NOTICES
Vampire Policy is Bleeding Us Dry - Blood-Quantums Be Gone!
by Suzan Shown Harjo
(reprinted with permission of the author; originally appeared as a column in Indian Country Today on Feb. 14, 2001)
Native Peoples have the traditions,
openness and patience that come from
measuring time and possibilities against
the entirety of our ancient cultural
continuum. That’s why we,collectively,
have gotten so many things right - we
have tried things out for myriad
generations, incorporating those that
work and discarding those that do not.
We like to observe something new
from a distance and circle around it for
a while. We don’t hate or love the new
thing - we just show it respect. It could
be dangerous, like a rifle, a tool of
destruction and of providence. It could
be charming, like cut-glass beads, a
good way of sharing a vision.
We may want to admire it from afar
and we may want to invite it to our
camp, either to stay as family or to come
and go as a friend.
Oftentimes, decisions about
societal incorporation have been forced
upon us. Our ancestors did not get to
make a leisurely decision about
“civilization,” for example. From 1880
to 1936, the federal government banned
our traditional religions and made
outlaws of our spiritual leaders. While
American Indians were starving and
eating rancid rations, the coffers of
Christian denominations were fattened
by annual congressional appropriations
for civilizing the Indian. Children were
taken to prison schools, parents were
held hostage at home and no one had a
choice in this new thing.
This new thing was a way for the
white man to keep Indian land without
keeping treaty promises. Some white
men had a theory that went roughly this
way: Savages could be tamed and
taught to be God-fearing and English-
speaking at the government schools and
their allegiances to their families and
tribes would diminish. Cross-tribal and
non-Indian alliances should be
encouraged until Indians value pan-
Indianness and white values.
The federal government calculated
it would take three generations for
American Indians to breed themselves
out as tribal people. By 1900, the terms
“full-bloods” and “half-breeds” were
commonly used on reservations and in
popular culture.
Airman First Class Joshua B. Morrow, Airman First Class Joshua S.
Severson, Allen Dale June (81 years old), and Major Kent Wong, 388,h
Component Maintenance Squadron Commander, Hill Air Force Base, Utah
Morrow Meets Navajo Code Talker
Allen Dale June visited Hill Air Force Base in Utah on April 11,2003.
He’s one of five surviving members of the original 29 Navajo code talkers who
developed the important secret code used during World War II.
He presented a briefing about his involvement as one of the original 29
Navajo code talkers. He also is the recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.
Eligibility for most federal Indian
programs was made dependent on a
quarter-degree-Indian-blood-quantum
requirement. The idea was that the
United States would continue to uphold
treaty promises for health, education,
land protection and the like, but only
until the Indians were down to one-
quarter Indian blood. At that point, the
government could stop paying for their
new lands, water, gold and silver.
In the 1930s, the BIA forced many
tribes to codify this slow genocide
policy in tribal constitutions, declaring
that once their people were down to a
certain level of tribal blood, they would
cease being tribal citizens and Indian
people. In the 1940s, the BIA made lists
of those tribes whose people had low
tribal blood quantums and few cultural
attributes, who could be sent sailing
down the mainstream, and of those
whose people spoke their tribal
language and practiced their traditional
ways, who still needed the government
to take care of them.
Congress, in the 1950s, started
terminating ties with tribes whose
people were the most deculturated.
Some tribes even raised their blood
quantum requirements to one-half to
escape being targeted for termination.
Now, the blood-quantum require
ments are having exactly the pernicious
effect on many Native Peoples they
were intended to have. Lots of children
and grandchildren of tribal citizens do
not qualify for enrollment, because their
parents and older ancestors married
outside their nation. We are not talking
about the pseudo-Indians who have zero
Native ancestors or cultural ties. These
are real Indian kids and many of them
speak their language, practice their
traditional religion, contribute to their
nation and, in fact, are the future of
their nation.
So, what federal laws are forcing
us to keep these blood-quantum
requirements? None.
In the mid-1970s, the Supreme
Court ruled that no federal agency or
any entity except an Indian tribe could
determine who its people are. For even
longer, the high court has held that
Indian nationhood and tribal citizenry
are political, not racial matters. If we
cling to these blood standards, which
are solely about race, some clever neo-
terminationist is going to try to unravel
the Indian political status doctrine by
using the fixation on and fiction of tribal
blood. (The BIA draculas make us
particularly vulnerable in this regard by
their continuing use of CDIBs -
certificates of degree of Indian blood.)
For the past 25 years, we have been
free from any federally imposed
standards for tribal citizenship. While
some nations dropped the blood
quantum nonsense, most have not. This
is an excellent (and sad) example of
internalized oppression. We don’t need
the federal government to breed us out
of existence - we are doing it ourselves.
I talked with some tribal leaders this
year who do not know that tribes have
had the power for a quarter of a century
to drive a stake in our constitutions’
vampire clauses. Some want to do it,
but are worried about fakes flooding the
tribal rolls and siphoning off precious
tribal monies and benefits.
Native Peoples have traditional
ways of defining citizenship, ways
that worked for millennia before there
were any non-Natives or pseudo
Indians in our countries. Those ways
begin with family. If one or both parents
are tribal citizens, frauds are
automatically eliminated.
For those leaders whose nations
have lost their traditional ways of
deciding citizenship, there are more
than 560 Native nations today with
governmental relations with the United
States. Ask a leader of one of those
what kind of citizenship standards they
have. Shop around - compare tribal
citizenship requirements to those of
France, India, China, Zimbabwe, South
Africa, Mexico or the United States.
Blood quantums are not new things
and they are not our things. We have
circled them and been surrounded by
them for more than a century, easily
long enough to know that we do not
respect them, need them or want them.
Doing something about this is almost
as easy as one, two, three - blood
quantum, begone!
July 2003 □
Siletz News
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