#Indigenous people have to enroll in one tribe or nation

[chronicparagon]

[…I forgot Harmony’s other tribe. Her mother is enrolled with the Crow. She is enrolled as Lakota. I went back and added Crow.]

[matan4il]

It's very interesting that anti-Zionists claim to be "anti-colonial" given the arguments I routinely see them use against Jews. For years, I've seen them use full scale blood quantum arguments, for one. Most recently, now that we're fully in "Jesus was a Palestinian" season again, I saw a famous economist claim that "Jesus is genetically closer to Palestinians, (particularly Christians) than to Israelis (0 connection to most groups)," which is false to begin with.

Personally, I'm very sensitive to this kind of argument because I'm a ger. These people go after Jews like us very hard because to them we have the wrong DNA and thus undermine Jewish indigeneity, peoplehood, and history. Even if they concede the genetic evidence of born Jews' ancestral origins, they still point at gerim and any of our descendants as the "fake Jews" who don't belong… anywhere, actually. We don't belong in Israel because we're "foreign interlopers," and we don't belong outside of Israel because we had the gall to become Jews.

It's one type of antisemitism I can't seem to numb myself toward.

Hi Nonnie! Thank you for the ask, and my apologies about how long it's taking me to reply these days. Real life is not currently kind... :(

Okay, I had to roll my eyes so hard at that propaganda lie about Jesus. (found the economist in question, love it when someone who is living as a colonizer on stolen Native American land, has the audacity to goysplain a Jewish man to Jews, who support Jewish native rights. There really is no end to how much Jews just don't count to such people, is there?)

And it really is remarkable how many things he could get wrong in just that one part of his tweet...

Jesus was not a Palestinian, he was a Jew.

If you traveled back in time, and wanted to ask him about being Palestinian, you wouldn't be able to speak to Jesus in Arabic, which is the language of the Palestinians as Arabs, you would have to speak to him in either Hebrew or Aramaic (which is so close to ancient Hebrew, that I can speak some Aramaic simply by virtue of being a native Hebrew speaker) for him to understand you. Because he was a Jew.

If you did speak to Jesus in Hebrew or Aramaic, and asked him about being Palestinian, he wouldn't know what you're talking about, because the Romans would only rename the land Provincia Syria Palaestina in 136 AD, over 100 years after his death. Calling Jesus Palestinian is like saying that Chief Powhatan (probably best known as Pocahontas' father) was a Virginian, just because he was born and lived on territory that would later become Virginia. It's anachronistic, blatantly untrue, and totally imposing colonialist inventions on native people.

To the best of my knowledge NO ONE has dug up Jesus' DNA to compare it to ANY group. This is how you can tell that when he gets to that part, this guy is just blatantly making propaganda up.

Israelis are not one group, but Israeli Jews do test close to other Middle Eastern groups, and closest to other Jewish groups from around the world.

I guess, why settle for one bit of bullshit, when you can go for five?

I find it so interesting that you used the term "blood quantum." For non-Americans, who may not know it, here's a short introduction:

A person's Blood Quantum is the fraction of their ancestors, out of their total ancestors, who are documented as full-blood Native Americans. The blood quantum policy was first implemented by the federal government within tribes to limit native citizenship. However, since 1934, tribes were granted the authority/ability to create their own enrollment qualifications.

I find it interesting, because I keep thinking Jews and First Nations have so much in common, as native peoples. I remember coming across at least two different stories of people being adopted into Native American tribes. Obviously, each first nation has its own rules about it, before and after the colonization of America, but the point is... there is room for someone to become a member of the tribe, not based on blood. Most of the time, membership of the tribe IS based on ancestry, but it isn't limited to that. Some people come and live with the tribe, adopt its customs and way of life, emerge themselves in the values and heritage, embrace its spiritual beliefs, become a member of this community, and then they are adopted in. It's the same with Jews. Most of us are born Jewish, some of us choose to live this lifestyle, embrace the customs, beliefs and culture, go to synagogue, get to know the community, and eventually adopt and are adopted by it. That's the thing. Converting to Judaism isn't just changing your belief system. It's joining a tribe, and changing one's identity through this process of mutual adoption. Converts to Judaism don't take away ANYTHING from the native rights of Jews. On the contrary, this process of conversion is so different to when someone moves from one religion to another (think of how much simpler baptism is, to the long journey of converting to Judaism), precisely because Judaism isn't just a religion, unlike Christianity and Islam. It is an entire, intricate identity that combines multiple aspects, as all ancient, native identities do.

And in this context, think of Americans who are mostly of European descent, and have nothing to do with Native American culture, or way of life, but they can point to having an "exotic" great great great grandfather, who was a Native American chief. From what I've gathered, they would not be considered members of the tribe by most Native American nations. But the person who lives with the tribe, and shares its ways and its fate? That person is recognized as such by the tribe members.

Jews are the same. We are not native just because our ancestors are from Israel. We are also native, because we are the people who have preserved that Israelite identity. We have carried its torch, and passed it on along the generations, and we have shared our light with those, who chose to stand with us, to share our ways, our fate, and the consequences of the horrible hatred aimed at us.

I love you, my fellow tribe member. Thank you for sharing the light, and the burden, together! *sending so much love* xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[wihinaphe-makhoche]

6/24/24: Reflections on Visiting Homeland & Indian Policy

This will be a series of short essays about my experiences visiting CRST (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe). Edited & posted 7/30/24.

Standing beside the graves of my great-grandparents, William Garreau and his wife On the Lead.

I've just returned from a trip to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST), sovereign Lakota land surrounded by the state of South Dakota. This experience of going to this place where my ancestors lived was humbling, informative, and intense above all.

While I am an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Lakota, I was born and raised in Maine; In many ways, this is where my heart is. I connect with the woodlands and the river that has been a constant companion to me through all my years. This, though, is not where my blood family or ancestors are from.

The sky here seems to stretch forever. You don't fully understand the enormity of it until you're under its expanse--But despite what you might hear about "prarie madness" in places where the "sky is too big", I felt comforted in knowing that this is where my family and ancestors lived, and continue to live.

Coming from Maine, tribal lands are handled differently. In traveling to a Native community here, you are very nearly assured that everyone living on reservation land is either Native themselves, or integrated into a Native family one way or another (married, adopted, etc). In off-reservation areas, there is still often recognition of the land's Indigenous roots, whether it be through place names or by signage. This is not to give too much credit to colonizers. The Wabanaki community has been steadfast in maintaining their cultural identity and asserting their presence. This is helped by the fact that these are truly ancestral lands; Wabanaki have lived here since time immemorial, and their archaeological record in the area goes back at least 5,000 years.

