Based on the readings and lectures from our unit on Biological Perspectives, des

Based on the readings and lectures from our unit on Biological Perspectives, describe the difference between blood quantum and the one-drop rule. How are they related to settler colonialism in the United States
please Reade before answer–
CHAPTER TWO
“If He Gets a Nosebleed,
He’ll Turn into a White Man”
Biology
North American Indians who successfully negotiate the rigors of legal
definitions of identity at the federal level can achieve what some consider
the dubious distinction of being a “card-carrying Indian.” That 1s, their
federal government can issue them a laminated document (in the United
States, a CDIB; in Canada an Indian status card) that certifies them as
possessing a certain “degree of Indian blood.”
Unlike Louis Owens, of the previous chapter, Canadian-born country
music singer Shania Twain has what it takes to be a card-carrying Indian:
she is formally recognized as an Anishnabe (Ojibwe) Indian with band
membership in the Temagami Bear Island First Nation (Ontario,
Canada). More specifically, she is legally on record as possessing one-half
degree Indian blood. Given this information, one might conclude that
Twain’s identity as an Indian person is more or less unassailable. It’s not.
Controversy has engulfed this celebrity because of an anonymous
phone call to a Canadian newspaper a few years ago that led to the disclosure of another name by which Shania was once known: Eileen
Regina Edwards. Eileen/Shania was adopted by a stepfather 1n early
childhood and took the surname of Twain at that time. So far well and
good — except for one thing. Both sides of her Jzological family describe
themselves not as Indian but as white. It is only Jerry Twain, her late
stepfather, who was Indian.
As the adopted child of an Anishnabe man, Shania Twain occupies an
unusual status. Though the U.S. government allows for the assignment
of blood quantum only to biological descendants of Indian people,
38
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 39
Canada allows for the naturalization of non-Native children through
adoption.! Although Twain has stated that her white mother (now
deceased) had told her, in childhood, that her biological father (also
deceased) had some Indian heritage, his family denies the suggestion
entirely. They say they are French and Irish. Ms. Twain explains: “I don’t
know how much Indian blood I actually have in me, but as the adopted
daughter of my father Jerry, I became legally registered as 50-percent
North American Indian. Being raised by a full-blooded Indian and
being part of his family and their culture from such a young age 1s all
Pve ever known. That heritage is in my heart and my soul, and ’m
proud of 1t.”2
Twain has been sharply criticized, in both the United States and
Canada, for not making the full details of her racial background clearer,
especially to awards-granting agencies such as the First Americans in the
Arts (FAITA), which honored her in February 1996 as a Native performer. FAITA itself has made no such complaint. The group states that
it is satisfied that “Ms. Twain has not intentionally misrepresented herself’ And more importantly, her adopted family defends her. An aunt
observes: “She was raised by us. She was accepted by our band. If my
brother were alive, he’d be very upset. He raised her as his own daughter. My parents, her grandparents, took her into the bush and taught her
the [ Native] traditions.”?
Twain’s case shows with uncommon clarity that legal and biological
definitions are conceptually distinct. It is the task of this chapter to
examine the latter.
In their modern American construction, at least, biological definitions
of identity assume the centrality of an individual’s genetic relationship to
other tribal members. Not just any degree of relationship will do, however. Typically, the degree of closeness 1s also important. And this is the
starting point for much of the controversy that swirls around issues of
biological Indianness.
Closeness of biological or blood relationship can be conceived in a
fairly mechanical fashion, as suggested in the diagram provided by a
Bureau of Indian Affairs training handbook and shown 1n figure 2.1. It
graphically illustrates the amount of blood that should be attributed to a
child born to one parent of four-fourths (full-blood) Indian ancestry and
one parent of one-quarter Indian ancestry: this child 1s shown to be filled
up to the level of five-eighths with Indian blood.
Some Indian people accept a similar construction of blood relationship. Interview respondent Donald G., a Cherokee full blood, explained
Garroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
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FATHER MOTHER
CO = : O >
5/8
FIGURE 2.1. Visualizing blood quantum. Diagram from Bureau of Indian
Affairs handbook, illustrating how blood quantum may be conceptualized
and calculated. (Source: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Tribal Enrollment, 82.)
the implication of racial admixture for tribal identity, using mayonnaise
and ketchup to represent Caucasian and Indian genetics:
Donald G.: If you took mayonnaise and ketchup and mixed it equally,
what 1s 1t? Mayonnaise or ketchup?
Author (laugling): Both.
Donald G.: Or 1f you took just a small portion… of ketchup and a
larger portion of mayonnaise, then what do you have?
Author: Does it get to the point where youre not Indian any more,
with all the intermarriage? Do you finally just end up with
mayonnaise?
Donald G.: Well, see, that’s it. Thats the big question. Because I was
going to say—at what point? At what point is it more
ketchup or at what point is 1t more mayonnaise? That’s a
question that remains to be answered, I guess. . . . [But]
obviously, 1f you put more of one, it’s going to be more of
that one. And that’s how I feel about 1t.
Garroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED AI
Cornelia S., a full-blood Cherokee mother, offers similar sentiments:
“My opinion is [that people should be] a quarter or a half [to be considered Indians]. . . . Because I think that the less Indian . . . blood that you
have in you. . . . Well, [the non-Indian blood] is watering it [the Indian
blood] down.”
Hopi geneticist Frank D. draws explicitly on the language of biology
to express concerns about racial mixing: “I don’t know what ‘blood’
means. But I do know what ‘genes’ means. . . . I don’t like the idea of the
blood or the genes being deleted [through Indians’ intermarriage with
non-Indians]. I think it should go the other way, [so that Indian people] . . . increase their Indian population [by marrying each other, rather
than]… marry[ing] some non-Indian.”
