Blood Quantum Laws - Issues Related To Blood Quantum Laws

Issues Related To Blood Quantum Laws

Many Native Americans have become used to the idea of "blood quantum". 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. In some cases, family members or entire families have been excluded from being enrolled as members of their tribe even when they have no non-Native American ancestors.

At certain times, some state governments classified persons with African American and Native American admixture solely as African American, largely because of racial discrimination related to slavery history. 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). It related to the racial caste system of slavery before the American Civil War. Until 1870 there was no separate classification on the census for Indian.

The Lumbee, a group which appeared to organize from a variety of peoples on the North Carolina frontier in the 19th century, achieved state recognition as Croatan Indian after Reconstruction. This separate status allowed them to establish a school system for their children distinct from that for freedmen's children.

The question of identity is complex. Award-winning researcher Paul Heinegg and Dr. Virginia DeMarce found that ancestors of 80 percent of free people of color (including individuals on the census later claimed as Lumbee ancestors) in the 1790 and 1810 censuses on the North Carolina frontier were descended from families of white women and African men, and were free in colonial Virginia because of the mother's status. Many mixed-race people in frontier areas identified as Indian, Portuguese or Arab to escape racial strictures.

In 1952 the Croatan Indians voted to adopt the name of Lumbee (they were settled near the Lumber River, also called the Lumbee.) They achieved limited federal recognition in 1956 as an ethnic Indian nation by a special act of the US Congress, and accepted at the time that it was without benefits. Since then, they have tried to appeal to Congress for legislation to gain full federal recognition. Their effort has been opposed by several federally recognized tribes.

In other cases, because mixed-race children were often raised in the mother's Native American culture, United States society considered them to be Native American, despite European ancestry. (As the trappers, traders and soldiers on the frontiers were mostly men, most European-Native American unions were between European men and Native women.)

In 1924 Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, which required that every individual be classified as either white or black. (Some other states adopted similar laws.) In application, the law was enforced to the standard of the "one drop rule": individuals with any known African ancestry were classified as black. As a result, in the censuses of the 1930s and the 1940s, particularly in the South's segregated society, many people of African American and Native American descent who were either biracial or multiracial were largely classified as black. The result negatively affected many individuals with mixed African American and Native American descent. Because there are few reservations in the South, such individuals needed to provide evidence of ancestry to be enrolled in a tribe. The changes in historic records erased their self-identification as Indian. During the early years of slavery, some Native Americans and Africans intermarried because they were enslaved at the same time and shared a common experience of enslavement. Others made unions before slavery became institutionalized, as they worked together.

Today, the proposed regulations for children adopted into Native families are that they are unable to be federally recognized members unless they have a biological parent who is enrolled in a tribe. Such cases of adoption are probably less frequent than in the past. Historically, especially recorded during the colonial years and the 19th century in the American West, many tribes adopted young captives taken in war or raids to replace members who had died. Whether European or of another Native American tribe, the captives generally were fully assimilated into the tribal culture and were considered full members of the tribe. Generally they remained with the tribe, marrying other members and rearing their children within the cultural tradition.

In some cases, census rolls for tribes such as the Cherokee were incomplete due to intermarriage, immigration, treaties, or because the members were not living within the boundaries of the nation, and thus would not be recorded on the census. As noted above, however, many people self-identified on the US Census but are not eligible for tribal enrollment.

Some critics argue that blood quantum laws helped create racism among tribal members. The historian Tony Seybert contends that was why some members of the so-called Five Civilized tribes were slaveholders. The majority of slave owners were of mixed-European ancestry. Some believed they were of higher status than full blood Indians and people of African ancestry. Other historians contend that Cherokee and other tribes held slaves because it was in their economic interest and part of the general southeastern culture. Cherokee and other tribes had also traditionally taken captives in warfare to use as slaves, although their institution differed from that which grew up in the southern colonies.