Indian policy in Maine also fundamentally differs from that out West. In my paper Triumph and Tribulation: Wabanaki Experiences, 1950-2020, I cover MICSA, perhaps the most significant Maine Indian land policy in recent years:

For the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot, their long battle with the State of Maine for land claims would bear fruit in 1980, with the passing of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act (MICSA).[1] MICSA was initially deemed a success and was the largest land claims settlement at the time, as well as the first to include provisions for land reacquisition.[2] The Act had tribes cede 12.5 million acres, or 60% of Maine, in exchange for $81.5 million divided between tribes.[3] The Houlton Band of Maliseets joined the settlement in 1979 and were provided with $900,000 for the purchase of a five-thousand-acre reservation, as well as federal recognition.[4] The breakdown of the $81.5 million between the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot was $26.8 million for each tribe, or 150,000 acres in unorganized territories—soft money.[5] The remaining $27 million would be split between the two with one million dollars set aside for infrastructure for elders.[6] MISCA also created the Maine Implementing Act (MIA) and the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission (MITSC), which would define tribal-state relationships by establishing specific laws about Wabanaki peoples and their lands.[7] This served as a means to define and resolve discrepancies with MICSA, as it was largely considered much more legally rigid than the Wabanaki tribes had initially understood it to be.[8] This rigidity would ultimately be a major critique of MICSA and its associated provisions. There were concerns that MISCA did not respect Wabanaki tribes as sovereign nations but, rather, reduced reservation lands to municipality status.[9] State paternalism toward Indigenous peoples of Maine was effectively allowed to continue. Per-capita payments for MISCA were ultimately very little for many, hardly the windfall gain that many perceived it to be; additionally, many saw acceptance of the payments as agreement to the terms of MICSA, with which not all Wabanaki agreed.[10] Though MICSA was perhaps the first step in a road toward true self-determination, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Maliseet people continued to struggle. Fears surrounding termination still loomed in the minds of many ...

The 1990s would bring the Aroostook Band of Micmacs (or Mi’kmaq, now considered the correct spelling) into the MICSA agreement. Following the 1980 settlement, and with the MIA considered no longer necessary, the Mi’kmaq had been largely left to fend for themselves.[11] Their fellow Wabanaki found it inappropriate to speak on their behalf.[12] In 1991, Congress would seek to correct this oversight: similar to the Maliseet, Mi’kmaq would receive $900,000 for a five thousand acre reservation, federal recognition, as well as $50,000 in additional property funds in dispersed settlements.[13]

However, like many tribes in the West, my oyate were affected by the disastrous Dawes Severalty Act (also known as General Allotment Act) in 1887. In short, this act would give Indians an allotment of land to farm or ranch (regardless of traditional living and subsistence practices). "Surplus" land not allotted was then sold off cheaply to white farmers and ranchers, creating something of a checkerboard affect in Indian country. I talk more about this in reblog discussing the issues of cottagecore on my main blog back in January.

Because of this, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe land is still inhabited by a minority of white farmers and ranchers. While we had no incidents while picking timpsula, traveling through fields to Thunder Butte, or otherwise exploring and learning, the discomfort my aunties (residents of CRST) felt when encountering white ranchers was palpable.

Digging timpsula at CRST with my thiwahe (family)

Reservation lands have historically been a place where Indians are cloistered away. My grandfather would recall times when there were curfews for when they had to be back (though he would gleefully recall violating this curfew and riding around with friends and getting up to all sorts of car-related hijinks); an extension of US paternalism towards Indians. In earlier times (though not in such a distant past), Indian agents policed and monitored Indian behavior. Nuns and priests evangelized and enforced the ban on Indigenous religious practice. The cultural devastation created by these systems is still felt today. My great auntie, who lived on the reservation, was very Christian until the day she died. Our language continues to be endangered. Efforts to revitalize and maintain our culture are critical and complicated by generations of racial shaming, residential schools, and forced US paternalism that has caused us to become unwilling dependents.

This is one of the biggest recurring themes in Indian policy in the United States. We are set up to fail, and when we do, the US government can swoop in and claim we can’t take care of ourselves. 

I don’t mean to engender a sense of hopelessness within this essay, far from it. There is hope. I want to make those outside of Indigenous communities viscerally aware of our struggles and our existence in the current moment. We are here, we are not peoples of the past, and everything is not okay. There is pain, but how we navigate our cultural wounds is a testament to our resilience as a people. 

Within the Lakota Nation, there have been a number of programs to preserve and revitalize the culture. The Lakota Cultural Center in Eagle Butte has recently experienced a massive overhaul under the leadership of Dave West, current program director.

Me and Até outside the Lakota Cultural Center in Eagle Butte after getting my tribal ID

We were lucky enough to catch Dave during his work day at the center, and he graciously gave us an extremely in-depth and powerful tour of the museum. What stood out to me during my conversation with him was a re-orientation of cultural knowledge.

The Lakota Cultural Center has been doing important work in facilitating community nights and days were our oyate can come together and share knowledge on more equal footing. Tables and chairs are set up in a circle, so that, as Dave put it, "A six year old child and seventy year old elder can both be heard." Workshops may range from traditional crafts to singing, story-telling, gathering, and language-sharing.

Elk hide prepared by CRST youth.

Community engagement with traditional practices is not only sacred, but helps heal and offers a healthy outlet for pain we may be feeling.

Something I've taken away from my work this summer, and what I intend with this blog is similar to the cultural center's message-- Knowledge sharing. Knowledge is power as much as it is healing. I believe it is critical to share knowledge not only without our own communities, but outside of them as well; To facilitate a conversation between Indigenous communities and our neighbors (all residents of Turtle Island).

I hope to share more about my trip in follow-up posts. This installment has been focused on Indian land policy and cultural revitalization. If you've made it to the end, I want to thank you for taking the time to read and engage. Please feel free to share your thoughts in comments! Respectful conversation around my posts is very encouraged. Have a wonderful day!

Check out my (free) substack!

Citations & References:

[1] Lecture NAS 222, 4/15/24. [2] Girouard, 60. (Girouard, Maria L. 2012. “THE ORIGINAL MEANING AND INTENT OF THE MAINE INDIAN LAND CLAIMS: PENOBSCOT PERSPECTIVES.” Graduate School: University of Maine.) [3] Lecture 4/15/24. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid; Girouard, 60. [8] Girouard, 60. [9] Lecture 4/15/24. [10] 4/19/24.

[11] Brimley, Stephen. 2004. “Native American Sovereignty in Maine” Maine Policy Review 13.2 (2004) : 12 -26. http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol13/iss2/4., 22. [12] Ibid. [13] Lecture 4/19/24.

[2boldlyqueer]

Hi, you reblogged a scam from fullbarbarianblaze, who is promoting a donation scam. They have had this scam running for a very long time, and this link leads to a post with the trail of all the usernames they've used to run this scam, starting with their header name, vero-og. https://www.tumblr.com/kyra45/740721061635768321?source=share

It has been going on for months, meaning that their story of constantly needing "just $370" for insulin is dishonest. Their PayPal name is "Sophia Magubo" which is not a Native American name, but an East African one. (This PayPal account has also been consistent through all of these blogs they've held.) Since they apparently live in the U.S., they should know by now that the price of insulin was capped at $35/pen, meaning that even if they were unable to buy a single unit, a full box of pens (3) would cost $105 plus tax.

Their insulin reading photo shows a 592, which could not last for months on end. Typically a reading of 592 is severe and would warrant a hospital visit if they were out of insulin. It could lead to a coma or death, not waiting idly by for days, hoping for tumblr users to donate to your PayPal.

Please, before interacting with a donation request, check their blog. Do searches of the text username through the tumblr search engine or reverse image search their photos, as some users have compiled scam lists. (e.g. kyra45, anonthescambuster, azalea-alter) Many donation requests are honest, but there are plenty of repeat scammers who are taking advantage of people's sympathy and generosity.

If you are interested in supporting a family whose fundraiser has been through a vetting process and is in danger of being killed in Gaza, please replace your post from fullbarbarianblaze with a post supporting @/nesmamomen. If you have any questions about how to determine the legitimacy of a donation ask, feel free to contact me through DMs or askbox.

While it does appear that this person is scamming people, I have some issues with this ask, to be honest. You have good intentions, which is why I'm responding to let you know about these concerns, instead of just ignoring it like I initially planned to.

