particular tribes remains tricky because of all the intermarrying that has occurred over the years.
Even if the testing companies could narrow a person's origins to a specific tribe, would it matter? The science might be improving, but the Indian tribes show no inclination to accept it - or even consider it. "Our citizenship laws require you to have a Cherokee ancestor who was on the Dawes Roll. Can a DNA sample prove that?" says Cherokee spokesperson Mike Miller. "If I did a DNA test, it might show that I have some German DNA. That doesn't mean I could go back to Germany and say, I have German ancestry and I would like to be a German citizen."
It's a crude analogy. Germany's citizenship laws don't require applicants to prove that a relative was listed on a flawed census of people with purported Teutonic blood. And if Miller so desired, he could become a naturalized German citizen someday. The Freedmen have no such chance.
Other tribes are just as closed-minded. When I ask Jerry Haney, the Seminole chief who expelled the tribe's black members in 2000, whether he might reconsider his stance based on DNA tests, he huffs. "They can claim all the Indian they want," he says, "but they cannot become a member of the Seminole Nation by blood. They're down there [on the roll] as Freedmen. They're separate."
Feature:
Blood Feud
Plus:
Testing Bloodlines
Not all tribal members reject the merits of the Freedmen's cause. Seventy-year-old John Cornsilk, who is seven-eighths Cherokee, opposed the 1983 decision to rescind Freedmen's voting rights - which he said happened because many Freedmen were backing a progressive candidate running for chief. Tribal leaders, he says, "colluded and drew up a new set of rules that said only people that could produce one of those cards could be a member. What the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has been doing in regard to disenfranchising the Freedmen is all totally illegal."
Cornsilk's son, David, has taken up his father's cause. While working in the tribe's enrollment office in the 1980s, he found that about a third of the Freedmen applications had some documented Native American ancestry. When higher-ups told him that these people could not be enrolled, he became an advocate for the Freedmen from the inside, helping black plaintiffs prepare to file suit in tribal courts. "I came to realize that this was a deep-rooted problem, that racism in my tribe was profound," he says. "They were perpetrating a genocide, a paper genocide."
Rick Kittles is one of the last speakers at the Descendants conference. When he steps up to address the crowd, he speaks briefly about the underlying science. He describes how African genealogy is relatively easy to trace because of the population's high number of polymorphisms - genetic variations unique to a particular group. Then he gets down to business. He shows charts indicating that African ancestry in the 95 Freedmen he tested ranged from 4 to 76 percent, while European ancestry varied from 0 to 62 percent. "Native American was surprising," Kittles says as he presses the slide clicker to bring up the figures that everyone's waiting for. The range of Indian blood was from 0 to 30 percent, for an average of just 6 percent - almost identical to an East Coast African-American population.
The chatter in the crowd stops. Kittles is telling attendees that, genetically, they are no more Indian than blacks in New York City or Baltimore. "I expected it to be higher because of the experiences you've had," he admits. Then he offers a consolation.
He explains that many Freedmen display high levels of European ancestry, with the group average at 18 percent. He suggests that, ironically, this might be exactly what links them genetically to the Five Civilized Tribes. Indians, he explains, were in contact with white colonists starting in the 17th century, and there has been significant gene flow between the two groups. As a result, many people who identify themselves as Native American have very high percentages of European DNA. East Coast African-Americans show much weaker links to Europe. So the Freedmen's levels of white genetic material may, in fact, be the very proof of Indian-ness that they're looking for.
To prove this hypothesis, Kittles tells the attendees that more testing is in order. "If genetics is going to help this cause, we really need to do tests on so-called purebloods, to assess their European ancestry," he says, theorizing that they, too, will have high levels of European blood. "I think that many of those so-called purebloods aren't so pure."
It's not the definitive result the audience expected. And yet, some find good news in the message. The first woman to raise her hand is an elderly lady in the very last row, wearing a flowing kente cloth dress. She leans forward in her seat. "I just want to thank you," she says as loudly as she can muster. Her test revealed 11 percent Indian ancestry. "It's true what my grandmother said, that I did have Native American blood."