Sociologist Eugeen Roosens summarizes such common conceptions
about the importance of blood quantum for determining Indian identity:
There is . . . [a] principle about which the whites and the Indians are in agreement… . People with more Indian blood . . . also have more rights to inherit
what their ancestors, the former Indians, have left behind. In addition, full
blood Indians are more authentic than half-breeds. By bezmg pure, they have more
right to respect. They ave, in all aspects of their being, more integral.+
Biological ancestry can take on such tremendous significance in tribal
contexts that it overwhelms all other considerations of identity, especially
when it 1s constructed as “pure.” As Cherokee legal scholar G. William
Rice points out, “Most [people] would recognize the full-blood Indian
who was enrolled in a federally recognized tribe as an Indian, even if the
individual was adopted at birth by a non-Indian family and had never set
foot in Indian country nor met another Indian.”> Mixed-race individuals,
by contrast, find their identity claims considerably complicated. Even if
such an individual can demonstrate conclusively that he has some Native
ancestry, the question will still be raised: Is the amount of ancestry he
possesses “enough”? Is his “Indian blood” sufficient to distinguish him
from the mixed-blood individual spotlighted by an old quip: “If he got
a nosebleed, he’d turn into a white man”?
Members of various tribes complain of factionalism between these
two major groups — full bloods and mixed bloods — and they suggest
that the division arose historically because of mixed bloods’ greater access
to the social resources of the dominant society and their enhanced abulity to impose values and ideas upon others.°® As Julie M., a citizen of the
United Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians, says: “For the Cherokee
people, there’s been this mixed blood/full blood kind of dynamic going
Garroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
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42 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
from before the removal [in 1838, also known as the Trail of Tears]… .
Its kind of like us-and-them…. It’s almost been like a war in some
cases. . . . It’s a ‘who’s-really-going-to-be-in-control-of-the-tribe?’ kind of
thing.” Many historians have similarly found it logical that political allegiances would tend to shift for those Indian people who formed
alliances, through intermarriage, with members of the dominant society,
and that this has made the division between full bloods and mixed
bloods politically important.”
Modern biological definitions of identity, however, are much more
complicated than this historical explanation can account for. This complexity did not originate in the ideas and experiences of Indian tribes.
Instead, they closely reflect nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century theories of race introduced by Euro-Americans. These theories (of which
there were a great many) viewed biology as definitive, but they did not
distinguish it from culture. Thus, blood became quite literally the vehicle for the transmission of cultural characteristics. “‘Half-breeds’ by this
logic could be expected to behave in ‘half-civilized) 1.e., partially assimilated, ways while retaining one half of their traditional culture, accounting for their marginal status in both societies.”8
These turn-of-the-century theories of race found a very precise way to
talk about amount of ancestry in the idea of blood quantum, or degree of
blood. The notion of blood quantum as a standard of Indianness
emerged with force in the nineteenth century. Its most significant early
usage as a standard of identification was in the General Allotment
(Dawes) Act of 1887, which led to the creation of the Dawes Rolls that I
discussed in the last chapter. It has been part of the popular — and legal
and academic — lore about Indians ever since.
Given this standard of identification, full bloods tend to be seen as the
“really real,” the quintessential Indians, while others are viewed as
Indians in diminishing degrees. The original, stated intention of blood
quantum distinctions was to determine the point at which the various
responsibilities of the dominant society to Indian peoples ended. The
ultimate and explicit federal intention was to use the blood quantum
standard as a means to liquidate tribal lands and to eliminate government
trust responsibility to tribes, along with entitlement programs, treaty
rights, and reservations. Through intermarriage and application of a biological definition of identity Indians would eventually become citizens
indistinguishable from all other citizens.°
Degree of blood is calculated, with reference to biological definitions,
on the basis of the immediacy of one’s genetic relationship to those
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 43
whose bloodlines are (supposedly) unmixed. As in the case with legal
definitions, the initial calculation for most tribes’ biological definitions
begins with a base roll, a listing of tribal membership and blood quanta
in some particular year. These base rolls make possible very elaborate
definitions of identity. For instance, they allow one to reckon that the
oftspring of, say, a full-blood Navajo mother and a white father 1s onehalf Navajo. If that half-Navajo child, in turn, produces children with a
Hopi person of one-quarter blood degree, those progeny will be judged
one-quarter Navajo and one-eighth Hopi. Alternatively, they can be said
to have three-eighths general Indian blood.
As even this rather simple example shows, over time such calculations
can become infinitesimally precise, with people’s ancestry being parsed
into so many thirty-secondths, sixty-fourths, one-hundred-twentyeighths, and so on. The Bureau of Indian Affairs uses the chart in table 1
as a means of calculating blood quanta. The chart constitutes a quick reference for dealing with such difficult cases as a child with one parent with
a twenty-one thirty-seconds blood quantum and another with a thirteensixteenths blood quantum. (The answer in this example, the table
informs us, would be forty-seven sixty-fourths.)
For those of us who have grown up and lived with the peculiar precision of calculating blood quantum, it sometimes requires a perspective
less influenced by the vagaries of American history to remind us yust how
far from common sense the concepts underlying biological definitions of
identity are. I recall responding to an inquiry from a Southeast Asian
friend about what blood quantum was and how it was calculated. In
mid-explanation, I noticed his expression of complete amazement.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” he burst out. “Who ever
thought of that?”
