>It's weird because I have friends who are clearly of native American decent, who's kids are clearly of native American decent and they can't gain membership to their associated tribes but my family all has their membership through an ex cheif from the 1800s of one of our tribes here and we're what I can only describe as Caucasian.

The reason for this is that blood quanta is not how most tribes historically determine membership. Various tribes used either matrilineal of patrilineal descent where if either your mother or father but not the other was part of the tribe then you had a place in their matrineal or patrilineal clan systems, which is to say part of the tribe because the clans were the basis of the tribe.

Tribal membership rooted out of clan membership, if you had no clan you were basically an outcast to the tribe because you had no place, as your clan is what made your place. The political systems revolved entirely around this, in a matrilineal tribe like the Iroquois you would have clan mothers who were like your mother's mother and anyone descended from them was part of that clan and the various clan mothers made a tribe as each clan mother ruled over a longhouse and multiple longhouses made up the village. If you had no clan mother you had no longhouse so you were not part of the village etc. Now the men would still rule usual, but they did so by way of their maternal descent and it was a big taboo to go against your clan mother even if you were the high chief or whatever.

Of course what I am saying is not universally applicable as it is only applicable to the group I am basing it off of, as obviously patrilineal tribes also existed who would be more like Arabs where if your father is an Arab you are an Arab regardless of who your mother was and this extends backwards indefinitely such that you have berbers in north africa who claim to be arab despite being not remotely arab simply as a result of (likely forged) genealogies. In such an analogy various arab "tribes" are more like clans, as several tribes made up the arabs as a whole but you get the idea. The specific name and level of the word used to describe what I'm talking about is irrelevant.

European "dynasties" were obviously a thing and worked similarly but they didn't really make it across the Atlantic so a new system basically rose up where male and female ancestry was weighted equally called blood quanta where you were "half" regardless of if your parent was male or female. I think this was influenced by the fact that they had to deal with confusion arising from having some groups being patrilineal while others were matrilineal so they just created one system to cover both as an attempt to understand why it sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, because otherwise you would have to track every native group individually based on their own rules.

Realistically it should be a lot lower threshold. Even at 10% that's enough with enough mixing in the community to restore a group over several generations.

Blood Quantum is a BIA thing.

Yeah the whole blood quantum thing is pretty wack cuz even full blooded Indians were counted as 1/2 if they were mixed tribe which was fairly common by the time of the Dawes rolls.

Now correct me if I’m wrong but I’m under the impression each nation can choose their membership, and most use blood quantum (which is really based on the Dawes rolls) or relation to the Dawes rolls, but they can choose a method that doesn’t relate to the Dawes rolls at all right? Like that’s how the Cherokee removed the freedmen despite them being on the rolls?

So yeah they have a state “office of Hawaiian affairs” but they don’t have the same formal relationship as American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Alaska Natives are treated as a different group by the feds from the rest of the American Indians. For example they don’t have reservations like the rest of the country instead having village and regional “corporations”. But yeah cuz of that Hawaiians don’t really have the same quantum thing

Native Hawaiian here. Ethnically and culturally we are considered Polynesian (or Pacific Islander, which includes other ethnic groups from the Pacific/Oceania besides Polynesians).

Its estimated theres about 5,000 pure blood Native Hawaiians left, out of an estimated 300,000 mixed-race Native Hawaiian population.

Native Hawaiians are not federally recognized as being a Native American tribe, there were efforts in the past to do so, but it was shot down in congress.

We do indeed have a State administered "Office of Hawaiian Affairs" (OHA). and in regards to the tidbit about reservations, we do not have reservations either. Or corporations like the Alaskan natives. We do have whats called "Hawaiian Homelands" which is basically just parcels of land strewn through out our islands that are reserved for Native Hawaiians to (originally) homestead on. Now much of it is regular residential housing. Theres a whole controversy about it but i wont get into it here.

And we dont have a "quantum" thing based on tribal membership, because well, Native Hawaiians dont have tribes. If you can trace your lineage to the Native peoples who lived in Hawaii prior to Western contact (1788 A.D.) you are considered Native Hawaiian. However there is a 50% blood quantum requirement to receive a parcel of land via Hawaiian Homelands.

