So a lot of people don't want any type of solution that Too much intermarriage and 'passing' and leaving the tribe is making us lose our culture.Ĭertainly it is making us lose our languages. And, too, there are complaints from Indians that And it wouldīe impossible to get federal benefits if we couldn't prove anything about blood, and few tribesĪre wealthy enough to get by without that. Let in anybody who wanted to come? It would be very difficult practically. There is hardly enough money for programs for the people we have. But there's a problem with that, and it's resources. I'd personally like to see it that wayĪgain. You justīelonged where your mother belonged, or, maybe some tribes did it where your fatherīelonged. The tribes all mixed around a lot, and it didn't make anyone's culture disappear. Do you see what I mean? Every generation, there areįewer people this system thinks are full-bloods, and all the blood quantums get smaller.įor my part, I think a mixed-blood Indian is just an Indian. A personĬan get more white, but not more Indian. One of my descendants will marry a white person again and hah! We will be 1/4 white. Just as it has since the 19th century when my white ancestors entered my family. White, but that doesn't mean that's the end of whiteness in my line. They are white and their children will be white, forever. Someone who is 1/8 Indian is considered white, and that is the end of their Indianness. By this standard, white is the default, and everyone is approaching whiteness. And four, most disturbingly: it guarantees the eventual extinction of the American Get a scholarship from the NAACP or put "Black-owned" on their business Nobody makes African-Americans prove their entire family lineĪnd apply for some governmental Certificate of Degree of African Blood before they can Three, it's wrong for outsiders to tell you if you can or can'tīelong to an ethnic group. Two, it means that if some of your ancestors aren't in the records, you can beĭenied being an Indian. Marry white people or their children will lose their heritage, and that bothers a lot of It's a reallyīad way to define somebody's culture and almost everyone agrees on that, but everyoneĬan't agree on a better kind of system, so there's a lot of complaining and it doesn't change.īasically, there are four problems with this. We argue about this so much because nobody likes it. They're just trying to see how close we are Muskogee instead of Cherokee, but they don't care about that. By their counting, I think I'm 7/8 Indian. Generations since all your ancestors were pure-blood by the number of marriages with They have some arcane way of calculating this by dividing the number of Well, the way the government defines whether someone is a "real" Indian or not is they Question: What is a "blood quantum," and why do American Indians argue about it so much? Measuring Blood: The American Indian Blood Quantum Measuring Blood: Blood Quantum, Mixed-Blood, and Indian Wannabe'sĪmerican Indian languages American Indian cultures What's new on our site today!
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