As I wait for the day's final speaker, Sharon Lindsay Scott stops by my seat to say hello. An attractive woman with light skin and prominent cheekbones, Scott has the sort of face that might have convinced a Dawes clerk to place her on the blood roll. She tells me she's a descendant of the Perrymans, an illustrious Creek family with a lineage that included a chief in the 1880s, Legus C. Perryman. But for reasons that are lost to time, her ancestors were made Freedmen. "You know, the Dawes Commission would take brothers and sisters and divide them up," she says. "They went by how you looked, and a lot of the Creeks are darker-skinned. So you might be a full-blood and …" Scott trails off in a sad laugh. "I mean, they had no DNA testing back then."
With Graham's assistance, she has pulled together copious documents that attest to her family's Creek lineage and plans to submit her application for membership soon. The final piece she'd been waiting for was Kittles' DNA test. Now she has it: 79 percent African-American, 19 percent European, and 2 percent Native American. Which means her Indian DNA results could very well be just the result of genetic noise.
The results leave me wondering whether the Freedmen are caught up in a false hope. Will the intersection of Rick Kittles and a group of desperate would-be Indians mark a turning point in their struggle for recognition? Or just another twist in a sad tale? I ask Scott whether she expects her application to be rejected, considering that her percentage of Indian blood is smaller than the test's margin of error. She seems both surprised and slightly offended: "I don't see how they can."
Race is a loaded word that genetic testing companies avoid in favor of phrases like biogeographical ancestry. No wonder. For centuries, science has been hijacked to validate racist beliefs. Scientific journals from the 19th century are replete with discussions of cranial capacity and brain weight, measurements used to explain why blacks would never be as intelligent as whites. Then there are eugenics and social Darwinism, used to twist Darwin's findings and shape Nazi ideology.
But if the young discipline of DNA testing has taught us anything, it's that the very notion of race is fading, at least from a genetic perspective. The world is populated by mongrels and half-breeds. Even those who base their self-worth on being of "pure" racial stock probably aren't. Every family tree has a thousand branches. "The technology will show how mixed we are," Kittles says. "There is no line of distinction you can draw between groups. There will be people who say they have 100 percent African blood. I can show them that they have significant European ancestry, too."
So far, reams of historical documents and legal briefs have gotten the Freedmen nowhere against a century-old document created by clueless white bureaucrats and enforced by men the Freedmen once considered brothers. The question is whether a tool created by molecular biologists will have any more luck.
There are three types of DNA test designed to pinpoint genetic heritage. Ranging in price from $99 to $299, all three start with a swab of the inner cheek and provide results in two to eight weeks. Here's what happens along the way.
The Y chromosome method searches for genetic markers on the Y chromosome. A particular polymorphism, or variation, on the DYS199 locus, for example, is unique to those indigenous to the Western hemisphere. So anyone with that polymorphism has Native American ancestry. This test has two problems: It measures only 1.5 percent of the genome - so you may have Indian genes that don't show up - and it works only on males.
To determine maternal lineage, the mitochondrial DNA test looks for polymorphisms in mitochondrial DNA. All humans have mtDNA, which is inherited from the mother, so anyone can take the test. But since it measures just 0.005 percent of the genome, false negatives are a big problem. Also, mtDNA results will show the presence of, say, European and Native American genes along the maternal line, but not the percentages of each.
The genome-wide technique scours the entire genome for "ancestry informative markers" that indicate "biogeographical ancestry." Statistical software then analyzes the data to determine what percentage of genes comes from where. This is the test of choice for the Freedmen. The good news is that it's exhaustive. But it's also the most expensive option, and it still can't trace a Native American's roots back to a particular tribe.
Contributing editor Brendan I. Koerner (brendan@wiredmag.com) wrote about hybrid cars in issue 13.04.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 16 Sep 2005 02:51 Post subject: Re: Native American DNA
Powell wrote:
It appears that federally recognized "American Indian" tribes (especially the Southern "Five Civilized Tribes") are mostly full of predominately European "Indians" ....
....