I'm curious why they would want more people. The less people, the more the money goes around.

What band are you from? My dad, aunt & grandmother wered all enrolled members of LCO, but LCO's never responded to me when I reach out about it for myself. It hurts, my grandma was abandoned as a baby and adopted by Slovakian immigrants, though she briefly reconnected with her mother and siblings later in life. My dad left my family when I was a kid.

I just feel robbed as a mutt who's always been an outsider, even in my own home. I did a deep dive in to what it meant to be Anishiaabe, all of my passions & instincts suddenly felt like they made perfect sense. The shores of Lake Superior are the closest thing I have to an ancestral homeland, I wasn't raised to be German or Slovak.

My great grandma was from Old Post, a village that was flooded & destroyed by the Northern States Power Company to provide electricity that the villagers of Post wouldn't even have access to for decades. There's a continual pattern of being kicked out & abandoned that stretches back to that flood. We've been trying to survive on the outside, it was never a choice leave it behind.

I just feel like my Ojibwe heritage has been stolen. I may look like a white guy, but that's what genocide is intended to do, destroy not just the blood but the heritage behind it. It made me proud to learn my great aunt Sandra fought against blood quantums, but the genocide isn't finished yet so that fight isn't over.

Nono, I don't think its racist, I know its racist. Please do tell them that.

And calling people white assholes just means you're one as well.

And no, sorry, racial quotas for immigration are not cool, always racist, and you are a bigot, a racist, and a flat out terrible person if you defend it or think its acceptable in this day and age. Get your head out of the past and stop defending the practices of shitty people.

I'd agree but my dad's cousin did it and confirmed he had native ancestry. Can't link to my other comment about it

She's long dead, but It gets wilder.

My dad's mom's brother's son did the same DNA test and he has native ancestry. Definitely something funny going on but not shit can be done about it now but laugh.

By government cheese, I assume they're referring to how you gain access (as an enrolled member of a tribe) to tuition waivers for college (some are limited to certain tribes in a state, some are available to any tribe) and being able to go to Indian Health Services for healthcare (which is so unreliable in some parts of the US you might as well have no healthcare)

As for reparations I assume they are referring to tribes who have treaty money disbursed (an example is the 1854 Treaty Authority) in some interval (yearly, quarterly, etc).

Which yeah, is speaking in generalities. I've had people assume we all get "casino money" while my tribe's casino is so poorly managed all it does is lose money, and the only money you're getting from it is working minimum wage as a gift shop cashier

Government cheese is a thing if you're on WIC, since pregnant women need a good diet the government just hands out some food if the woman is low-income, one of those foods being 'government cheese'.

I guess in some states they also give Native Americans government cheese? Seems odd "heyy we stole your land and genocided your people, here's some apology cheese" 🤷.

From what I've been told the cheese comes in an unsliced block and varies in quality. Like I've been told in many states the government cheese is disgusting. In NY though it's better than Boar's Head, best American cheese I've ever eaten.

The tribes where I live get bricks of government cheese. For a short period of time the US Federal government gave out roughly $450-$550 to every tribal member, a one time "reperation" for stolen lands (2012-2013)

Certain tribes here even give you land when you gain membership.

Your tribe doesn't have commodities for its members?

In Oklahoma, it doesn’t go off DNA or even proven ancestry- it goes strictly off the Dawes rolls. Dawes was a man hired by the US government to make a list of all Native Americans for land grants etc. If any of your ancestors signed these rolls, you can get a CDIB card (certified degree of Indian blood) which is the only way to enroll in the tribes there. Once you are enrolled in a tribe, you are considered Native American even if you are majority white. It is not uncommon to see CDIB cardholders with 1/124th or 1/215th etc. Anyone with 1/4 or more is extremely rare and they are eligible to be elders and often get offered special jobs at the nation.

Right, but they may self identify on the census, which would explain a large increase of native ancestry on the census.

Thank you for taking the time to answer me so fully.

What you call yourself on the census will have no effect on that.