Context: I am a white US American with type 1 diabetes, and my response is based only on how things are in the US. A lot of my diabetes facts aren't sourced because they're things I learned from my doctors, or in my time doing advocacy and educational outreach with the American Diabetes Association in high school and 2017-2019.

Firstly, just because someone's PayPal name does not match the ethnicity or nationality you think they are, does not mean they are lying. This is an incredibly slippery slope to start on. Interracial and intercultural marriages exist, and are quite common in the US.

This is especially true of Native American people, who face a ton of issues around the concept of "blood quantum" and not being counted as Native because of it. I am not Native American myself, so I highly recommend you look into what actual Native Americans have to say on the topic. Here's one place you can start:

ID: embedded link for "Blood Quantum and its role in Native Identity - The Indigenous Foundation" with an old black and white photograph of four Native American men in European style formal suits. /End ID

Highlight from the article for our purposes:

Blood Quantum, as a way to ascribe Native American membership, has dire consequences. Blood Quantum policies are little other than genocidal and will eventually lead to the extinction of indigenous people. For example, if the blood quantum limit is set at ¼ in tribal enrollment, and intermarriage proceeds, natives will eventually be defined out of existence. It is almost as if this erasure was premeditated by the government.

While you and I aren't actively trying to legislate them out of existence, by judging a Native American for having a "not Native" name, you are perpetuating the idea of what a Native American is or is not, and that by marrying and having a child with someone of a different culture, that child is automatically not Native enough.

Secondly, the information and assumptions you include about diabetes are not accurate. You say the reading they show is too high to last for months on end. It is possible to be that high for many weeks and sometimes even months. Typically it's before diagnosis, and it will lead to miserable symptoms and long-term complications, but it's not unheard of.

They also never claim to be in the 500s for months. As far as I can tell, that idea is coming from the same image with the same number being used for multiple campaigns. While I can understand you being reasonably skeptical of this, I could also fully see a miserable diabetic who isn't great with tech thinking they could just use the same picture.

One of the things that happens when your blood sugar is too high is that your brain literally doesn't work right. You aren't getting enough glucose into the cells that need them because it's all stuck in your blood, which causes irritability, trouble focusing, fatigue, confusion, and other mood changes. Keep this in mind whenever you say that this person "should" know something about diabetes, or that they would certainly be going to the hospital with a blood sugar that high.

Personally, the one time I had to go to the hospital for a high blood sugar, four people had to talk me into it, and I was told later by my family that I begged the doctors in the Cardiac Care Unit to let me go home because I could treat it myself (I was in the CCU because my blood sugar was high enough that my heart was in danger of failing, and I was told afterwards what happened because my brain wasn't functioning enough to form memories). I also tried to decline an ambulance when my blood sugar was severely low, as I knew in my addled state that my insurance wouldn't cover the bill and that I didn't have $2000 to spare.

Regarding the price of insulin, I live in a state with very robust Medicaid that I'm on, and I have issues at least twice a year with my insulin supply. Recently, I had to get a friend to give me a vial of hers to get me to my refill day, as I ran out two days before my insurance would let me get it, and it would have been almost $100 to fill it early.

Let's take a look at GoodRx to see the best prices possible in a less kind state to live in, like Texas. The amount of insulin required per month varies wildly depending on person, but Native Americans tend to have insulin resistance, so I'll go with 4 vials, as I'm highly insulin resistant and use 6-7 vials a month.

ID: screenshot from GoodRx of prices for 4 (10ml) vials of insulin lispro 100 units/ml in Austin, TX (73301). Prices are: Walgreens $51; Walmart $114.21; CVS Pharmacy $93.50; HEB Grocery $101.68; Community, a Walgreens Pharmacy $51; Costco $114.40 with Special offers available; Target (CVS) $93.50; Randall's $104.52 with Special offers; Walmart Neighborhood Market $114.21 /End ID

Indeed, it's not $370 like the person was requesting, but it's potentially more than you suggested. And it often doesn't make sense to buy one vial when you need more in a month, as it is more expensive.

ID: screenshot from GoodRx of price of 1 (10ml) vial of insulin lispro 100 units/ml in Austin, TX (73301) from Walgreens, priced at $19.50. /End ID

They also do not specify which insulin they need. If this person is not on an insulin pump (highly likely with the level of care Native Americans tend to get, which I will get into shortly) they most certainly need more than one kind of insulin. The most common combo of insulins these days is insulin aspart or lispro (fast-acting insulins) and insulin glargine (AKA Lantus, a long-acting "basal" insulin). It's possible to be allergic to any of these (I am allergic to glargine) and you can get a different kind, but it takes a major fight with your insurance if you have one, or a higher price if you don't.)

Right now, Lantus is so kind as to have a major coupon available that brings the price of their insulin down to the Medicare cap of $35 for everyone (because the cap you mention is only for Medicare recipients, though it has had rippling effects across all levels and kinds of insurance.)

ID: screenshot from GoodRx of prices for Lantus (1 carton (5 solostar pens) 3ml) in Austin, TX (73301). Prices are: Walgreens $35; Walmart $35; HEB Grocery $35; and CVS Pharmacy $35, all marked as Exclusive discount. On the Walgreens line is the text "$518 retail Save 93%" with the price crossed out. /EndID

Notice that teeny grey writing there with the retail price? $518 for a month of Lantus! A shitty pharmacy could absolutely get away with charging up to that price, without letting their customers know about the discounts available.

I mentioned that I'm allergic to Lantus. Last year, I ended up buying a month worth of the version I can tolerate (Tresiba/insulin degludec if you're curious) out of pocket to have as a backup. I paid about $80 for it, which tracks in Texas as well, though it could be double or worse depending on the pharmacy you can use:

ID: screenshot from GoodRx of prices for insulin degludec (1 carton (five 3ml flextouch pen…) in Austin, TX (73301). Prices are: Walgreens $84.92; CVS Pharmacy $160.34; Randall's $183.09 with Special offers; HEB Grocery $184.34; Walmart $189.82; and Costco $200.46 with Special Offers /EndID

Given all that, this person could easily have to pay $370/month if they have bad/no insurance, a shitty pharmacy, and don't have a doctor that will help them get the least expensive options. Not everyone knows about GoodRx and other ways to save on medications.

In fact, my biggest issue throughout your ask is that you have multiple statements on what this person "should" know about our healthcare system or diabetes in general. This is, to be frank, a very privileged view of health education in our country, especially for Native Americans with any concerns.

ID: A Native woman in casual modern clothing looks into the camera neutrally, posing in an office /End ID

Highlight from that article for our purposes:

Indian Health Service, the federal agency responsible for providing health care to federally recognized tribes, is chronically underfunded and doesn’t administer specialty care. So, depending on where one lives on the reservation, a person may have to travel hours for things like cancer treatment, behavioral health services or even to deliver a baby. 

You know what requires specialty care? Diabetes! Now, technically speaking, you can get diabetes care through a primary care doctor. That said, every single primary care doctor I've ever had has deferred to me as the expert in my diabetes, as I have significantly more training on it from my specialist care than my primary care doctor does from their schooling.

What does proper diabetes education look like? When I was diagnosed, I spent a week in the hospital learning how to manage. Then, I started seeing a diabetes endocrinologist (endo), a certified diabetes educator (CDE), and a diabetes ophthalmologist, with the endo and CDE being available via phone and email 24/7 (with a response time typically under 24 hr). (Also available at my kick-ass diabetes center are diabetes specific social workers and art therapy, which I only don't use because I have a therapist I love.)