Indians, he explains, were in contact with white colonists starting in the 17th century, and there has been significant gene flow between the two groups. As a result, many people who identify themselves as Native American have very high percentages of European DNA.
Hi Miss Powell and Frank,
That is exactly what I would like to know in more detail. I know there was a lot of intermarriage between colonist and Native Americans in the United States, and that from that fusion certain groups become assimilated to the White population and others become the "white-Indians" that are common in Eastern United States. I would like to know numbers, statistics, dates, dna percentages and reliable and impartial population history.
That's not extrange, because mixture between Whites and Indians were widespread in the Western Hemisphere from Canada to the Land of Fire. It is well known today of the mutual attraction between Asian women and White men, which also happened in the past between Indians (an Asiatic people) and Europeans.
The thing I don't understand is why the United States had hide that historical truth with so much force. What is the people afraid of ?
I know White Americans and the Russian-Ucranian-Germanic populations of Western Canada and South American Germans as well, and, I tell you, U.S. Whites in average are a lot darker than Canadian Whites. Americans certainly carry lots of Native blood in them, perhaps more than the amount they want to recognize.
Please, give me more historical facts about this particular issue. I am interested in getting a good picture of the invasion of the Americans by the Europeans and the intermarriage between invasors and invaders. I don't believe the genocide theory. That's what I am focused.
For me this issue is very interesting because most of South American and Central American countries have large Mestizo populations that share the same roots and histories of the metis (white Indians) of North America. Populations that have passed for the same complicated processes of identity formation. And I would like to make some sort of comparative study of both histories.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 16 Sep 2005 23:45 Post subject: Understanding the history of tribal enrollment
Hi Frank, Mrs. Powell
I found this article. I got the idea that the number of American Indians is kept down artificially because it is not convenient for the U.S. government to have a larger Native population. Because, treaty rights.
What do you think?
Regards,
Omar Vega
Quote:
Understanding the history of tribal enrollment
by Nora Livesay
"The question of my 'identity' often comes up. I think I must be a mixed-blood. I claim to be male, although only one of my parents was male."
Jimmie Durham
Cherokee, 1991
It's difficult to talk about tribal enrollment without talking about Indian identity. The two issues have become snarled in the twentieth century as the United States government has inserted itself more and more into the internal affairs of Indian nations.
Ask who is Indian, and you will get divergent responses depending on who's answering. The U.S. Census Bureau, state governments, various federal government programs and agencies, and tribal governments all have different definitions. The criteria vary from a specific amount of blood quantum and descendency to residency and self-identification.
But, the answers don't really tell you who is Indian. They tell you who can receive health care from the Indian Health Service (IHS), who can get eagle parts from the National Eagle Repository, who qualifies for educational assistance or who can vote in tribal elections. These artificial definitions don't come close to describing how it feels to sit with one's own people sharing a joke or a ceremony. They don't describe the cultural and historical bonds that guide one's life. Identity reaches into the intangible parts of ourselves. The rest are definitions with an agenda.
The agenda behind tribal enrollment is a sordid one, but one that continues. Indians are still defined as a "problem" for American progress, and manipulating tribal enrollment particularly through blood quantum is how federal and state governments have dealt with the issue.
As historian Patricia Nelson Limerick summarized in The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, "Set the blood quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed as it had for centuries, and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens, the federal government will be freed of its persistent 'Indian problem.'" This was particularly evident in federal relocation programs that encouraged Indians to leave their reservations and resettle in large metropolitan areas beginning in the 1950s through the 1980s.
And if it isn't enough that the government is subtly trying to terminate Indians and Indian nations, the recent popularity of Indian themes in pop culture has led many people to claim to be Indian. While many non-Indians are searching for spiritual validation, the real fight over who is Indian is centered on assets; spiritual and cultural assets, land assets and financial resources, which the federal government is obligated to provide based on treaties and subsequent federal trust responsibility.
In exchange for more than 95 percent of the land in what is now called the United States, the U.S. Government signed international treaties that promised goods and services to different Indian tribes. Commonly, these included education, health care, food and annuity payments. Nearly all the goods and services were promised to continue in perpetuity.
