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Dr_DMT t1_j77rsyu wrote

Several tribes changed their constitutional standings around 2010-2012.

They opened up their tribes to accepting "Any direct descendent of a living tribal member".

Meaning If you had a grandma or grandfather in the tribe but your blood quantum was minimal and not enough to claim tribalship on your own you could still apply and become a tribal member.

This has since been overturned but it is once again in talks as native Americans in general are becoming extinct in the terms of blood quantum. There will no longer be living members of tribes with a blood quantum of 50% to 100% in the next 50 years and tribal numbers will become obsolete unless laws change.

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Archberdmans t1_j77sgh8 wrote

How many even have 100% quantum now? Like 2000?

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Dr_DMT t1_j77svit wrote

Good question, I honestly have no idea

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

🤷‍♂️.

If the tribes would like to keep their status as soveirgn nations they are going to have to change their constitutions in the next decade.

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p314159i t1_j77z1ds wrote

>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.

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SteelMarch t1_j77ywqb wrote

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.

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KingofRomania t1_j78f34j wrote

It depends on the tribe, Nations like the Mississippian Choctaw and Navajo Nation probably have a lot of people who are 1/1 Blood Quantum while it would be more uncommon for the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma or any if you are Lumbee.

Even being 1/16th on the Blood Quantum doesn't mean you can't be 100% of different Native ancestries since Blood quantum is only based on your distance from an ancestor or ancestors on a roll and you can't mix blood quantum of different tribes.

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Archberdmans t1_j78i2yq wrote

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?

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myindependentopinion t1_j7ar1jw wrote

>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?

Yes, each US Fed. Recognized Tribe (FRT) can determine their own criteria for tribal membership since 1978 SCOTUS Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez landmark case.

Yes, the vast majority (~85%) of the 574 US FRTs use Blood Quantum as 1 of their criteria and most of those use 1/4 BQ of their own tribal blood as a holdover from what used to be the BIA dictated minimum standard.

No, it's not all really based on the Dawes Rolls. There are over 1 thousand different NDN Census Rolls conducted by NDN Agents from 1885 to 1940s when there were mandatory annual NDN censuses taken on NDN rez's.

The Dawes Rolls only concerned the so-called "5 civilized tribes" and is rather well known because of the Allotment Act but not all tribes were allotted. My tribe chose to use a US Govt. roll from 1954 that I am enrolled by that has nothing to do w/Dawes.

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Cetun t1_j79oijk wrote

Are native Hawaiians considered native Americans? Or they considered Polynesian? One of my neighbors was 100% native Hawaiian, I suspect there are plenty of 100% native Hawaiians still around.

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Archberdmans t1_j79pq2z wrote

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

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jerry_03 t1_j7ab6sh wrote

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.

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Archberdmans t1_j7dgpy9 wrote

As a native Hawaiian, would you say the majority of Hawaiians are for federal recognition? I know that there are natives who are against it and are for succession but I’m just not sure that’s realistic

Thanks

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jerry_03 t1_j7jsul8 wrote

I couldnt say how much are for or against it. But I do know that there are some who are against it because getting federal recognition would legitimize US overthrow of the former Monarchy/Kingdom in 1893 and annexation in 1898. There are some who still hold out and think it can be reversed by future US or international law. I personally dont think that would ever happen

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Potential_Sherbet130 t1_j79wamq wrote

A lot, but law states you can only be enrolled in one tribe so if they’re mother is from one tribe and the father a different tribe they will have two pick one of the two and will only be counted as half native from that tribe.

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Chiefo104 t1_j77wykh wrote

Overturned by who? Tribes can define membership based on how they want to. The bia typically stays out of inter tribal matters

In my tribe you have to be born into the tribe. You then have 1 year to apply. No exceptions. That means some people are left out. We have a casino so we want the least amount in our tribe. Before the casino, we had really lax rules on membership.

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Dr_DMT t1_j77xfhd wrote

By the tribes as you stated.

I was specifically talking about Ojibwe when I wrote this, I know of a few other tribes as well but the one in most familiar with is Ojibwe because that's part of my lineage.

For us we tried to grow our numbers in 2010-2014. The tribe then voted against that and overturned family lineage once again in favor of blood quantum.

We do have casinos also but not big name or big money casinos. The Ojibwe tribes with major casinos make it next to impossible to claim membership through law.

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Chiefo104 t1_j77xy7y wrote

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

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Dr_DMT t1_j77y8x0 wrote

Because unless your relatives want to be incestuous, there's no way to keep the current blood quantum requirements.

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Slick_36 t1_j79jnjn wrote

Also prevents tribal members from leaving the reservation. You can marry before leaving for a career, but your kids would have to move back to find a partner of their own. Good luck telling your kids that they have to marry not just within the same race, but the same tribe if they want their kids to inherit their identity.

It's basically ensuring those communites shrink until they disappear. It's not historical, it's not traditional, it's a calculated way to drain the blood from the tribe & disguise it as freedom of choice.

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Chiefo104 t1_j77zhgh wrote

My family tree has branches overlapping. Luckily it's a couple generations in the past.

My great great grandma was married and had a child with a man. He then had a child with my great grandma. I also know of at least 2 sets of first cousins, not from my family, who are married with kids.

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[deleted] t1_j797xom wrote

They want more members because it gives them larger influence plus the government gives grants based on how large the tribe is. You don’t have to be 1/64th to join an Oklahoma tribe- you just have to have an ancestor who signed the Dawes rolls. Many people have CDIB cards showing 1/124th or 1/215th etc.

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Slick_36 t1_j79ieh4 wrote

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.

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chrisjinna t1_j7aegdk wrote

Good to see capitalism working lol... Please go ahead and down vote me. I earned it :)

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CutterJohn t1_j799d0k wrote

Native blood quantum is such a weirdly racist concept. I can't imagine any other context where saying "Your blood isn't pure enough to join our group and we are going to explicitly discriminate against you based on that fact" would be tolerated or accepted.

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maniac86 t1_j7btz2c wrote

I'll be sure to tell my cousins living on the RESERVATION some probably white asshole thinks they are racist by trying to preserve what scant resources they have left

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CutterJohn t1_j7c8nm8 wrote

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.

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maniac86 t1_j7cd3w5 wrote

Breed out the Indian. Got it. Good job taking the moral higher-end of being a 1800s imperialist

Calling natives all shitty people. You are such a scummy person

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AnthillOmbudsman t1_j782v7i wrote

I remember there was a time in in the 2000s where you could get group health insurance if you had an ancestor of a certain tribe (usually a grandparent or great grandparent). A lot of people used that to get coverage. IEEE and USAA were another way to get coverage but they all ditched their health insurance around 2010.

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[deleted] t1_j79hxxs wrote

You can still get free insurance on healthcare.gov if you are Native American. Most tribes also have free healthcare facilities.

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GeoSol t1_j79rkqt wrote

I'm "fathered" into a tribe, because my 2 sons are members.

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bmorejaded t1_j7b4ybe wrote

The original was overturned by the Supreme Court because these changes were made to exclude people who were decendants of slaves they've owned in the past. That's when they started accepting any descendent. It was really controversial at the time. I've lived in Native communities if that matters.

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