Blood quantum laws
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the US government believed tribal members had to be defined for the purposes of federal benefits or annuities paid under treaties resulting from land cessions.
The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears led to a major enumeration of Native Americans as well as controversies and misunderstandings about blood quantum that persist to this day.
As they were being forcibly driven out of their ancestral homelands and subjected to genocide,[4] many Natives understandably feared and distrusted the government and attempted to avoid enumeration.
At the time, the federal government required persons to have a certain BQ to be recognized as Native American, and thus eligible for financial and other benefits under treaties or sales of land.
At the time, for someone to be recognized as Native American and be qualified for financial and other benefits under treaties or land sales, they had to meet a specific BQ requirement set by the federal government.
[7] Native American tribes did not formally use blood quantum law until the government introduced the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, instead determining tribal status on the basis of kinship, lineage, and family ties.
Overall, the number of registered members of many Native American tribes has been reduced because of tribal laws that define and limit the definition of acceptable blood quantum.
Native American nations have continued to assert sovereignty and treaty rights, including their own criteria for tribal membership, which vary among them.
Others use a tiered system, with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma using lineal descent for general enrollment, but requiring a BQ of "at least one-fourth" for all tribal council candidates.
[11] Prior to colonization, individual tribes had established their own requirements for membership, including the practice of banishment for those who had committed unforgivable crimes.
The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians accept persons of 1/4 Native American ancestry plus documented descent from an ancestor listed in specific records.
[13] Given the new revenues that many tribes are realizing from gambling casinos and other economic development, or from settlement of 19th-century land claims, some have established more restrictive rules to limit membership.
The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed an amicus brief, taking up the legal case of the Black Seminoles and criticizing some officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for collaborating in this discrimination by supporting tribal autonomy in lawsuits.
[19] The blood quantum laws have caused problems in Native American families whose members were inaccurately recorded as having differing full or partial descent from particular tribes.
This was prevalent in the South after Reconstruction, when white-dominated legislatures imposed legal segregation, which classified the entire population only as white or colored (Native Americans, some of whom were of mixed race, were included in the latter designation).
[26] It is projected that the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe will experience a gradual population decrease in the coming decades, unless it lowers its current membership requirement of at least 25% Native ancestry,[27][28] as a consequence of tribal members having children with non-Native Americans for several generations.
Many researchers have published articles that caution that genetic ancestry DNA testing has limitations and should not be depended on by individuals to answer all their questions about heritage.
)[35] In response, one critic asserted the percentage must be higher because there are so many family stories (the reasons for which Gates and, notably, Chris Rock explored in the documentary), but felt that many people did not always talk about it because to acknowledge it would be to deny their African heritage.
[36] Some critics thought the PBS series African American Lives did not sufficiently explain such limitations of DNA testing for assessment of heritage.
Basing citizenship off specific enrollment rolls, like the Dawes Roll (that were taken after more than 80 years after Removal, after the Civil War, and after tribal government restructuring), is what scholar Fay A. Yarbrough calls "dramatically different from older conceptions" of tribal identity based on clan relationships, "in which individuals could be fully," for example, "Cherokee without possessing any Cherokee ancestry."
The Miccosukee of Florida, the Mississippi Choctaw, and the St. Croix Chippewa of Wisconsin all require one-half "tribal blood quantum", also among the higher percentages.
Many tribes, such as Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town and the Wyandotte Nation,[50] require an unspecified amount of Indian ancestry (known as "lineal descendancy") documented by descent from a recognized member.
[51] Many tribes today are confederations of different ethnic groups joined into a single political entity making the determination of blood quantum challenging.