The logic that underlies the biological definition of racial identity
becomes even more curious and complicated when one considers the
striking difference in the way that American definitions assign individuals to the racial category of “Indian,” as opposed to the racial category
“black.” As a variety of researchers have observed, social attributions of
black identity have focused (at least since the end of the Civil War) on the
“one-drop rule,” or rule of hypodescent.!° In the movie Raintree County,
Liz Taylor’s character articulates this rule in crassly explicit terms. The
worst thing that can happen to a person, she drawls, 1s “havin” a little
Negra blood in ya’—yjust one little teensy drop and the person’s all
Negra.” That the one-drop method of racial classification 1s fundamentally a matter of biological inheritance (rather than law, culture, or even
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TABLE 1. Calculating the Quantum of Indian Blood
Non- Indian 1/16 1/8 3/16 1/4 5/16 3/8 7/16 1/2
1/16 1/32 1/16 3/32 1/8 5/32 3/16 7[32 1/4 9/32 1/8 1/16 3/32 1/8 5/32 3/16 7[32 1/4 9/32 5/16 3/16 3/32 1/8 9/32 3/16 7[32 1/4 9/32 5/16 11/32 1/4 1/8 5/32 3/16 7[32 1/4 9/32 5/16 11/32 = 3/8
5/16 9/32 3/16 7[32 1/4 9/32 5/16 11/32 = 3/8 13/32 3/8 3/16 7[32 1/4 9/32 5/16 11/32 3/8 13/32 7/16
7/16 7/32 1/4 9/32 9/16 11/32 = 3/8 13/32 7/16 15/32
1/2 1/4 9/32 5/16 11/32 = 3/8 13/32 7/16 15/32 = 1/2
9/16 9/32 5/16 11/32 = 3/8 13/32 7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32
5/8 5/16 11/32 = 3/8 13/32 7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32 9/16
11/16 | 11/32 3/8 13/32 7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32 9/16 19/32
3/4 3/8 13/32 7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32 9/16 19/32 5/8
13/16 | 13/32 7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32
7/8 7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32 11/16
15/16 | 15/32 = 1/2 17/32 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32 11/16 = 23/32
4/4 1/2 17/32 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32 11/16 23/32 = 3/4
1/32 1/64 3/64 5/64 7/64 9/64 11/64 13/64 15/64 17/64
3/32 3/64 5/64 7/64 9/64 11/64 13/64 15/64 17/64 = 19/64
5/32 5/64 7/64 9/64 11/64 13/64 15/64 17/64 19/64 21/64
7[32 7/64 9/64 11/64 13/64 15/64 17/64 19/64 21/64 23/64
9/32 9/64 11/64 13/64 15/64 17/64 19/64 21/64 23/64 25/64
11/32 | 11/64 13/64 15/64 17/64 19/64 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64
13/32 | 13/64 15/64 17/64 19/64 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64
15/32 | 15/64 17/64 19/64 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64
17/32 | 17/64 19/64 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64
19/32 | 19/64 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64
21/32 | 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64
23/32 | 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64
25/32 | 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64
27/32 | 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64
29/32 | 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64 45/64
31/32 | 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64 45/64 47/64
SOURCE: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Tribal Enrollment, app. H.
NOTE: To determine the degree of blood of a child, find the degree of one parent in the left-hand column
and the degree of the other parent 1n the top row. Read horizontally to the right and vertically down to find
the degree. Example: If one parent is 11/16 and the other is 5/8, the child 1s 21/32 degree.
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TABLE I. (continued)
9/16 5/8 11/16 3/4 13/16 7/8 15/16 4/4
1/16 | 5/16 11/32 3/8 13/32 7/16 ~=15/32 «1/2 17/32
1/8 11/32 3/8 13/32 =—7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32 =9/16
3/16 3/8 13/32 =—-7/16 15/32 1/2 17/32 =9/16 19/32
1/4 13/32 ~=7/16 15/32 = 1/2 17/32 =9/16 19/32 5/8
5/16 7/16 15/32 =1/2 17/32 =9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32
3/8 15/32 91/2 17/32 = 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32 +=11/16
7/16 1/2 17/32: 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32 11/16 23/32
1/2 17/32 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32 11/16 23/32 83/4
9/16 9/16 19/32 5/8 21/32 11/16 23/32 3/4 25/32
5/8 19/32 5/8 21/32 11/16 23/32 3/4 25/32 13/16
11/16 | 5/8 21/32 11/16 23/32 3/4 25/32 13/16 27/32
3/4 21/32 «11/16 = =23/32— 3/4 25/32 13/16 27/32 7/8
13/16 | 11/16 23/32 3/4 25/32 13/16 27/32 7/8 29/32
7/8 23/32 3/4 25/32 13/16 27/32 7/8 29/32 15/16
15/16 | 3/4 25/32 = 13/16 27/32 7/8 29/32 15/16 = 31/32
4/4 25/32 13/16) 27/32 7/8 29/32 15/16 3 31/32 4/4
1/32 19/64 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64
3/32 21/64 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64
5/32 23/64 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64
7/32 25/64 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64
9/32 27/64 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64
11/32 | 29/64 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64
13/32 | 31/64 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64 45/64
15/32 | 33/64 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64 45/64 47/64
17/32 | 35/64 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64 45/64 47/64 49/64
19/32 | 37/64 39/64 41/64 43/64 45/64 47/64 49/64 51/64
21/32 | 39/64 41/64 43/64 45/64 47/64 49/64 51/64 53/64
23/32 | 41/64 43/64 45/64 47/64 49/64 51/64 53/64 55/64
25/32 | 43/64 45/64 47/64 49/64 51/64 53/64 55/64 57/64
27/32 | 45/64 47/64 49/64 51/64 53/64 55/64 57/64 59/64
29/32 | 47/64 49/64 51/64 53/64 55/64 57/64 59/64 61/64
31/32 | 49/64 51/64 53/64 55/64 57/64 59/64 61/64 63/64
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4.6 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
self-identification) 1s clear from the 1948 Mississippi court case of a
young man named Davis Knight. Knight, accused of violating antimiscegenation statutes, argued that he was quite unaware that he possessed
any black ancestry, which in any case amounted to less than onesixteenth. The courts convicted him anyway and sentenced him to five
years in jail. “Blood” was “blood,” whether anyone, including the
accused himself, was aware of it or not.!!
The same definition of identity held sway for blacks in America well
past the 1940s. For instance, up until 1970, Louisiana state law defined as
black anyone possessing “a trace of black ancestry.” In an apparent seizure
of racial liberalism, however, the legislature formally revised the
definition of identity in that year. It decided that the amount of blood
constituting a “trace” should be limited by declaring that only those possessing more than one-thirty-second-degree “Negro blood” would be
considered black.!2
A woman named Susie Guillory Phipps challenged this law in 1982-
1983, when she discovered, at age forty-three, that she was a black
woman. It happened this way: Susie Guillory was born in 1934 in
Louisiana to a poor, French-speaking family. She married a tradesman,
Mr. Phipps, who worked hard and did well—so well that, in 1977, the
couple decided to take a trip to South America. Mrs. Phipps drove to
New Orleans to apply for the first passport she had ever required. Upon
arrival, she ran smack into one of the American definitions of racial identity.
There was a problem, the clerk at the records agency whispered,
drawing Mrs. Phipps into a private oflice. She had declared on the application that her race was white. But, the clerk pointed out, Phipps’s birth
certificate described both her parents as “colored.” Mrs. Phipps
protested. She “looked” white, she said. She thought of herself as white.
