CVK
Fascinating (but long) article in The New York Times magazine about how Native American/American Indian communities are being forced to confront the question of what exactly makes a person Indian: genetics? or culture? both? or neither? The article talks about how many white people are tracing back their lineage to find their Indian ancestry and then identifying just as Indian. (Um… listen to the latest Addicted to Race if you want to know my views on that.) But it’s funny that they are hyper-sensitive to being made fun of for doing exactly that. The article also talks a lot about how the government adopted policies to deliberately breed Indians out of existence. The less Indian blood you had, the more privileges you received - thus, it was socially and economically advantageous to marry white. Below are some excerpts but I would really recommend that you print this out and read it in its entirety - it’s really well done.

All weekend at the Jaycee Fairgrounds, the Cherokees of Northeast Alabama whom I spoke to were quite nervous that I might pronounce them, as some put it, ”ethnic frauds.” Hickman, the genealogist, insisted upon knowing if I was ”going to make fun of them.” In the days leading up to the powwow, he called me repeatedly, his voice filled with panic. Hardly an hour went by over the weekend that the event’s spokeswoman, Karen Cooper, didn’t sidle up to ask me if there was anything she could do…

Some Native Americans carry what is called, awkwardly, a white card, officially known as a C.D.I.B., a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. This card certifies a Native American’s ”blood quantum” and can be issued only after a tribe has been cleared by a federal subagency.

The practice of measuring Indian blood dates to the period just after the Civil War when the American government decided to shift its genocide policy against the Indians from elimination at gunpoint to the gentler idea of breeding them out of existence. It wasn’t a new plan. Regarding Indians, Thomas Jefferson wrote that ”the ultimate point of rest and happiness for them is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people.” When this idea was pursued bureaucratically under President Ulysses S. Grant, Americans were introduced to such phrases as ”half breed” and ”full blood” as scientific terms. In a diabolical stroke, the government granted more rewards and privileges the less Indian you were. For instance, when reservation lands were being broken up into individual land grants, full-blooded Indians were ruled ”incompetent” because they didn’t have enough civilized blood in them and their lands were administered for them by proxy agents. On the other hand, the land was given outright to Indians who were half white or three-quarters white. Here was the long-term catch: as Indians married among whites and gained more privileges, their blood fraction would get smaller, so that in time Indians would reproduce themselves out of existence.