From my diagnosis in 2007 up until the pandemic, I saw at least one of these specialists every 3 months. On top of that, I had access to classes outside of these appointments where I could go learn about a specific diabetes concern with a bunch of other diabetics (for example, I took a 3 hour class entirely dedicated to how to drink safely with diabetes!) Frankly, a lot of these appointments are dedicated to repetition of important things, because you have to learn so much to manage your health that it's impossible to remember everything, especially if you've only heard it once when you were still processing the diagnosis in the first place.

Imagine having to do all of this, but needing to drive over 50 miles each way, when you're already poor and struggling to survive (an assumption we can make about a Native American begging for help paying for medication online, especially considering the higher rates of poverty they face.

All minorities across the US tend to be left behind in diabetes education and support, and while there are many groups working to help, they aren't able to get to everyone. (Intense irony, I tried to access the CDC's Native Diabetes Wellness Program during this search, and initially got sent around multiple dead links! Even when you try to access the info it's not always there! Plus, it's type 2 specific, which is a whole other rabbit hole I'm not going down right now other than to say it can be hard to find type 1 specific info and they are very different diseases.)

All of this to say, while there are legitimate reasons to believe that user is a scammer, many of the reasons you included in your ask are not, and are instead based on anti-Native American ideas and medical misinformation. This quite honestly makes me less inclined to believe you, and it weakens your argument. All that was necessary was saying that the same exact paypal, story, and image have been used across multiple accounts (ideally with a link to proof, like another user who sent an ask about the same person did.)

[12timetraveler]

Here to info dump a bit about the nature of Blood Quantum as recent system vs traditional kinship ties in native communities, if I can, feel free to delete if not: Yeah the blood quantum system really a complex issue and hot debate topic in the Native community. You have some that are for it as a way to keep 'mixed bloods' or people with low BQs out federal tribal membership (and the services provided therein) and just as many Natives against the BQ system, because it was put in place by a white, colonizing government. But the entire purpose of it, when it was put into place, was for white government to decide who was and was not native and quantify it with fractions. Hence that old joke of 1/16th Cherokee ect. No other culture is required to do this. In order to even apply for membership in a lot of tribes, you need a card from the Bureau of Indian Affairs that says what 'amount' of 'native blood' you have and which tribe. And the BIA was put in place by, guess who? So you need a card that basically tells people you're Native and then you can apply.

Now, some tribes go based off of lineal descent: One of my mother's tribes, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, does this. You need to be a direct descendent of someone listed on the Dawes Rolls Cherokee By Blood and prove it with a line of birth and death records leading from that ancestor to you. For this particular tribe, they don't disqualify based on quantum. If you can prove you are descended from one or more person on the Rolls, you can enroll as a tribal member. The other of my mother's tribes, 1 of the 3 federally recognized Shawnee tribes DOES look at degree of Native blood. It's random.

Pre-contact, it was not about blood or the made up idea of race. It was about community connection, tradition, ties to culture and the people. Traditionally the Cherokees were matrilineal - - if your mother was Cherokee, so were you. It didn't matter if you were mixed at all. But the centuries of anti-native policies, scientific racism ect and the desire to protect our communities from those who seek to benefit from services for Native tribal members, this divide has been put in place. It's caused so many issues within native communities about who can/cannot identify as indigenous and then you have every Tom Dick and Harry who love to claim that their great grandma was a Cherokee Princess.

The end goal of the blood quantum was and is to breed out Nativeness. My siblings and I are an example of that 'success' because we're assimilated, white passing mixed Natives. We still have 'native blood' but we don't look Native anymore, aside from skin tone, especially when we tan. The huge problem is that in a few generations, if we keep to the BQ standard, the number of Natives will plummet and the end goal of complete eradication of Natives on paper and in the eyes of the government is achieved.

The BQ debate also feeds directly into the issue of dating, marrying and having children with non-natives if you are native, but that's not the point.

Peopled don't know this, because we haven't really started to focus on indigenous history, the TRUTH of it, until the last few decades. So don't fee bad about it. In America, it's normal for people to ask 'what percentage native are you'; I get that question and I simply say I'm native, that's all.

That was so interesting to read. I had no idea how complex it all is. Thank you so much for taking the time out to explain it to me.

[skruffie]

okay, so "descendian"

if you're not in a lot of online Indigenous communities you're probably not sure what these "-dian" terms are. You probably have seen pretendian floating around, which is somebody who claims to be native with zero ancestry to back it up. The newer one in the mix is descendian. It's not as common as a term but here's a graphic I saw today that had been reposted by one of my cousins:

Descendian - is a person who has a remote indigenous relative WAY back in their family genealogy, and then take that indigenous Ancestor from multiple generations back to lay claim to full indigenous benefits today. That is wrong!

There's a lot that can be unpacked on this image and what this is mostly geared toward, I think, is more like... either the white people that would otherwise be called pretendians, or unfortunately this could result in lateral violence against a lot of eastern coast tribes that were the first to have contact with settlers. When my cousin had reposted this I had to really consider if or how I would respond because it makes me feel a lot. My own ancestry and reconnection journey has often felt like it was too far away and yet also too close at the same time.

(Also not to nitpick but it's not actually guaranteed you have 16-128 individual great+ grandparents because pedigree collapse is a very real thing but that is beside the point)

I really wonder whoever wrote this considers the tribes that do in fact rely on an ancestor from a specified period of time rather than concepts like blood quantum. The more generations of people we have, the farther removed those ancestors on the documents become, so at what point is that nation going to die out? When is the genocide going to be completed?

The other part of this is that even within tribal communities and with enrolled members it is not an immediate guarantee that you'll be connected to your culture. Sometimes people just... don't. Or they can't. Or their nation rejects them due to disenrollment, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

The part about this that is valid is that if you're like me and trying to repair the connections that almost got lost, it is not the same as having grown up around the culture and being recognized as part of that. Part of the reconnection journey, especially when you're also racially white, is balancing unpacking the privileges that you do have with the knowledge you have about your ethnicity. That is where you have more expertise: your own individual journey but not necessarily that of your ancestral background. A lot of the criticisms I've described here I've seen laid out from other people.

In the end I responded to my cousin with "this is an interesting one because I am constantly wondering what it actually means to be raised in an Indigenous way. My grandma got orphaned and though she was not raised with the culture or stories, she was raised to value keeping a family together" and my cousin thankfully knows that the descendians outlined here are not at all the same as the people who are earnestly trying to reconnect in a good way. That's something I appreciate, and I also know at the same time this term is going to gain more traction and be used as a paintbrush against every other person who is still reconnecting no matter if it's in good faith or not. It's not as big a deal offline as it is on the internet, but I've still seen bits of it in action and it makes me feel acutely aware when I'm walking through an Indigenous space/event/etc and especially if I'm wearing something culturally identifiable.

Sidebar: it is actually incredibly difficult for me to know the difference between what is "my right" to reclaim versus if it's just an extension of unpacking the ol' white suitcase. Ironically, there was an essay written by Gwen Benaway that compared whiteness to that of a specific cryptic I will not be naming--one that is cannibalistic and consumes everything but is never satiated, and it's something that really resonated with me when trying to work through my race versus ethnicity. Then, naturally, it came out that she was a pretendian and it left me just kind of hanging in the air about what I'm supposed to do now.

[shamandrummer]

Court Case Threatens Native Sovereignty

A serious threat to Native American tribes across the United states looms large. A decision on the Supreme Court case Brackeen v. Haaland -- a direct assault on the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), and by extension, the very right of tribes to be classified as sovereign nations -- is expected later this year.

