Indian by Blood, Culture, and Nation : The "real" Indian?

"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life." - Richard Bach

What makes one Indian? Who is Indian and who is not? It's something that people may think they know, something that has even been legislated, but that remains unclear to many. When we first got to Tahlequah, I tried to ask Jessi Bardill, a graduate student from Duke accompanying us on our trip, more about her field of concentration. When she told me she was studying "genetics and genomics in Native American populations," this seemingly vast topic eluded me. What exactly about their genetics? What about their genomics? I couldn't put my finger on it.

I knew Jessi was a descendent of the Eastern Band of Cherokee back in North Carolina, with family in the ancestral Cherokee homeland of northwest Georgia. Knowing little about her, I struggled to afix something more specific to her course of study. I couldn't help but wonder if she somehow tied this to her own background, whether she was going to observe certain traits about the people she best knew, her own family, perhaps to compare to the broader population. Making conversation, I asked, "So have you looked at genetics of your own family? Have you...traced your own lineage through this?"

She was a bit surprised, even irritated, by my question. Looking back on it, though, I can pretty much see why. She probably gets asked this sort of thing all the time. For all that broader society is concerned, Jessi is "white." But as a person who is not "identifiably" Indian and claims Indian ancestry, people tend to inquire, "So how much Indian are you?" As Tuscarora classmate back in NC once retorted in response, "Well, how much monkey are you?!"

I cringe at the necessity of using the phrase "she's part Indian," or even "she's part Cherokee," to describe Jessi, or other descendants of native people, for lack of any better way to put it. It reminds me of the way you'd refer to a dog as "part Labrador" or "part Dalmatian"--it just can't be that rudimentary, that cut and dry. Because it has spots it must be part Dalmatian. Because a person has tan skin, dark eyes, high cheekbones, whatever, they must be part Indian. No, it can't be as crude as that.

Historically, it has been said that if you have "one drop of black blood, then you're black" and for all societal purposes it is so. But it takes a whole lot of Indian blood to be Indian. At least that's what many would have us believe, or what we mainstream Americans stereotypically imagine when we picture an Indian...a bronze-skinned, hard-nosed warrior, with dark hair flowing behind them. This is probably for a simple reason. At home in North Carolina, despite having one of the largest populations of Indians (if not the largest) on the east coast, it's still strange to really know or meet an Indian. The sheer unfamiliarity with Indian people is obvious just based on the behavior of those we left behind in NC. Walker's grandmother somehow came to the conclusion that he was going on a mission trip to minister to the poor Indians. My grandmother sent me some cards with brightly-feathered powwow dancers on them, while so many others asked me, "So how is the reservation?" Ideas like this must only be exacerbated in places with even fewer Indian people. We only know the Indians we make up in our heads. From what I've seen here in Oklahoma, chances are you've met an Indian and didn't even know it.

The notion of race and identity is very different and much more complicated in Indian Country. There are fluent Cherokee speakers and ceremonial callers who are, for all intensive purposes, like Jessi--"white." There are "identifiably" Indian people who have been raised speaking their native tongue and some who know not a lick of it, and there are many more people who don't necessarily look "white" but aren't necessarily identifiable as Indian, either--perhaps more often mistaken for "Asian" or "Hispanic." Any of these people, regardless of appearance, can think of themselves and feel themselves to be Indian...and can, of course, place varying importance on the role that being Indian plays in their life, from the smallest role to the most central. Here the bounds of skin color to culture have been blurred; Indian cannot be consolidated as a race but rather as an amalgam of people united by thought--the thought that they are Indian.

Onlookers like myself, from outside Indian country, may often find themselves filtering "who is Indian" through the lens of color, the way we've been conditioned to do (whether we like it or not). It is much different to face this blurring of "the color line" through experience rather than through academic discourse. I went through other classes back at home where I could easily accept and conceptualize from academic articles that Indian identity went beyond race. But it's different confronting it in real space, coming into Indian Country, where so many people of varying shades, blood degrees, and a multitude of tribes are represented. It forces you to check your assumptions about "who Indians are" every day, just as I did in my simple conversation with Jessi, where one unwitting comment stirred an entire mode of thought. It turned out that her "study of genetics and genomics in Native people" was really a study of identity of Indian people, how closely (or not) those genetics are linked to Indian identity, and how using the Dawes Rolls, and blood descent from those Rolls, is problematic for determining who is or is not Indian.