She lived as a white woman. She saw no reason why her personal documents should describe her otherwise. She felt so strongly about the matter, in fact, that she started a legal battle to have the racial identification
on her birth certificate changed. It turned out to be a long road, but her
perseverance illuminated some of the most interesting back alleys of
America’s biological definitions of racial identity.
The Division of Vital Records of New Orleans, it seemed, did not
subscribe to Phipps’s view of herself as white, and it was not about to
change its mind. The New Yorker, reporting on Phipps’s case in 1986,
wrote: “At Vital Records, it was taken for granted that certain families
were white and certain families had a traceable amount of black blood,
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 47
and that it was up to the vital-records office to tell them apart. When it
came to tracing traceable amounts, nobody ever accused the vital-records
office of bureaucratic lethargy.”
Certainly in the case of Mrs. Phipps the office was on its toes. The
office chief began by commissioning a genealogist to trace Mrs. Phipps’
ancestry all the way back to the 1700s, and then he went in search of her
living relatives and her childhood neighbors. (The similar ransacking of
“Chief” Buftalo Child Long Lance’s ancestral roots comes to mind.) By
the time the case came to court, the office had gathered boxes of depositions and other records testifying to the Guillory bloodlines. And they
could show that the Guullorys, indeed, had black ancestry: Mrs. Phipps’s
great-great-great-grandmother Margarita had been a slave in the 1700s.
Margarita had borne children to her white master, and some of her
descendants had married individuals of mixed race.
Confronted with the evidence, Susie Phipps consented to the argument that she might possess one-thirty-second-degree black ancestry —
the amount that would bring her in just under the wire for establishing
a white identity. Vital Records, however, by scraping together and
adding up all the dribs and drabs of ancestral blood, argued that Mrs.
Phipps was as much as five-thirty-secondths black. This was enough for
the courts. They denied her petition to change the racial designation on
her birth certificate to white, and in 1985 an appellate court upheld the
decision. The complainant had failed to produce sufficient evidence to
show that the document, as issued, was in error, and it would have to
stand. Regardless of her self-perception, Mrs. Phipps had to bow to the
biological definition of race, and its corollary, the one-drop rule. For legal
purposes, she would forever be a black woman.
Mrs. Phipps’s story in and of itself is an interesting study of the way
Americans link ideas about racial identity and biology. But 1t becomes far
more intriguing when we contrast the logic underlying the definition of
identity in operation there with the one that applies to Indian identity.
Can the reader imagine a scenario in which an office of the American
government legally compels a person professing anything more than onethirty-second-degree Indian blood to accept identification as Indian:
Can she imagine such a claim being widely tolerated as legitimate, even
for the purposes of casual social interaction?
Far from being held to a one-drop rule, Indians are generally
required — both by law and by popular opinion — to establish rather high
blood quanta 1n order for their claims to racial identity to be accepted as
meaningful, the individual’s own opinion notwithstanding. Although
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48 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
people must have only the slightest trace of “black blood” to be forced
into the category “African American,” modern American Indians must (1)
formally produce (2) strong evidence of (3) often rather substantial
amounts of “Indian blood” to be allowed entry into the corresponding
racial category. The regnant biological definitions applied to Indians are
simply quite different than those that have applied (and continue to
apply) to blacks. Modern Americans, as Native American Studies professor Jack Forbes (Powhatan/Lenape/Saponi) puts the matter, “are
always finding ‘blacks’ (even if they look rather un-African), and… are
always losing Indians?”
Biological Definitions: Contexts and Consequences
Biological definitions of Indian identity operate, in short, 1n some curious and inconsistent ways. They are nevertheless significant in a variety
of contexts. And they have clear relationships, both direct and indirect, to
legal definitions. The federal government has historically used a minimum blood quantum standard to determine who was eligible to receive
treaty rights, or to sell property and manage his or her own financial
affairs.!© Blood quantum 1s ove of the criteria that determines eligibility
for citizenship in many tribes; it therefore indirectly influences the
claimant’s relationship to the same kinds of rights, privileges, and responsibilities that legal definitions allow.?”
But biological definitions of identity affect personal interactions as
well as governmental decisions. Indian people with high blood quanta
frequently have recognizable physical characteristics. As Cherokee
Nation principal tribal chief Chad Smith observes, some people are easily recognizable as Indians because they pass “a brown paper bag test,”
meaning that their skin 1s “darker than a #10 paper sack.” It 1s these individuals who are often most closely associated with negative racial stereotypes in the larger society. Native American Studies professor Devon
Mihesuah makes a point about Indian women that is really applicable to
either gender: “Appearance is the most visible aspect of one’s race; It
determines how Indian women define themselves and how others define
and treat them. Their appearance, whether Caucasian, Indian, African, or
mixed, either limits or broadens Indian women’s choices of ethnic identity and ability to interact with non-Indians and other Indians.”!8
Every day, identifiably Indian people are turned away from restaurants,
refused the use of public rest rooms, ranked as unintelligent by the eduGarroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 49
cation system, and categorized by the personnel of medical, social service,
and other vital public agencies as “problems” — all strictly on the basis of
their appearance. As Keetoowah Band Cherokee full-blood Donald G.
notes, a recognizably Indian appearance can be a serious detriment to
one’s professional and personal aspirations: “It seems the darker you are,
the less important you are, 1n some ways, to the employer. . . . To some,
it would be discouraging. But I am four-fourths [1.¢e., full-blood]
Cherokee, and 1t doesn’t matter what someone says about me. . . . I feel
for the person who doesn’t like my skin color, you know?”
There are circumstances, however, in which it 1s difficult for the victims of negative racial stereotyping to maintain an attitude as philosophical as this. In one interview, a Mohawk friend, June L., illustrated the
potential consequences of public judgments based on skin color. She
reminded me of a terrifying episode that had once unfolded while I was
visiting at her house. Our conversation was interrupted by a phone call
informing this mother of five that her college-student son, who had
spent the summer day working on a roof, had suddenly become ill while
driving home. Feeling faint, he had pulled up to a local convenience store
and made his way inside, asking for a drink of water. The clerk refused.