Enacted in 1978, ICWA was part of the federal government's efforts to rectify the incomprehensible harm it caused to Native families through the forcible removal of Native children from their communities into boarding schools or non-Native foster and adoptive homes. Between 1819 and 1969, hundreds of thousands of children were taken from their families and homes.

ICWA establishes minimum standards for a Native child to be removed from their home and empowers tribes to be more involved in adoption and custody procedures for kids enrolled or eligible to enroll in tribal nations. The law gives tribal courts exclusive jurisdiction over members who live on tribal land, in the hopes of keeping families together, and creates a process whereby they're noticed and involved in cases outside of these boundaries.

For years, people and organizations hostile to ICWA have tried to erode the legislation through the court system. Should ICWA fall, it's not only adoption and foster cases that will be gravely impacted; the basic foundations of tribal sovereignty could be unwound. Observers in Indian Country have long believed that attacks on the legislation have broader aims in mind than the well-being of children, and many anti-ICWA proponents are also perceived as gunning for access to natural resources, mineral rights and more.

Calling into question the authority of Congress to deal with tribal nations as distinct sovereigns would have ​major reverberations throughout the field of Indian law. These attacks on sovereignty can be traced back to the Trail of Tears, the deadly westward displacement of five tribes between 1830 and 1850 initiated by then-President Andrew Jackson. The argument made at the time was that the tribes were being overwhelmed by European settlers, and they would be annihilated if the government didn't take them into custody and move them. ​In truth, those tribes controlled the waterways, and Andrew Jackson said, "​We want it, and we are going to take it."

Tribal sovereignty predates the coming of the colonial powers. From 1778 to 1871, the United States federal government signed 370 treaties with tribal nations. Many were used as tools to forcibly remove Indigenous people from their native lands and relocate them to reservations. In exchange for the land they had lived on for generations, tribes were offered many now-broken promises from the government: of peace, the provision of health and education, hunting and fishing rights and protection against enemies.

According to the Constitution, treaties can only be enacted between two sovereign nations. That status and the right of tribes to self-govern was affirmed in the 1832 Worcester v. Georgia Supreme Court case. It's also grounded in the Constitution through not one, but two clauses, and was reiterated yet again in the 1990s by a Department of Justice memorandum that tribal nations have the unique status of ​"domestic dependent nations." You can help protect tribal sovereignty by supporting the Native American Rights Fund.

[sgokie2024]

The Cheyenne are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma, and the Northern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o (more commonly spelled as Suhtai or Sutaio) and the Tsétsêhéstâhese (also spelled Tsitsistas, [t͡sɪt͡shɪstʰɑs]). The tribes merged in the early 19th century.

At the time of their first European contact, the Cheyenne lived in what is now Minnesota. They were close allies of the Arapaho and loosely aligned with the Lakota. By the early 18th century, they were forced west by other tribes across the Missouri River and into North and South Dakota, where they adopted the horse culture. Having settled the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Powder River Country of present-day Montana and Wyoming, they introduced the horse culture to Lakota people about 1730. With the Arapaho, the Cheyenne pushed the Kiowa to the Southern Plains. In turn, they were pushed west by the more numerous Lakota

The main group of Cheyenne, the Tsêhéstáno, was once composed of ten bands that spread across the Great Plains from southern Colorado to the Black Hills in South Dakota. They fought their historic enemies, the Crow and later (1856–79) the United States Army. In the mid-19th century, the bands began to split, with some bands choosing to remain near the Black Hills, while others chose to remain near the Platte Rivers of central Colorado.

The Northern Cheyenne, known in Cheyenne either as Notameohmésêhese, meaning "Northern Eaters" or simply as Ohmésêhese meaning "Eaters", live in southeastern Montana on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Tribal enrollment figures, as of late 2014, indicate that there are approximately 10,840 members, of which about 4,939 reside on the reservation. Approximately 91% of the population are Native Americans (full or part race), with 72.8% identifying themselves as Cheyenne. Slightly more than one quarter of the population five years or older spoke a language other than English. The Southern Cheyenne, known in Cheyenne as Heévâhetaneo'o meaning "Roped People", together with the Southern Arapaho, form the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, in western Oklahoma. Their combined population is 12,130, as of 2008. In 2003, approximately 8,000 of these identified themselves as Cheyenne, although with continuing intermarriage it has become increasingly difficult to separate the tribes.

[prying-pandora666]

Okay! Here we go. I am going to regret this, probably, seeing as most people who post about this get hate. But I think it’s important that indigenous voices aren’t buried.

Disclaimer: DO NOT take this as an excuse to harass Ian Ousley or any of the other actors! This situation is bigger than one actor who may or may not even be aware of this and who was a minor when he auditioned for the part. Harassing actors for the choices of the studio is reprehensible and is never acceptable. PERIOD.

This also doesn’t mean you can’t watch or support the show. This is simply in the interest of dispelling misinformation surrounding this topic.

So let’s dive in.

Claim: Ian Ousley claims to be from a tribe called The Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky.

TRUE.

Ousley and his family members have posted about SCNK, and he even has close family members on the board.

Claim: Ousley’s acting resume claims he can play every ethnicity, with no regard for whether he is actually from those groups.

TRUE.

Seen here.

Claim: Ousley’s tribe SCNK is only being picked on for being federally unrecognized.

FALSE.

Plenty of legitimate tribes are not recognized by the federal government. This is not the reason SCNK has been accused of being a fake tribe.

Claim: SCNK is recognized at the state level - making them legitimate!

FALSE.

Although the SCNK has claimed to be state recognized, this is not true. The state of Kentucky does not offer state recognition.

Here is a list of all state-recognized tribes in the United States. Kentucky is not even listed.

The SCNK’s false claims of state recognition is one of the reasons they’ve been accused of being illegitimate.

Claim: It’s only “Twitter detectives” making these claims, and therefore no one should take them seriously.

FALSE.

The allegations did not only come from the Twitter account 7GenVoices. Although this Twitter account—who claims to be run by multiple indigenous people—brought the controversy to wider attention, they are not the only ones to have made claims against the SCNK’s legitimacy.

In fact, every single federally recognized Cherokee Nation has been making these claims and raising the alarm since long before this particular casting controversy even existed.

Here is an article from The Cherokee Phoenix: the official newspaper of the Cherokee Nation.

Let’s look into the allegations within.

The Cherokee Phoenix Newspaper reports that Ian Ousley's tribe has been "decried as false by the three recognized Cherokee governments".

Ousley’s claimed membership is with the “Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky,” one of dozens of federally unacknowledged tribes decried as false by the three recognized Cherokee governments.  

…

It is possible that the ATLA production took the word of Ousley’s management at face value, or was satisfied with membership claimed in a tribe not federally recognized. It also seems CN [Cherokee Nation] resources were not consulted.  

This corroborates what 7GenVoices posted: that the Cherokee Nations were not consulted and that they did not have Ousley listed as a member.

Many offices within the CN can quickly verify whether a person has citizenship, and one department in particular can advise the entertainment industry.  

… 

“With the exception of the Cherokee Phoenix inquiring, the Cherokee Nation Film Office has not been contacted in regards to Mr. Ousley,” said Jennifer Loren, director of the CNFO and Original Content. “He is not registered with CNFO and is not included in any of our directories, which are readily available for citizens of any federally recognized tribe to enroll in.”

Claim: SCNK is a fake tribe made to siphon resources from indigenous people.

LET’S LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE.

So is the SCNK a fake tribe? What does that even mean?

Thank you to u/KelpieCat for their comprehensible and accessible breakdown, despite the hate they got on Reddit for their post. I will be drawing from this post because of how clearly they laid it out.

