Gallatin, Albert, 1761-1849.Library of Congress.
While white Americans experience the novelty of ancestry tests, the colonial history of DNA testing is laden with racism against American Indians, whose tribal affiliations have been restricted by “blood quantum” laws.
Like many people, I have at least one friend who has invested money in finding out just what blood runs through his family’s veins. Erik is your classic white forty-something male. Growing up, he was always told that his father’s family was mostly Swedish and his mother’s was German. Through the corporate science of DNA services, Erik discovered he is also Scottish. Though this discovery has not dramatically changed his life, he did get married in a kilt.
I have yet to meet an American Indian who has made similar efforts to ascertain his or her ancestry. In fact, when I ask Indians about this, they crunch their eyebrows and curl their lips in confusion. These Indians will say they were born Indian, raised Indian, and have spent their lives living as American Indians. Personally, I believe some of these Indians are afraid they will learn they are Scottish as well.
While racial identity may seem like the latest in dinner party fodder for white people, the reality is that American Indians have been burdened with this issue for generations.
Though discovery of my friend's Scottish ancestry has not dramatically changed his life, he did get married in a kilt.
Before the arrival of Europeans, tribal identity was a rather simple matter of community association. If you lived among Navajo people, then you were accepted as a Navajo. Even when Europeans came ashore, tribal adoption was common. You did not need a federal Indian ID card nor did you have to prove you had Indian blood.
For many decades, tribes witnessed the loss of their lands, languages, and sovereignty as world nations. In the ensuing decades, the U.S. government began to strip American Indian tribes of their right to determine who was and who was not an Indian, mostly by establishing blood quantum rules that ended traditional tribal identity practices.
However, even as tribes have reclaimed much of what was stolen, including the right to determine tribal membership, the issue of blood quantum has remained foundational to Indian identity. And now, what was once considered a vile form of racial genocide inflicted on American Indians has many native people, including me, rethinking the value of blood identity.
Indians are losing our blood at an alarming rate (and have been for years). We intermarry with other races more than any other racial group. The blood loss is so acute that a number of tribes are eliminating blood quantum requirements.
While I do not believe that blood alone determines Indianness, this loosening of the rules for tribal membership is worrying. Without the blood, there is little left to determine who is and who is not an American Indian.
And yet, there are Indians—both half and full bloods—who have no connection to their Indian genes. They are disconnected from their tribes and even immediate family. For the few who hail from casino-rich tribes, the appeal of the white man’s ways and his toys makes a bow and canoe relics of a bygone era. Thus, I recognize blood alone could not possibly be enough to define Indianness.
Indians are losing our blood at an alarming rate (and have been for years). We intermarry with other races more than any other racial group.
In the past, I have written about white people who like to pretend to be Indian. They find out their great grandmother was Cherokee and, well, racial enlightenment never looked so good. This is true of a certain Democratic Senator (and presidential hopeful) from Massachusetts, who resorted to DNA testing to prove to President Donald Trump that, in fact, she does have at least one drop of Indian blood. I find it charming, certainly benign, when I hear white people like Elizabeth Warren speak of their Indian heritage and I even validate their fractured identity, to a point.
The one reality the Warrens of the world will never have to face is racism. While the President might refer to them as “Pocahontas,” they will never be called dirty Indians or savages. They will never be perceived as having “special rights” because they are members of sovereign tribes that fight for the right to manage their own lands and affairs based on treaties with the U.S. government.
Besides, the blood racism may be among the few experiences that bind Indians across tribes. We still deal with border hate, in those rural towns located next to reservations. The violence perpetrated against Indians, especially against women, is something right out of the last century. And corporate racism is on the rise, with Trump’s call to corporations to exploit our lands through mining and the construction of oil and gas pipelines that threaten our way of life.
But depending on your perspective, it can be difficult to distinguish between racism and appreciation when it comes to all things Indian. Racial interlopers fit this mask to a tee. These people love to insinuate themselves into tribal communities. They let out all European blood and fully claim being Indian.
Years ago, while in Los Angeles, I attended a workshop hosted by a group of white people known as Hobbyists. These Hobbyists are serious Indian-philes. They bring in traditional American Indians from all over Indian Country to teach their chapter members how to drum, sing tribal songs, do traditional beading, and sew dance outfits. Perhaps, in a hundred years or so, when there is no more Indian blood, it will be the Hobbyists who become the keepers of our ancient ways. Curious indeed.
There is also the issue of place that identifies Indianness. Since the reservation system was established and some Indians migrated to cities, there has been tension among us. How can you be Indian living with concrete under your feet and the glare of glass skyscrapers?
The importance of place remains critical. It is where ceremony and creation stories began. It is the land that informs one’s Indianness. Without the feel and scent of the land, how can an Indian learn his or her place in a tribal universe?
The one reality the Warrens of the world will never have to face is racism. While the President might refer to them as “Pocahontas,” they will never be called dirty Indians or savages.
I know an Indian from Oklahoma who is the elder in his family. He has been charged with keeping the sacred pipe and other medicine bundle items. Pipe carriers are expected to live among their own people, but this man has carved out a life on the West Coast. He refuses to return to the poverty of his birthplace in Oklahoma. And of course, moving the pipe to California is not an option.
My elder Ojibwe cousin, Earl Nyholm, tried living in the city but he missed the woods and waters of northern Michigan; that is where he grew up, speaking the Ojibwe language. He would on occasion make the journey to Milwaukee just to visit my mother.
“Corrine and I managed to arrange for ‘about town adventures’ during the early-to-mid-1960s era,” Earl once wrote. “Aware, too, of the sparsity of her purse, when we would go out on the town I’d always surprise her by taking her to the fanciest of establishments, much to her delight. I always took extra zhooniyaa [money] because I insisted that she ordered only the best of cocktails, much to her delight.”
While my mother fell in love with the city when she relocated from the reservation in northern Wisconsin after World War II, she did miss home, missed speaking the Ojibwe language, and most of all missed family. “I don’t get to visit our relatives anymore, but you always take time for me,” she told me. “Your mother and grandmother always took time. Now, your grandma and my mother and father are gone.”
It took me years to realize why I adored cousin Earl. As I struggled to define my own identity, his stories about growing up speaking the language, hunting, fishing, and participating in ceremonies helped me understand what it really means to be Indian. It is the Ojibwe values he embraced from our family. Respect, selfless love, tending to another’s needs more than your own—these have all informed his life. I can hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes, and feel it in his gentle hands. All the language acquisition, mastery of ceremony, and sharpshooting of deer would mean nothing to Earl without Ojibwe values.
I don’t speak our language. I have no taste for deer meat or walleye. I would feel entirely out of my skin in a sweat lodge. But I strive to exercise the values that have shaped our people for millennia. Oh, I still believe the blood is vital. It is in the blood that we find memory. And memory defines who we are. I think of something else cousin Earl wrote about memory:
“Memories are one of the greatest mysteries of the human mind. Like the finest piece of material, be it colored cloth or paper or the like, is fragile and in time, fades. Sometimes, along the path, there is someone who cares about these fragile fragments and returns them to their rightful place.”