Dangerously dehydrated, the young man collapsed on the floor from
sunstroke. “The worst thing about it,” June recalled, “was that I have to
keep wondering: What was the reason for that? Did that clerk refuse to
help my son because she was just a mean person? Or was it because she
saw him stumble into the store and thought, ‘Well, it’s just some
drunken Indian’?” Anxiety about social judgments of this kind are a fact
of daily life for parents of children whose physical appearance makes their
Indian ancestry clearly evident.
At the same time, June’s remarks showed the opposite side to the coin
of physical appearance. In some contexts, not conforming to the usual
notions of “what Indians look like” can also be a lability:
My aunt was assistant dean at a large Ivy League university. One day she called
me on the phone. She had one scholarship to give out to an Indian student. One
of the students being considered was blonde-haired and blue-eyed. The other
one was black-haired and dark-skinned, and she looked Indian. ‘The blonde girl’s
grades were a little better. My aunt didn’t know what to do. She said to me,
“Both these girls are tribal members. Both of them are qualified [for the scholarship]. They’re sitting outside my office. What would you do?” I told her that, as
an Indian person, there was only one thing I could say. Which was to give the
money to the one with the dark skin. As Indian people, we do want to have
Indian people that look like theyre Indian to represent us.
Garroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
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50 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
Readers may be surprised by such a candid statement. But June’s pragmatic reasoning takes account of certain historical realities. As she
explained further, “We like people to know who’s doing those accomplishments, like getting scholarships. We want them to know this is an
Indian person doing this. Because I come from a background where if
you looked Indian, you were put in special education because the schools
said you couldn’t learn. And it wasn’t true. We need Indian people today
who look Indian to show everyone the things we can do.”
A physical appearance that 1s yudged insufficiently “Indian” can also act
as a barrier to participation in certain cultural activities. Bull T., a Wichita
and Seneca minister in his midfifties, recalls that, in his youth, he witnessed light-skinned individuals who attempted to participate in powwow dances being evicted from the arena. “That kind of thing 1s still happening today,” he added sadly, and other respondents readily confirmed
this observation. A more unusual instance of the relevance of physical
appearance to cultural participation was volunteered by Frank D., a Hopi
respondent. His tribe’s ceremonial dances feature the appearance of powerful spirit beings called kachinas, which are embodied by masked Hopi
men. Ideally, the everyday, human identity of the dancers remains
unknown to observers. Frank commented on the subject of tribal members whose skin tone is noticeably either lighter or darker than the norm:
Frank D.: Say, for instance, 1f a Hopi marries a black person . . . [and] you get a
male child . . . 1¢s gonna be darker skinned. It might even be black. A
black kachina just wouldn’t fit out here [at Hopi]. You see, everybodyd know who it 1s. He’d be very visible [in the ceremonial
dances]. . . . Itd be very hard on that individual. Kids don’t work the
other way, too — if they’re real light… . Kachinas gotta be brown.
Author: So there are certain ceremonial roles that people could not fill because
of their appearance:
Frank D.: Well, they could, but it would be awful tough. A lot of these [ceremonial] things are done with secrecy. No one knows who the kachinas
are. Or at least, the kids don’t. And then, say you get somebody who
really stands out, then everybody knows who that [dancer] 1s, and it’s
not good. For the ceremony — because everybody knows who that
person 1s. And so the kids will start asking questions — “How come
that kachina’s so dark, so black?” or “How come that kachina’s
white?” They start asking questions and it’s really hard. So I think, if
youre thinking about kids, it’s really better 1f kachinas are brown.
Finally, the physical appearance borne by mixed bloods may not only
create barriers to tribal cultural participation; 1t may also offer an occaGarroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 51
sion for outrightly shaming them. Cornelia S. remembers her days at the
Eufala Indian School:
You had to be Indian to be [allowed admission] there… . But . . . if [certain students] . . . didn’t look as Indian as we did, or if they looked like they were white,
they were kind of looked down upon, like treated differently because [people
would say] “oh, that’s yust a white person.” . . . They just [would] tease °em and
stuff. Say “oh, whatcha doin’ white boy” or “white girl” — just stuff like that.
Nor is the social disapproval of light-skinned mixed bloods strictly the
stuff of schoolyard teasing. The same respondent added that even adults
confront questions of blood quantum with dead seriousness:
Us Indians, whenever we see someone else who 1s saying that they’re Indian . . .
or trying to be around us Indians, and act like us, and they don’t look like they’re
Indian and we know that they’re not as much Indian as we are, yeah, we look at
them like they’re not Indian and, ya know, don’t really like why they’re acting like
that… . But you know, Pm not that far off . . . into yudging other people and
what color [they are].
The late author Michael Dorris, a member of the Modoc tribe
(California), has written that humiliations related to his appearance were
part of his daily experience. He describes (in his account of his family’s
struggle with his son’s fetal alcohol syndrome, The Broken Cord) an
encounter with a hospital admissions staff, to whom he had just
identified himself and his son as Indians. “They surveyed my appearance
with curiosity. It was an expression I recognized, a reaction, familiar to
most people of mixed-blood ancestry, that said, “You don’t Jook like an
Indian. No matter how often it happened, no matter how frequently I
was blamed by strangers for not resembling their image of some
Hollywood Sitting Bull, I was still defensive and vulnerable. ‘Pm part
Indian; I explained.”!°
Even his tragic death has not safeguarded Dorris from insinuations
about inadequate blood quantum. Shortly after his 1997 suicide, a story
on his life and death in New York magazine reported that the author’s fair
complexion had always caused some observers to wonder about his
racial identity and archly repeated a rumor: “It is said he . . . [eventually]
discovered tanning booths.”°
In short, many Indian people, both individually and collectively, continue to embrace the assumption that close biological connections to
other Indian people — and the distinctive physical appearance that may
accompany those connections — imply a stronger claim on identity than
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52 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
do more distant ones. As Potawatomi scholar of Native American
Studies Terry Wilson summarizes, “Few, if any, Native Americans,
regardless of upbringing 1n rural, reservation, or urban setting, 1gnore
their own and other Indians’ blood quantum in everyday life. Those
whose physical appearances render their Indian identities suspect are
subject to suspicious scrutiny until precise cultural explanations, especially blood quantum, are offered or discovered.”?!