There are three federally recognised Cherokee tribes: the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians.

Ian is not enrolled with any of these. Instead, he is a member of the Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky. The three recognized Cherokee governments have said that this group is fake .

What traits do these fake tribes have in common, and what damage do they do to Cherokee sovereignty? According to Travis Snell writing for the Cherokee Phoenix:

Sometimes people take illegal or unethical steps to form "tribes" and sell membership. Some claim treaty rights and seek state and federal recognition, while others take federal money intended for legitimate Indian nations. A group of Cherokee Nation employees and officials recently formed a task force to deal with these "wannabe" Cherokees.

There is in fact a task force that represents the Cherokee Nations and investigates “pretendians”: people who fake Cherokee heritage or tribal status.

And even though their task force has no official name, it does have an agenda.  

Why is exposing fakers so important?

"It looks at protecting our sovereignty," Allen said. "We have so many individuals and groups who are using the Cherokee name and a lot of times it's in a manner that is very inappropriate. They scam people. They charge for genealogy. They charge for DNA tests that might suggest that people could be Indian. In essence, we are looking at groups that claim to be Cherokee but have no real status and who are just distorting the culture and history."  

… 

Wannabes scam people, schools and government officials, or come together to establish tribes seeking rights.  

Even if someone has indigenous heritage, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically Cherokee. Indigenous people are not a monolith, and it’s wrong to take resources set aside to help Cherokee tribes.

"We don't deny that there are individuals out there who might have Indian heritage, but coming together as a group doesn't make them a tribe," Allen said. "They are creating an identity that is absolutely false." … "I don't think anyone (on the task force) has an objection to someone having a Cherokee heritage club and not trying to be a tribe or nation," Rhoades said. "A large part of our objection comes from when you pretend to be an Indian tribe or nation and lay claims to treaties you have no right to. That's just wrong."  

So are fake tribes even a real problem? Yes.

Rhoades said there are more than 200 bogus Cherokee tribes. … Task force members said wannabe groups asking for federal recognition are the reasons why it takes so long for legitimate tribes to go through the recognition process.

The SCNK shows the hallmarks of the fake Cherokee tribes, such as:

Membership Fees

[Source]

Legitimate tribes do not charge you to remain a member of your own nation.

Cheesy Stereotypical Names

[Source]

Over-the-top stereotypical “Indian” names are considered a red flag.

Shady DNA Practices

The SCNK accept DNA test evidence as proof of Cherokee citizenship. Sounds foolproof, right?

Not so fast! It’s actually currently impossible for DNA evidence to link a person to a specific Native American tribe. And due to DNA testing companies having limited data on indigenous/Native American/Indian American people, they may even give a false positive OR false negative.

[Explanation here]

The SCNK themselves admit this but say:

"DNA test results cannot prove which Native Tribe you descend from, however, we will not discriminate against any positive Native American test result, and will promptly accept you as a Tribes-person so that you can join with us in our celebration and appreciation of our heritage."

In other words, it is not necessary to prove you are Cherokee at all to be given membership in this tribe as long as you take a DNA test and are willing to pay a membership fee. You can read more from Indigenous authors about how damaging it is to Cherokee sovereignty to use DNA tests for claims of Cherokee membership [here] and [here].

This means you may have zero Cherokee DNA, or even zero indigenous DNA and just get a blip of unrecognized DNA that gets lumped in as being indigenous, and the SCNK will accept you as Cherokee. Even if you have lived your whole life unaware, privileged, and with none of the disadvantages that the Cherokee people have had to live with, and the whole reason why resources are set aside to help them.

There are even shady companies that will give out questionable DNA results which legitimate DNA companies cannot corroborate.

SCNK doesn’t care. They will still label you as Cherokee as long as you pay.

They even outright state they will offer Cherokee membership to someone WITH ZERO INDIGENOUS DNA.

That’s from their own website.

Don’t forget! These people survived genocide, systemic abuse, and continue to face poverty, violence, and injustice in the criminal justice system.

I’ll cover more in Part 2.

Yeah. We aren’t even DONE yet.

Can you make a post about the Ian Ousley/White Sokka controversy? I keep seeing contradictory information and you seem more informed.

I may draft one later if there’s time this evening.

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[mostly-mundane-atla]

i realize you probably dont care about the upcoming netflix adaptation but the cast pretty much got confirmed and people are talking about it again so, whats your take? are you lookin forward to it or dont care for it?

Usually I wouldn't care about this, and I have said before to please not involve me in discourse i haven't already talked about, but I was going to make this post anyway so

*cracks knuckles*

Alright children, it's come to my attention that some people don't know their etiquette regarding Indigenous peoples and are making themselves look a fool.

First: you are not entitled to anyone's family history under any circumstances, save perhaps them paying you to do a family tree.

There is an aspect of this specific to Native people. I don't know how it works for Native folks in Canada but in the United States, when you are born Native your parents do some paperwork and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs gives you a Certificate of Indian Blood, stating exactly how Native you can be proven to be based on how Native your parents can be proven to be. The Certificate of Indian Blood is often called a pedigree with bitter irony because in essence, that's what it is. We come with papers like fancy show dogs, just instead of it qualifying our "breed" it's qualifying our right to be enrolled in tribal membership.

I keep my pedigree with all my other important documents, like tax information, birth certificate, social security card, that sort of thing. I inherited a total blood degree of 1/4 Eskimo from my mom and thus qualify for tribal membership. Past a certain point, I wouldn't be considered "Native Enough" based on blood alone and i'd have to get a special dispensation to be legally recognized as an Indigenous descendant. It doesn't matter what my tribe or nation's traditional customs regarding kinship and identity were, by United States law, I could be declared "Not Native Enough" no matter my connection to my culture, no matter how accepted I was by my Native family. Kinda fucked up, isn't it?

Oh, and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs is part of the US government. They ran the schools where kids got beat for not speaking English. We have to tell them we are members of this marginalized group that seems to keep demanding safe drinking water and the right to not be kicked out of our homes at the expense of oil companies if we want access to healthcare and scholarships we may not otherwise have access to because of our "unique situation" (systemic disadvantage). This marginalized group that faces police brutality and wrongful arrests for peacefully protesting our right to live in the few places we have been allowed to live. So if the US government decides Native people are a problem, they have a registry of us. Kinda fucked up, don't you think?

So with that all in mind, do you see how uncouth and just plain nasty it is to demand proof of someone being "Native Enough" or "The Right Kind of Native"? If some freak tries to dig up this info and he's more mixed than some have deemed acceptable (so 1/4 or less) or god forbid doesn't even have his papers or tribal membership for any reason (justified paranoia, clerical error, any degree of negligence on the parents' part) he gets to look forward to being treated even more like a pretendian than the fans have already seen fit to treat him as. How fun.

Every day I wake up I am made to remember that I'll never look "Native Enough" to a huge swath of people who may not have even talked to one of us face-to-face. And it's only a matter of time before one of them sends me a message, written to sound like they're crawling on their belly because they have nothing but respect for "Real Natives" but if they saw me in the regalia my older cousin in Nome made for me so I could graduate high school in regalia, they'd throw a fit. If they saw me after I eventually get my tavlaģun, all pale skinned and blue-eyed, they'd treat me as a study in cultural appropriation, as if i'm not trying to learn whatever variation of my ancestral tongue I can get my hands on.

I can totally understand why he or anyone else might have thought it was better not to specify. Like my first reaction (and this isn't necessarily correct nor something i'm proud of, just the first thing that came to my mind) to seeing Katara was cast as that Mohawk girl from Anne with an E was "they couldn't even get a real eskimo?" I'm guessing others felt similarly. If he didn't wanna deal with that, I can't blame him.

