Blood Quantum

It was, critics maintained, a mechanism to quicken the pace of self-termination. Native North America, some critical scholars claim, has been rendered self-colonizing, if not self-liquidating. Over the centuries, blood quantum has divorced thousands of people from their Native American ethnic heritage by arbitrarily defining who is or is not a person of Native American descent. For others, it is a mechanism to legitimately define who may claim to be Native American. Blood quantum, as a concept, will thus remain a contested arena on the cultural and political landscape of Native North America for the foreseeable future.

Gentry and Donald A. The Origins of Native Americans: Evidence from Anthropological Genetics.

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The Mismeasure of Man. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance , edited by M. Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America, — University of Chicago Press. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since University of Oklahoma Press.

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Modern Language Association http: It's odd to think about high school-aged me, on the lookout for an Indian baby daddy. Especially because, even now, I'm not sure if motherhood is something I want for myself. But at 14 and 15, I was meeting Native boys on the powwow circuit and running equations in my head.

How much Indian "blood" did he have? Did his fraction plus mine equal legitimate tribal citizenship for our offspring? Would his brown skin and high cheekbones survive the wild labyrinth of our genes so that my babies might not have to fight to be seen as Indigenous? On the phone, my friend tells me that her current beau checks most of these boxes.

They've only been together for two months, but she's done the math. The hard part is over. All that's left to do is fall in love and stay there. Here's the thing about blood quantum: It has no basis in biology or genetics or any Indigenous tradition I'm aware of. It's a colonial invention designed to breed us out of existence. But it's got all these smart people—traditionalists, university students, Indigenous language revitalists—running around doing mental math, convinced it's our best shot at keeping our cultures alive. I won't pretend that I'm above it. The prospect of having kids even more mixed than I am makes me anxious.

If, in a century, the Wampanoag tribe no longer exists—if we lose our land, our traditions, our language—will it be my fault? If my babies end up looking like him, if they feel more white than Wampanoag, have I wasted my ancestors' sacrifices? My boyfriend also wants to learn the language. When we visit my mom, he points to labels placed around the house to help the kids build vocabulary and reads them aloud.

By this standard, white is the default, and everyone is approaching whiteness. It keeps sitting there, just as it has since the 19th century when my white ancestors entered my family. Eventually one of my descendants will marry a white person again and hah! A person can get more white, but not more Indian. Do you see what I mean? Every generation, there are fewer people this system thinks are full-bloods, and all the blood quantums get smaller.

For my part, I think a mixed-blood Indian is just an Indian. Before white people came here, the tribes all mixed around a lot, and it didn't make anyone's culture disappear.

So What Exactly Is 'Blood Quantum'?

You just belonged where your mother belonged, or, maybe some tribes did it where your father belonged. They didn't have to prove who they were. I'd personally like to see it that way again. But there's a problem with that, and it's resources.

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Indian tribes don't have a lot of resources now. There is hardly enough money for programs for the people we have. If we let in anybody who wanted to come? It would be very difficult practically. And it would be impossible to get federal money if we couldn't prove anything about blood, and few tribes are wealthy enough to get by without that. And, too, there are complaints from Indians that too much intermarriage and 'passing' and leaving the tribe is making us lose our culture.

Certainly it is making us lose our languages. So a lot of people don't want a solution that would encourage more of that.

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That is why there's disagreement on this issue. Personally, I would rather see five non-Indians get Indian status than one Indian be denied it. Not all Indians agree with that, but it's what I think. The white politicians, of course, want just the opposite.