Negotiating Biological Identities
There are many reasons why people fail in their efforts to negotiate a
meaningful identity as an Indian by reference to a specific biological
definition. For one thing, many tribes today really do have large numbers of claimants to membership with relatively low blood quanta, due
to intermarriage. However, difficulties in establishing an Indian identity
by reference to blood do not stem solely from having a deficient corpuscle count. Many times, the problem lies with the way blood quanta
are reckoned.
It would be an enormous understatement to say that the original
assignments of blood quanta on the tribal base rolls that are still used to
determine the blood quanta of Indians today were often not especially
accurate. Modern observers may express disbelief at the decision of the
Passamaquoddy tribe of Maine, which was recently recognized by the
federal government. A highly intermarried tribe, they declared an intention 1n 1990 to constitute anyone appearing on the tribal census of that
year as a full blood, automatically and by fiat.?? But the arbitrariness of
this decision is not unlike the methods employed in many historic
records of blood quantum.
On some reservations, nineteenth-century Indian agents assigned and
recorded blood quantum on the basis of the candidate’s physical appearance, making darker people into full bloods and lighter ones into mixed
bloods with a pen stroke, even when all the individuals involved were
oftspring of the same set of parents. In Oklahoma, the Dawes
Commission dealt with people of mixed tribal ancestry by calculating
blood degree based on the mother’s tribe only. This could reduce an
enrollee’s total, recorded Indian blood quantum by as much as one-half.
Applicants with discernible black ancestry were not assigned a blood
quantum at all (even 1f they clearly had an Indian parent or grandparent),
but were simply marked down in the census category for freedmen. As
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 53
long as applicants did not appear to have black ancestry, some Indian
agents simply took people’s word about their racial heritage, but even
then the results were not necessarily particularly reliable. The definition
of blood quantum was not one familiar, historically, to Indian people of
traditional upbringing, and not something they previously had reason to
keep track of.2? Moreover, by the time the U.S. government began collecting this information in the nineteenth century, Indian people had
acquired incentives to creatively revise estimates of their blood quanta.
They could not have been unaware of a widely prevailing sentiment 1n
the larger society that “white blood makes good Indians.” Given the
social handicaps associated with Indian blood, it seems likely that people
would frequently have admitted to as little of it as they reasonably could.
Those decisions continue to aftect their descendants’ ability to demonstrate that they possess “enough” blood to satisfy particular biological
definitions.*4
The difficulties of negotiating a legitimate identity within biological
definitions multiply as specific requirements shift, creating a whole new
set of opportunities for, and constraints upon, identity claims. For
instance, the Rosebud Sioux tribe (South Dakota) at one time dropped
its blood quantum requirement for tribal enrollment, but then reinstated
it a few years later (1n 1966). This has created families in which the older
children are enrolled tribal citizens, while the younger children of the
same couple are not.?> A similar situation occurs when a tribe “closes” its
rolls and declines to accept further enrollments. In this case older people
remain citizens while younger ones, no matter if they possess the same
blood quanta as their elders, or even higher, can never be enrolled.
What all this means is that even though one’s actual blood quantum
obviously cannot change, the definition of identity that depends upon it
can and does. Biological Indianness, just as much as legal Indianness, can
wink in and out of existence, sometimes with remarkable rapidity.
Evaluating Biological Definitions
Like legal definitions, biological definitions of Indian identity have both
advantages and disadvantages, when viewed from tribal perspectives. On
the positive side of the ledger, biological definitions have their common
usage to recommend them. They are drawn upon frequently for the purposes of both informal interaction and formal record keeping. Like legal
definitions based upon documentary evidence, blood quantum defiGarroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
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54. IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
nitions provide a relatively nonsubjective standard amenable to bureaucratic needs.
Another virtue of biological definitions is that they allow for the
expression of a justifiable pride of ancestry. For a family lineage to have
survived for hundreds of years, with few or none of the benefits that
accrued to those who attached themselves through marriage and other
alliances to members of the dominant race, simply zs an accomplishment.
As Cornelia S. explains: “I know that both my parents are full-blood
Cherokee, and I know that their parents are full-blood Cherokee, and
[my ancestors] before them. [m really proud that I am full-blood
Cherokee in this . . . more modern society, … because I… know…
it might be harder to be Indian, or just any minority.”
Of course, all those who have maintained more or less unmixed bloodlines did not necessarily choose this course entirely out of a ferocious
dedication to ethnic personhood. Cherokee sociologist C. Matthew
Snipp remarks that, historically, “to be an American Indian often meant
that one had not developed the requisite skills to avoid being identified
as such.”2° Many more Indian people might have intermingled with and
lost themselves in the larger, European population if they had had the
opportunity to do so.
But acknowledging this fact should not diminish our appreciation of
how bone-crushingly hard it has been for families simply to carry on in
the absence of the resources that often came to those who merged their
lives and fortunes with those of Europeans. Survival under such circumstances 1s an extraordinary achievement, and the language of blood quantum gives people a well-deserved means to express it. Elder Martha S. has
the right to her shy smile and the light that comes into her eyes when she
says, in gentle tones, “I just feel real good about being full-blood Yuchi.
I can trace my grandparents down to my great-grandparents, and they
were all Yuchis.” Cornelia S. voices an equally justifiable pride in being a
full-blood Cherokee: “I know exactly what I am. That’s zt. Like, you
know, race horses that are purebred, . . . and they’re the best ones. That’s
how I feel like about myself, because Pm a full blood of my tribe.”
A related but more subtle benefit of a biological definition of identity
is that it allows for a protest against a certain arrogance that Indians
rather commonly encounter on the part of people who resemble, in all
discernible ways, members of the dominant society. This arrogance 1s
portrayed in an episode of Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy. Lucy is an
indigenous woman from the West Indies, a Carib Indian, and she 1s
aware of the price that this ancestry has exacted from her tribal people:
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 55
“My grandmother is a Carib Indian. … My grandmother 1s alive; the
Indians she came from are all dead.” Lucy works in a wealthy American
household as a nanny, and one day her employer hesitantly announces
that, like Lucy, she “has Indian blood in her.” Lucy reacts with astonishment and bitterness: “There was nothing remotely like an Indian about
her. Why claim a thing like that? . . . [U]nderneath everything I could
swear she says it as if she were announcing her possession of a trophy.