If you think he doesn't look brown enough to convincingly play someone native to the tundra, i recommend the following: go on youtube, look up "inupiaq" and watch at least five of the videos that come up to see how varied we are.

Don't watch this live action adaptation if you don't want to, but if you refuse on the grounds of "the actor's not native enough :/" and go on to ignore actual Native media, that's some performative shit if I've ever seen it. Seriously, how many of the people complaining have watched Smoke Signals? Dance Me Outside? On the Ice? How many were hyped over Reservation Dogs (first two episodes are on Hulu as I'm writing this post)?

Anyway, I'm tired. I'm probably not gonna watch the live action series, but that has nothing to do with Sokka's actor not being "brown enough" to be seen as one of the red and brown. I'll finish off this post with a 1491s video so everyone can get a taste of Native media and maybe elevate it more than discourse over who gets to play a Fantasy Eskimo who was originally written and played by white guys with no Actual Eskimo input:

[native-academia]

𝓯𝓮𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓻𝓮𝓬𝓸𝓰𝓷𝓲𝔃𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓻𝓲𝓫𝓮𝓼

Across the world, there are many indigenous peoples existing within established countries who maintain their national identity, unique cultures, and individual methods of government. In the United States, those that the government officially recognizes are referred to as “federally recognized tribes”. This means that they are being recognized as sovereign nations that exist within the physical boundaries of the United States. Although legal recognition can come in a variety of forms and be standing on an international level, the US government has enumerated 3 ways of establishing formal federal recognition; an act of Congress, a decision made by a US court, or a petition by the tribe in question to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Notice that these enumerated forms of recognition put a lot of the responsibility for decision-making on the US federal government, rather than on the government or people of the tribe in question. According to these terms, an act of US Congress or decision by a US court can grant a tribe federal recognition without the tribe recognizing that distinction themselves. Historically, this has led to the erasure of many traditional tribal lines. If the US government says that all Indians living in a specific area and speaking a specific language are part of a particular tribe, that decision stands in the eyes of the US Government, even if the people themselves consider themselves to be different tribal nations. One can only imagine the level of intertribal conflict this policy has created over just the last two hundred years.

In order for a tribe to petition for their own recognition, they must file officially through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA is very strict on its definition of “tribe”, requiring any tribe in question to reach all seven qualification standards.

First, a tribe must have been considered an American Indian entity continuously since 1900, meaning that the tribe would have already had to have been established at that point.

Next, the majority of the tribe must consist of a distinct community that is recognizable from the others around it, also continuously.

Third, the tribe must have maintained political authority over its members, uninterrupted, from “historical times” to present.

Next, the nation must be able to provide a governing document (like a constitution) including and specifying citizenship criteria and political procedure, or else otherwise be able to provide a detailed explanation of that criteria. Basically, you must have a way of defining who your tribe is and how you do things.

The citizens of the tribal nation must themselves be descendants of historical nation(s) acting as a single political entity. I believe this might be the basis of blood quantum laws, because too much intermarrying could possibly threaten that claim.

The majority of a tribal nation must not be enrolled in any other federally recognized tribe.

Lastly, there have been acts of Congress expressly ending or forbidding the federal recognition of certain tribes. Those tribes are completely ineligible for federal recognition, even if they manage to meet all of the other requirements of the BIA.

sources: x - x

[uwmspeccoll]

Native American/First Nations Woman Writer of the Week

DEBORAH A. MIRANDA

Deborah A. Miranda is poet, professor, and recipient of the 2000 Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Writer of the Year Award. An enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of California, Miranda was born in Los Angeles to an Esselen/Chumash father and a Jewish-French mother⁠—a mix of cultures that play a central role in the author’s writing. 

UWM Special Collections preserves a signed presentation copy to our library (which is named after Golda Meir, who grew up in Milwaukee) of Miranda’s 1999 poetry collection Indian Cartography: Poems, published by the historically diverse Greenfield Review Press. The book received the Diane Decorah Memorial First Book Award for Poetry from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, a special honor as it is one of the few literary awards presented to Native Americans by Native Americans. The book’s cover is a monoprint, called “August Sky,” by Kathleen R. Smith of the Mihilikawna Pomo and Yoletamal Coast Miwokwhich. Our collection also holds a signed presentation copy of Miranda’s 2005 poetry collection, The Zen of La Llorona, published by Salt Publishing. This collection was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award, which celebrates “vibrant, dynamic” LGBTQ storytelling.

In her author’s note for Indian Cartography: Poems, Miranda observes that people believed all Natives of California to have “died.” Acknowledging her peoples’ struggles, the author dedicates the book: “for my tribe, my family, our children.” This first collection focuses on the author’s childhood and her journey back to her Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen roots, after Spanish Missions’ and Mexican secularization’s near erasure of the culture. Miranda dedicates The Zen of La Llorona to her spouse, poet, Margo Solod, stating that this second collection of her poetry is 

a record of my journey out of destruction and into a North American indigenous state of creativity, the erotic, and joy. 

This book follows the author’s personal growth into adulthood and motherhood, through a divorce, and her attempts at finding love as a queer person. In this collection, Miranda states that Indigenous peoples are all children of La Llorona, as they continue to fight for federal recognition in the American historical canon after surviving termination efforts by the U.S. government for decades. 

Deborah Miranda continues to write and is currently the Thomas H. Broadus, Jr. Professor of English Emeritus at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Her research includes Indigenous women's poetry, California Indian issues both historically and in contemporary times, and North American Indigenous environmental and social justice concerns. She runs workshops at universities across the United States and maintains a blog through Twitter under the username, @badndns.

The photographic portrait used here is by Margo Solod from the website Split this Rock, presenting Miranda’s poem “We.”

See other writers we have featured in Native American/First Nations Woman Writer of the Week.

–Isabelle, Special Collections Undergraduate Writing Intern

We acknowledge that in Milwaukee we live and work on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee homelands along the southwest shores of Michigami, part of North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee, and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, and Mohican nations remain present.

[antoine-roquentin]

Bill Gates has never been a farmer. So why did the Land Report dub him “Farmer Bill” this year? The third richest man on the planet doesn’t have a green thumb. Nor does he put in the back-breaking labor humble people do to grow our food and who get far less praise for it. That kind of hard work isn’t what made him rich. Gates’ achievement, according to the report, is that he’s largest private owner of farmland in the US. A 2018 purchase of 14,500 acres of prime eastern Washington farmland – which is traditional Yakama territory – for $171m helped him get that title.

In total, Gates owns approximately 242,000 acres of farmland with assets totaling more than $690m. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly the size of Hong Kong and twice the acreage of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, where I’m an enrolled member. A white man owns more farmland than my entire Native nation!

The United States is defined by the excesses of its ruling class. But why do a handful of people own so much land?

Land is power, land is wealth, and, more importantly, land is about race and class. The relationship to land – who owns it, who works it and who cares for it – reflects obscene levels of inequality and legacies of colonialism and white supremacy in the United States, and also the world. Wealth accumulation always goes hand-in-hand with exploitation and dispossession. In this country, enslaved Black labor first built US wealth atop stolen Native land. The 1862 Homestead Act opened up 270m acres of Indigenous territory – which amounts to 10% of US land – for white settlement. Black, Mexican, Asian, and Native people, of course, were categorically excluded from the benefits of a federal program that subsidized and protected generations of white wealth.