Unbeknownst to Indian leaders, the U.S. Government did not have serious intentions to abide by those treaties. But because it was a relatively new nation without much international clout, the U.S. couldn't abrogate its treaties with Indian nations without jeopardizing those with its European cousins. Instead the U.S. Government embarked on various plans to get rid of the Indians and thereby get rid of its treaty obligations. One method that the government began using in the 1800s and continues to use is federal involvement in tribal enrollment.
Determination of one's own citizenry is a universal principle of sovereignty. Every nation possesses the right to determine its members regardless of how powerful it is or how rich it is. The United States opted to unilaterally preempt the rights of many Indian nations to engage in this fundamental and internal decision-making process.
Federal officials began deciding on a person-by-person basis who qualified as a member of the tribe and therefore, qualified for treaty benefits. Eventually the federal government settled on the idea of blood quantum, similar to what was used to determine which African Americans could be enslaved.
In 1887, under the General Allotment Act (also known as the Dawes Act), Congress adopted the blood quantum standard of one-half or more Indian blood. This meant that if an Indian could document that he (women were excluded) was one-half or more Indian blood, then he could receive 160 acres of tribal land. All other Indians were excluded regardless of their standing within the tribe. After all the "blooded" Indians were parceled out land, the rest of tribal lands were declared "surplus" and opened up for non-Indian settlement.
Limiting the allotted land to 160 acres per qualified person ensured that there weren't enough Indians meeting the genetic requirements to retain the original land base of the tribe; land that was rightfully theirs by aboriginal occupancy and recognized as such by treaties with the U.S. Government. In this way, the aggregate Indian land base was "legally" reduced from 138 million acres to 48 million acres in less than 50 years. (John Collier, Memorandum, Hearings on H.R. 7902 Before the House Committee on Indian Affairs, (73rd Cong., 2d Sess.), U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, D.C., 1934, pp. 16-1.
From then on, the federal government began imposing various blood quantum eligibility requirements on Indians for commodity rations, education, annuity payments and health services.
"By the 1920s, it was also becoming increasingly apparent that much of the agriculturally worthless terrain left to Indians after allotment lay astride rich deposits of natural resources such as coal, copper, oil, and natural gas; later it the century it was revealed that some 60 percent of all "domestic" uranium reserves also lay beneath reservation lands. It was therefore becoming imperative, from the viewpoint of federal and corporate economic planners, to gain unhindered access to these assets. Given that it would have been just as problematic to simply seize the resources as it would have been to abrogate the treaties, another expedient was required. This assumed the form of legislation unilaterally extending the responsibilities of citizenship (though not all the rights; Indians are still regulated by about 5,000 more laws than other citizens) over all American Indians within the United States." (M. Annette Jaimes 1992, p. 127).
U.S. citizenship was conferred in 1924, whether it was wanted or not. The resulting dual citizenship of Indians served to confuse the issue and allowed government and corporate representatives to negotiate with individual U.S. citizens and prevail with arguments about the "greater good," thereby bypassing Indian governments.
In 1934, the federal government interposed itself one step deeper into internal tribal affairs with the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) also known as the Howard-Wheeler Act.
The ultimate goal of the IRA was to dissolve native nations and absorb Indians into the dominant culture. A committee selected by the secretary of the interior had determined that Indians comprised an unbearable financial burden for the federal government and advocated their dissolution by humane means.
The IRA used a model for tribal governance based on a corporate structure with a governing council and constitutional bylaws or charters. The Bureau of Indian Affairs developed a boilerplate constitution that was distributed to all the tribes. All constitutional bylaws and all council actions were made subject to the approval of the secretary of the interior. The government model put forth by the BIA ignored traditional and more democratic consensus governing models already in use by tribes.
The act had to be approved by a majority vote of "eligible" tribal members before it could be completely implemented. How the IRA was railroaded through is familiar to many people. Tribes who didn't hold referendums were automatically included. Tribes where most people refused to participate and didn't vote, were included because a non-vote was interpreted by the BIA as a yes vote. There were also cases of more blatant election fraud.