How do you get to be the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also?”27
The claim “I have Indian blood in me” has many layers of implication
that are difficult to tease out. Perhaps it 1s a compliment to the liberal attitudes of the speaker and her family: that her forebears did not shudder to
conjoin themselves with others of a presumably “lesser” race. Or perhaps
it is an effort to garner the prestige of exoticism without crossing over
into disreputability. After all, “having Indian blood in you” 1s rather
different than “being Indian.”
These are only two possible analyses of a particular conversational
foray, and perhaps they are overly cynical. However, when one observes
the common reactions of Indian people to the statement “I have Indian
blood in me,” one suspects that it may often feel to them like the speaker
is trying to lay claim to benefits that she did not earn. The definition of
identity through biology and blood quantum, however, provides those
most likely to have endured the life chances reserved for “the vanquished” with a way of thinking about the differences between themselves and those who, whatever remnant of racial admixture their genetics may admit, now openly enjoy the rewards of “the victor.”
On the negative side of the evaluation of biological definitions of
Indian identity: While some Indian people embrace the terminology and
the logic of blood quantum, others find it offensive. Individuals of the
latter persuasion may distance themselves from such definitions by
means of humor. For example, Jimmie Durham, an artist whose selfidentification as Cherokee has earned him a number of inquiries into his
racial identity, has become well known for his comment: “The question
of my ‘identity’ often comes up. I think I must be a mixed blood. I claim
to be male, although only one of my parents 1s male.”?8 Others express
their displeasure more straightforwardly. An Anishnabe and Cree grandmother, Kathleen W., comments, “I don’t like being talked about in a
vocabulary usually reserved for dogs and horses.” Her remark recalls
Snipp’s comment that, for Indians, the matter of “blood pedigree”
assumes significance “in a manner bordering on flagrant racism.”?? A
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56 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
Cherokee colleague expresses a similar annoyance with questions concerning whether or not he is “part Indian.” “Indians,” he writes dryly, “do
not come in ‘parts.’”° Lyrics from the song “Blood Quantum,” by the
Indigo Girls, capture some of the emotions suggested by the previous
remarks:
Youwrre standing in the blood quantum line
With a pitcher in your hand
Poured from your heart into your veins
You said Iam, I am, I am
Now measure mec, McCasure mec
Tell me where I stand
Allocate my very soul
Like you have my land.#!
Some commentators, in fact, object to the entire notion of mixedbloodedness, which is central to biological definitions, because it 1s so
frequently used to diminish a whole category of people. It more than
hints that mixed bloods are some kind of degenerate representatives of a
once-pure category. As Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, the Dakota Sioux (South
Dakota) editor of the Native American Studies journal Wicazo Sa Review,
argues, “To adopt this idea [of racial purity] in its fullest, most sophisticated sense makes hybridity a contaminant to the American Indian’s right
to authenticity.”%?
An emphasis on “pure” cultural expressions can encourage us to
devalue the important role played by the “impure,” the mixed blood. For
centuries, mixed bloods have bridged the chasm between cultures —
bridged it with their bodies, bridged it with their spirits, bridged it with
their consciousnesses, bridged it often whether they were willing or
unwilling. In the scholarly literature, researchers such as Terry Wilson,
Clara Sue Kadwell, and Margaret Connell Szasz talk about mixed bloods
as “cultural brokers,” practical mediators of the relations between the
different racial categories they simultaneously inhabit.** However, it 1s a
fictional mixed-blood character created by Native novelists Michael
Dorris and Louise Erdrich in The Crown of Columbus who states the
intermediary role of mixed bloods most clearly:
We’re parked on the bleachers looking into the arena, never the main players, but
there are bonuses to peripheral vision. . . . We’re jealous of innocence, Pll admit
that, but as the hooks and eyes that connect one core to the other we have our
roles to play. “Caught between two worlds,” 1s the way it’s often put in cliched
prose, but Pd put it differently. We are the catch.*4
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 57
This marginal, mediative role deserves to be honored alongside the roles
played by full bloods, who are better able to accept the place of the
unselfconscious insider in tribal communities. But biological definitions, with the fractionated Indians they create, work to the contrary
eftect.
Cook-Lynn finds still another reason to criticize these definitions. She
argues that the American fascination with degree of biological connection to a given tribe finds its roots 1n, and encourages, a dismissive attitude toward the status of tribal nations. On the one hand, Americans regularly scrutinize the identity claims of well-known Indian authors. Yet,
Cook-Lynn writes, “No one asks how much Egyptian Naguib Manfouz
is, nor do they require that J. M. Cootzee provide proof that his citizenship and identity is embodied in tribal African nationhood.” The reason
for such differences, Cook-Lynn concludes, concerns differing levels of
“mutual respect between nations.”?>
Observers are willing to defer, without question, to decisions that
Egypt and other African countries make about citizenship, but obstinately believe that individuals, even those entirely unconnected to tribal
affairs, should be able to second-guess similar decisions that Indian
nations make. Cook-Lynn’s analysis suggests that the embrace of a biological (or any other) definition of identity over whatever legal definitions a tribe elects to apply 1s an insult to tribal sovereignty. It suggests
an underlying assumption that, regardless of tribes’ formal status as separate nations that enjoy government-to-government relations with the
United States, they are somehow less qualified to determine their own
citizenship than are other nations.
Another negative product of determining identity by reference to biological characteristics is the issue of technical extinction, or “statistical
extermination.” Biological definitions have long been used to limit the
numbers of Indians to whom the American government retains obligations, with the anticipation that those obligations would eventually cease
altogether. In recent years, the long-awaited event has quickly drawn into
view for a number of tribes. This is fairly unsurprising, given that Indians
have the highest rate of intermarriage of any ethnic group, with slightly
more than half of all Indian men and women marrying non-Indians.*°
Under these circumstances, blood quantum requirements (used by
about two-thirds of all tribes in the lower forty-eight states)?” are clearly
not well suited to the needs of groups too small to support endogamy, or
marriage of members within their own group. Bull T. describes the circumstances of his own Wichita tribe: “We were decimated so low [as a
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58 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
result of European contact] that we can’t intermarry. Were almost all
related to each other now. … Now, in order to be on the [Wichita]
tribal roll, you have to have one-eighth blood quantum. And after a
period of years there will be no one [who meets this criterion].” As
Native scholars Lenore Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr., put the matter, “To
make genetics the defining criterion for continuation of [tribes with only
small numbers of full blood members] . . . would be quite literally suicidal.”38 It projects, indeed, a scenario in which such tribes may find themselves redefined as technically “extinct,” even when they continue to
exist as functioning social, cultural, political, linguistic, or residential
groupings.