The billionaire media mogul Ted Turner epitomizes such disparities. He owns 2m acres and has the world’s largest privately owned buffalo herd. Those animals, which are sacred to my people and were nearly hunted to extinction by settlers, are preserved today on nearly 200,000 acres of Turner’s ranchland within the boundaries of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty territory in the western half of what is now the state of South Dakota, land that was once guaranteed by the US government to be a “permanent home” for Lakota people....

Like wealth, land ownership is becoming concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, resulting in a greater push for monocultures and more intensive industrial farming techniques to generate greater returns. One per cent of the world’s farms control 70% of the world’s farmlands, one report found. The biggest shift in recent years from small to big farms was in the US.

[coochiequeens]

By Hallie Golden 

On a picturesque island just a 30-minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle, Juanita Perez described losing a recent race for a delegate seat for the Tlingit and Haida tribes:

“I didn’t have all the tools to do it the right way,” she said.

It was a recent weekend in April and the third day of an advocacy boot camp put on by the Native Action Network, a non-profit in Seattle, Washington. She was sitting in a circle of more than a dozen Native women going over the challenges of running for office as a Native woman and the political positions they were each interested in pursuing. 

The event, a first for the organization, was designed to help more “Native womxn” run for office at every level.

The 20 participants from 17 different tribes had traveled to the meeting space from across Washington state and Oregon. There was a PhD student, a school district board member, a child advocate, a Native American education liaison, real estate brokers and an undergraduate student.

Some, like Perez, had already tried their hand in the political realm, while others were still getting acquainted with the prospect.

But each one had put their life on hold as they explored the idea of taking a seat at the decision-making table that too often leaves out Native women. And in the process, they had each found a loyal support system in each other.

In 2020, the Center for American Women and Politics, which has tracked female political candidacies for 30 years, identified a record 18 women who identified as Native American as running for US congressional seats, with two winning in the House. The center’s figures don’t include Yvette Herrell, who is a member of the Cherokee nation and was elected to the House.

The following year, Representative Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, became the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in US history.

But American Indian or Alaska Native women account for 1.1% of the population, and yet they, in 

combination with Native Hawaiian women, still make up just 0.2% of all voting members of Congress.

In other words, they continue to be largely left out of the decision-making at the highest levels of the country, despite the fact, as Leah Salgado, chief impact officer for the Native women-led organization IllumiNative, explained it, that their “very existence is a political issue”.

Now, as the country heads into the midterm elections, the bootcamp is meant to build on the momentum of past years by creating a space that, unlike many other campaign trainings, was Native specific, said Iris Friday, president and co-founder of Native Action Network.

“It makes all the difference when you get all of these women in the room and they have a safe space where they can have open, honest conversations and dialogues,” she said. “It’s just so powerful to see what transpires at the end of the day.”

There appear to be nine women who identify as Native American running for US congressional seats in the upcoming elections, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research for the Center for American women and politics, the second highest number to date. That number could still increase, as more than 100 women have registered their candidacy without stipulating their race.

Salgado said it’s important to understand the historical context surrounding Native people and the country’s political system. Native people were not granted citizenship in the US until 1924, and then it took more than three decades before they were considered eligible to vote in every state.

“Native people stepping into a place where we’re training and putting forth efforts to ensure Native people have access to the political process is necessary and important because we haven’t always had access to it,” she said.

Although still fairly rare, she said she has noticed a slight increase in training sessions like this one. But, she said, getting Native women into leadership roles is just one step. It’s also about helping them once they are there.

“It also has to be about what are the ways in which we’re making sure that they’re supported through all of this because you don’t get elected and then the racism stops,” she said.

In a series of detailed sessions, the boot camp participants were taught about fundraising, Pacs, communication styles and crafting their individual message. They heard from the Washington state senator Mona Das, a Democrat, and the Suquamish Tribe council member Windy Anderson.

On Saturday morning, a professional photographer took their headshots. By Sunday, their bags were full of such books as Lead from the Outside by Stacey Abrams and Run for Something by Amanda Litman.

Each day the women sat along long wooden tables, sharing meals together. There were spontaneous discussions on Indigenous language revitalization and blood quantum. In the evenings they stayed together in nearby lodges.

In the following months, they will have at least three additional training sessions, including one on public speaking in July.

Lafaitele Faitalia, 38, who is Tongan and Samoan, is considering a run for the Washington state house. The training taught her about bringing her authentic self, she said, while at the same time it helped her understand Pacs and the daunting prospect of fundraising.

“If you’re not exposed to the political systems in the US; if you don’t know what that looks like, [or 

about] navigating these systems, but you want to make change and you want to run for office, it’s going to be intimidating,” said Faitalia, who is a chief in Samoa and serves on Washington state’s commission on Asian Pacific American affairs.

Lisa Young, 59, who is Tlingit and Navajo, has spent 15 years working as a finance director for city government, but is now considering a campaign for city council in her small home town of Redmond, Oregon. She said she wants to give a voice to its small Native population, along with its other minorities, as well as immigrants.

“[Being] here allowed me to re-energize and say I can be that person of service even though I know there’s going to be barriers,” she said. “I think these women strengthened me a little bit. Enough to say, OK, I’m less afraid today than I was before.”

Claudia Kauffman, vice-president and co-founder of Native Action Network, is very familiar with what it’s like running for political office as a Native woman. In 2007, she was sworn in as the first Native woman elected to the Washington state senate.

But, she said, it was a moment more than 25 years ago, when she was working for the Indigenous activist Bernie Whitebear, that helped to spur her to run. They were at the state capitol in Olympia, meeting with lawmakers to try to get funding for afterschool programming for Native children.

“They’re just people just like you and me,” he told her.

She remembers thinking, “If they’re just people, then why not me?”

Now, through this advocacy boot camp, she is trying to have a similar impact on these Native women, no matter what type of position they may be seeking.

“Our job, our duty, is to cultivate future leaders, the next generation of leaders that we have within our community that we know are strong and resilient and committed,” she said.

By the third day of the training, when organizers asked the group whether they were inspired to run for office, six women raised their hands, with two others saying they wanted to explore getting seats on boards and commissions.

Perhaps just as important was how quickly the women had become each other’s steadfast supporters.

On that final day of the bootcamp, when Perez described losing the race, within seconds participants responded with messages of support.

One encouraged her to go bigger if her tribal community wasn’t receptive to her. Another said she had connections at the tribe, and offered to help. Then a third told her: “You’re not alone.”

[punksreadshit]

This isn't about race or blood or any of that settler hogwash. This is a tribal sovereignty issue. Michelle Latimer was outed because the tribe she claimed to be a part of, the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg (Maniwaki) of Quebec, heard their name was being dropped, looked into it, and said, "Umm, actually you aren't one of us." What if they decided to let her join the tribe, to be enrolled? I kind of wish they would. Because from what I can see—and I could be wrong—Michelle Latimer got caught up in the mess that so many of us in North America struggling with our “am I/am I not” Indigenous identities. She bought in and seems to have done a lot of good work on behalf of Indigenous people. My own mentor, Nicholas Vrooman, was a white guy adopted by the Turtle Mountain Chippewa because he was a tireless researcher, advocate, and defender of our people. Without him the Little Shell would likely not be recognized today. He literally wrote the book that is the written record of our tribal history, The Whole Country Was … One Robe.

Nicholas Vrooman never claimed Indigenous heritage but he was as much Little Shell as I am. More, actually. Which is why tribes need to throw out blood quantum requirements and all that settler bureaucracy and determine for ourselves how we want to build our nations. Enroll people committed to being members of the tribe, just like any other nation does, blood purity be damned. Like we did pre-colonialism. That is the only way we survive.