"On the Pine Ridge (Oglala Lakota) Reservation in South Dakota, there weren't enough abstentions to carry the day against those voting against the IRA. It was subsequently discovered that a sufficient number of dead people had cast ballots to provide a pretext for ratification. Even after this was established to have been the case, the ratification was described as 'binding' on the Oglalas." (M. Annette Jaimes, p 117; see also Graham Taylor, The New Deal and American Indian Tribalism: The Administration of the Indian Reorganization Act, 1934-45)
With these tactics, the BIA brought nearly every Indian nation under IRA provisions. Provisions for tribal enrollment were part of the boilerplate constitutions forced on tribes. A reading of a number of tribal constitutions today will show that most have not been significant changed since the 1930s. Enrollment provisions can usually be found under Article II or Article III and most are identical.
Enrollment as laid out under the IRA constitutions, starts with a base roll for defining membership. The base roll is usually a U.S. Census roll, an allotment roll or another BIA-compiled roll, such as the Durant Roll of 1910. Because the U.S. government determined who was included on the rolls, many have argued that the process was biased from the start. Today, the BIA is still responsible for compiling and maintaining rolls. When there is a "federal election" on a reservation to deal with constitutional issues or the election of tribal officials, the BIA runs the elections and uses the rolls to determine who is eligible to vote. (The list of those eligible to vote may or may not be the same list as those enrolled in the tribe.)
From the base rolls, most constitutions include as members anyone who at the time of the adoption of the constitution could prove descendency from someone on the rolls. After adoption of the constitution, future generations often have to meet a number of criteria usually relating to descendency from the rolls, their own residency or that of their parents when they were birth, blood quantum or membership of one or both parents. One-fourth degree blood quantum of the particular tribe in question is a nearly universal requirement. Almost all constitutions prevent people from being enrolled in more than one tribe, regardless of their actual blood quantum. These provisions inherently lead to problems of fractional heritage.
The history of tribal enrollment has caused some Indians to refuse participation in the federally-sponsored enrollment process. Leonard Peltier expressed a representative sentiment, "This is not our way. We never determined who our people were through numbers and lists. These are rules of our colonizers… I will not comply with them." (quoted by Churchill 1991, p. 12).
But, refusing to participate can also be seen a leaving a void in tribal affairs. Often this void has been filled by people whose interests are not in sync with protecting tribal sovereignty and empowering the Indian community, but rather in enriching themselves.
Many Indians would like to become enrolled with their tribes, but find the process excruciatingly difficult. Often it is difficult to obtain a copy of the tribal constitution and then to find a copy of the base roll. A significant amount of genealogical research is required even before an applicant can meet other criteria.
Although constitutions provide that tribal councils can pass ordinances to govern the enrollment process and establish enrollment committees to review applications, most have not. This leaves potential tribal members without a clear starting point or explicit procedures, and opens the door for real and apparent abuse of the process.
Tribal enrollment raises thorny issues in Indian communities, not the least of which is identity. Should federally-imposed blood quantum requirements be thrown out? If they are, how does one ensure that only "real" Indians are enrolled? If they aren't thrown out, how can Indians avoid fulfilling the federal government's original objective of defining themselves out of existence?
What about future generations of Indians? How can tribes ensure that Indian children being adopted outside of the Indian community are not lost? How can tribes address the issues of fractional heritage and the continuing trend toward intermarriage with non-Indians?
Perhaps it is time for Indians to take back the issue of tribal enrollment. As sovereign nations, tribes can and should determine their own citizenry without interference or approval by any federal or state government or agency. Ultimately, tribal enrollment policies will influence the future of tribal governments and the future of Indian nations. At the very least, Indians need to educate themselves about their own constitutions and unique set of circumstances. Becoming informed is the first step toward thoughtful community discussions and avoiding the failures of past policies.
Posted: Mon 19 Sep 2005 03:43 Post subject: Re: Understanding the history of tribal enrollment
oevega wrote:
Hi Frank, Mrs. Powell
I found this article. I got the idea that the number of American Indians is kept down artificially because it is not convenient for the U.S. government to have a larger Native population. Because, treaty rights.