A final concern that one might raise regarding biological definitions of
identity 1s their inextricable entanglement with the notion of race.
Biological definitions promote the notion that “race” constitutes an
objective, genetically based difference between groups of people. Most
Americans accept this assumption, unaware that it runs contrary to most
current scientific knowledge, which tends to view racial distinctions as
significant social, but not biological, realities.%°
The most significant point here, however, 1s not the scientific
“respectability” of the biological definition of race, or its lack thereof;
more importantly, those definitions also have a dubious past, having
been put to use in service of social goals that have been extremely oppressive to Indian populations. This becomes apparent if one looks, for
instance, to the social science of the early to mid-twentieth century.
Anthropologists of that period, operating from a conviction that “blood
would tell” — and tell in all kinds of ways — assisted in defining membership for various tribal groups (including the Ojibwe, Lumbee, Creek,
Choctaw, and others) on the basis of observable characteristics assumed
to derive from biological inheritance.
Usually for the purpose of determining eligibility for legal rights, they
ferreted out full-blood and mixed-blood Indians by such “scientific”
methods as measuring feet (mixed bloods were supposed to have big
ones), scrutinizing hair samples (full-blood hair was to be absolutely
straight), and scarifying chests (mixed-blood chests knew enough to turn
redder, when so assaulted, than their full-blood counterparts).4° These
procedures tended, as one might suspect, to yield rather variable results,
even for members of the same immediate family: A study of the Lumbee
tribe by physical anthropologist Carl Seltzer, for example, yielded at least
one instance in which the same set of Indian parents found themselves
with children of different racial statuses.*! But reliable or not, the results
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IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED 59
of such tests were used to deny the Lumbee federal recognition on the
grounds that, collectively, they did not possess enough “Indian blood.”
A more general goal of early-twentieth-century biological definitions
of identity was to sort out the “superior” races from the “inferior” ones.
“In this racial hierarchy, Indians were in competition with African Black
Americans as the lowest race of mankind, in what was referred to as ‘the
great chain of being’ by Eurocentric social scientists.”4? Biologists
engaged in this lofty quest shipped countless Indian body parts to government institutions for research purposes. Some museum personnel or
their agents stopped at almost nothing to acquire their grisly trophies.
Indians who met with mortal misfortune on the battlefield (even those
in the service of the United States) were frequently in danger of being
snatched up by vigilant U.S. military personnel, decapitated, and their
crania sent off to such institutions as the National Museum of Health
and Medicine.*#
Nineteenth-century army surgeons wrote of their resourcefulness in
repeatedly plundering Indian cemeteries to secure the severed heads of
those interred there, or filching the newly deceased from under the very
noses of their comrades (who had developed the regrettable habit of
“lurk[ing] about their dead”).45 But perhaps the most shocking single
episode involving the theft of human remains in the interests of substantiating a biological definition of identity is the 1897 case of a group of
Inuit (then called Eskimos). In that year, Arctic explorer Robert Peary
visited Greenland and loaded his return vessel with an exotic cargo. It
included the corpses of several Inuit, whom Peary had unearthed from
their fresh graves, for delivery to the American Museum of Natural
History. But it also included half a dozen living “specimens,” among
them a man named Qisuk and his son, Minik. These were to be put on
display at the museum as a means of generating money to fund future
Arctic expeditions.
Tragically, 1t soon became evident that the warm climate did not agree
with the Inuit, and when Qisuk shortly died (along with four of the others), scientists dissected him. ‘The remains of his physical body were then
boiled and the flesh stripped away so that the skeleton could be placed in
a museum collection. By way of a final indignity, the staff of the American
Museum of Natural History then covered up what they had done by presenting the surviving Minik (then seven years of age) with a blanketwrapped piece of wood, which they asserted was his father’s corpse, and
staging their own version of a traditional Inuit funeral for it, on the
museum lawn. When, as a teenager, Minik learned the truth of his
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60 IF HE GETS A NOSEBLEED
father’s fate, he began a quest to retrieve and bury his father’s body.
Although he spent many years 1n the effort, he never succeeded.*6
The point of this recitation of injuries to Native spiritual beliefs and
practices regarding the dead is that it was a biological definition of
Indian identity that motivated non-Native individuals and institutions to
commit those injuries. It would seem that there 1s much to lose by
embracing a definition of identity that encourages the fiction of race.
Garroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb33858.0001.001.
Downloaded on behalf of San Diego State University
THREE
What If My Grandma Eats
Big Macs:
Culture
Strange and perplexing legal cases have tried the sagacity of judges and
juries throughout the history of the American judicial system. But in
1976, the country witnessed an unprecedented event. An entire tribe
went on trial. Events began with the Indian community’s efforts to bring
a land claims case. But the point upon which the outcome quickly came
to turn was whether or not that community had the right to a collective
identity as an Indian tribe.
The trial involved a community of self-identified Indian residents of
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the Mashpee. They proposed to bring a land
claims suit that had the potential to significantly reconfigure economic
relations in the state.! The basis of their suit was the Indian NonIntercourse Act of 1790, which stipulated that the federal government
must approve all transfers of land from Indians to non-Indians.? In violation of this act, the Mashpee said, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had allowed Indian land to be sold over a period of years without congressional approval. And the Mashpee wanted their land back —
about 16,000 acres of It.
The non-Indian residents of the town of Mashpee had reason to be
nervous about the threatened legal action, which involved approximately
three-quarters of the land on which the town sat. The late 1960s and the
1970s had already seen a series of land claims cases based on violations of
the Non-Intercourse Act, and some tribes — notably the Passamaquoddy
and the Penobscot (both of Maine) — had received large settlements in
consequence. Lawyers for the town of Mashpee, accordingly, decided to
61
Garroutte, Eva Marie. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.
E-book, Berkeley: University of California Pres