From Removal to Relocation: Native American People Return to Illinois

Are these blond, blue-eyed children from a Peoria family Indians? Who decides?

The question of who is and is not an Indian has become a burning issue in Indian country.

The Problem of Blood Quantum

As Vine Deloria, Jr. says in Custer Died for Your Sins—Indians go in and out of fashion with mainstream America. Before the 1950s, any Indian skeletons in the family closet were kept carefully hidden. But in the 1970s and 1980s, counter-cultural “hippies” and “new-agers” appropriated various aspects of real and imagined Indian cultures for their own purposes. Indian wannabes abounded. Today, it is fashionable for Euro-Americans (and to some degree African-Americans) to acknowledge some Indian ancestry—as if it confers legitimacy, or in some cases the authority to speak from a Native point of view. As often as not, this connection takes the form of a Cherokee grandmother or great-grandmother (rarely does one claim a Cherokee grandfather…Does this suggest anything).

Although the Census allows individuals to identify their own racial heritage, American Indians are identified in another way as well. Starting with the Sac and Fox Nation in 1930, the federal government considers anyone with over 25% Native American biological heritage (usually referred to as “Indian Blood”) to be an Indian. Unlike any other ethnic group in the United States, Indians carry a CDIB card (the acronym stands for “Certified Degree of Indian Blood” which specifies “how Indian” they are. This is a highly problematic concept that essentializes and naturalizes Native American identity by conflating biological / genetic heritage and cultural identity.

Relying so heavily on blood quantum causes considerable division and inequity in Native American communities. For example, some tribes specify that only people with 25% or more tribal blood quantum (biological heritage from that particular group) can be enrolled tribal members and receive tribal benefits. Other groups, more generous in identifying their members, often have a higher population but, as a result, offer lower per capita health care and other benefits.

This genetic / biological definition of “Indian-ness” contradicts pre-reservation indigenous conceptions which based membership in a community on the relationship of an individual to the rest of the community. Identity was more fluid prior to the increased intervention of the U.S government during the 19th century.

The notion of “Indian Blood” has generated a racializing discourse. The reckoning of Indian Blood is a colonial imposition, a racializing discourse of conquest. Yet it remains a tragically necessary condition for the continued survival and vitality of many individuals and communities because rights and resistances have been couched in the very terms of the discourse. Strong and Van Winkle <<<GET ARTICLE CITATION>>> demonstrate the hegemonic power of this discourse over Native American lives, look at some of its various contradictory effects, and examine the creative and revitalizing ways in which the discourse is being reconfigured by Native American authors and artists <<<EXAMPLES>>>. They look at some of the ways in which this naturalizing discourse shapes and is shaped by the experience of particular Native individuals and communities.

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