What do you think?
[Omissions.]
Nora Livesay wrote:
[Omissions.]
Limiting the allotted land to 160 acres per qualified person ensured that there weren't enough Indians meeting the genetic requirements to retain the original land base of the tribe; land that was rightfully theirs by aboriginal occupancy and recognized as such by treaties with the U.S. Government. In this way, the aggregate Indian land base was "legally" reduced from 138 million acres to 48 million acres in less than 50 years. (John Collier, Memorandum, Hearings on H.R. 7902 Before the House Committee on Indian Affairs, (73rd Cong., 2d Sess.), U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, D.C., 1934, pp. 16-1.
First, why isn't "blood quantum" (e.g., 1/2+ "pure Indian") a fair way to gradually assimilate fractional aboriginal Native Americans (Indians) into mainstream U.S. citizenship? The quarter-section (160 acres) of land once granted to half-blood Indians reveals how few such "pure" Indians remained in 1934.
How was the lower "blood quantum" of the less-than-half-Indians not a fair incentive for them to assimilate Mainstream? Clearly, racial "blood" and the resulting "white" racism and victimization of "non-white phenotype," was the governing principal of federal BIA protection. "Redskin" was the publicly visible meaning of being Indian in 1934, not tribal membership. And by this time the tribal "bloods" were mixing with each other, and with Europeans'.
The principal danger of the "blood quantum" approach is the creeping identity-political pressure to lower critical "quantum" from half to a quarter -- finally to "any" -- as the state of Hawaii's project to reestablish a "one drop" Native Hawaiian "race." (See Rice v. Cayetano (2000); go to citation "528 U.S. 495" at
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com )
The creep went the opposite direction in the 1980s. It went both ways in the climate of greed arising from gambling casino revenues. The plight of the Freedmen (as always) demonstrates the divisive danger inherent in this defining people by "blood" in the breeding sense of animal husbandry. "Blood quantum" proves unworkable, I am sure -- dehumanizing. It should be discarded. Nonetheless, the idea of inviting fractional, invisible "Indians" to stop playing "redskin victim" makes sense to me. No ODR ever attached to Indian "blood." Fractional Indian ancestry never bore that stigma. In fact assimilating Indians through intermarriage has, from the start, been a suggested solution to America's "Indian problem." Anyway, people who look like Cher don't need "race-based" special government protection from other "whites."
Secondly, Ms. Livesay stumbled over the paradox of Indians "still regulated by about 5,000 more laws than other citizens," she alleged. But since 1924 Indians are U.S. citizens enjoying dual citizenship, just as Ms. Livesay observed. Clearly, this grants Indians super-citizenship, with about 5,000 special rights.
How far should government, the BIA, go sequestering Indians (& other "native bloods") who in time will be genetically indistinguishable from our U.S. Mainstream? When the blood evidence of Indian racial "phenotype" fades, then what purpose, what basis for the tribal treaties and trappings of fictitious native "sovereignty," will linger? Most cultural foundation of separate Indian ethnicity vanished with the 95% of Indians who tragically succumbed to Old World diseases centuries ago. Attempts were made in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to substitute tribe's communal land ownership with individually owned 160-acre quarter-sections. This was hoped to bring Indians in step with Ownership America. Individual Indians so empowered may relocate, even sell out, depart, taking their birthright with them. Besides preserving non-essential (moribund) tribal language, the surviving cultural artifact of the tribes is Indian religion. At this point U.S. involvement tends to establish Indian religions, contrary to our First Amendment. It may also violate the Amendment's free exercise of religion clause. What is clear is, citizen Indians can live as they wish to. Under the First Amendment they can live and worship their religion as Americans, without government involvement, just as several other Utopia-seeking religious communes do. (E.g., Amish, Hutterites, New Harmonyites, Shakers, etc.) Indians would live freer as plain American citizens exercising their guaranteed constitutional rights then they are "breeding" themselves as a "blood quantum" U.S. Govt. "Indian race," so-called.
George
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