We got this first hand on our trip by meeting with two controversial groups whose controversy is entirely centered around this question of race. First, we met with the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees, a tribal band who began as a political organization working in conjunction with the Cherokee Nation, but has recently moved toward separatism. The Keetoowah leaders we met insisted that it was they who were the "full bloods," the "real" Cherokee people, the traditional people who when you saw them, you knew they were Indian.

The room held an air of racial superiority and tension I have never felt before. The attitude was xenophobic (anyone outside the area wasn't a true Cherokee) and narrowly focused on race (anyone mixed in appearance was not truly a Cherokee). They made sure to distinguish that they were better than "those people down the street" or "those people over there" (Cherokee Nation). Chief Wickliffe insisted he was "not a racist" so many times that the phrase began to fall on deaf ears. There must be some reason he felt he needed to repeat this so often; perhaps because something repeated can make it seem true, or perhaps because his arguments for the basis of his separate tribe were based almost entirely upon race. His concept of the Keetoowahs was one that depended fully on breaking people down into severely limiting polarities: us and them, fullblood and mixed blood, dark and light skinned. I had come into the meeting with willingness to listen, and left with a feeling of complete exasperation. The color line is blurred in Indian Country, but this does not eliminate racism. It only makes racism more complex.

The Cherokee Nation is not without its own controversy over racial designations. We also met with the Freedmen, a group of people who, for all appearances, are "African-American." They met with us because many of them are advocating for full rights as Cherokee citizens, but have been denied it because they cannot trace an ancestor back to the Dawes rolls. Their ancestors were registered on separate rolls other than the Dawes Rolls, rolls specifically created for descendents of slaves owned by Cherokees. However, this does not mean they have no Indian ancestry. At the time of registering with the rolls, if a person had one slave ancestor, no matter if other ancestors were Indian, they were registered on the Freedmen rolls. Thus, descendents of these people registered as Freedmen may have significant Cherokee ancestry but be unable to become citizens of the Cherokee Nation because they cannot provide an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls. This controversy continues, and though many accuse the Freedmen of seeking tribal membership only for its benefits, or playing "the race card," they are not recognizing that just like other Indian people with mixed-race heritage, the Freedmen think of themselves as Indian and only want to be recognized as such. Are people who are black and Indian recognized as black, while people who are white and Indian recognized as Indian? It is a prime example of the problems that using the Dawes Rolls to designate "who is Indian" presents. It is the very same as asking, "How much Indian are you?" Is it relevant? Is it necessary?

As Jessi pointed out, are blood and nationality tied? With the Freedmen, it is mostly a question of citizenry, of nationality, not of blood. What has blood to do with whether you participated in a nation, helped build it, even served as leaders (as some Freedmen did in the Cherokee nation). And the Keetoowahs' idea of a separate nationality is based on race; they cannot separate the idea of "being Cherokee" from "being full blood," and thus they divide themselves from the Cherokee Nation.

Indian Country seems as divided on the question of blood and nationality as the Cherokees and Keetoowahs. The Keetoowahs require the standard amount, 1/4 blood quantum, in order to become an enrolled tribal member. The Cherokee Nation has no minimum blood requirement. The distribution of blood quantum requirements are as follows (as quoted from Professor Michael Green):

Blood quantum requirements for US Tribes

1. 5/8 - 1 tribe
2. 1/2 - 19 tribes
3. 3/8 - 1 tribe
4. 1/4 - 147 tribes
5. 1/3 - 27 tribes
6. 1/16 - 9 tribes
7. No minimum required - 98 tribe

Most tribes do require some kind of blood quantum (204 total). This includes the second largest tribe in the US, the Navajo Nation, which requires 1/4 blood quantum. Yet a very significant amount (nearly 100), including the Cherokee Nation, the largest tribe in the US, do not require a minimum blood quantum. As more tribes are admitted, perhaps without solid ties to Dawes Rolls, such as North Carolina's Lumbee, and as tribes grow and change, the blood quantum requirements will have to adapt.

Ultimately, my attempt to understand what Jessi sought to study was mistaken. I wanted to make it something specific, finite. The term "genetics and genomics" lends itself to an idea that identity can be measured precisely by mapping genomes or tracing genes. Yet identity extends beyond these finite markers. Our families are who raised us, who were around us, and who were there for us, not merely those whose blood and genes match our own.

So "who is Indian?" I think my newest friend, a Cherokee, Kinsey Shade, explained it best to me. "It's not about what you look like. It's about what you know."