Blood Quantum Laws - Origin of Blood Quantum Law

Origin of Blood Quantum Law

The blood quantum law or "Indian Blood law" was passed by European Americans to regulate who would be classified as Native American and thus eligible to receive federal benefits. The first such law was passed in 1705 in Virginia, but at that time it was used to restrict the rights of people who were half or more Native American. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the US government believed definition of tribal members was required, as it made treaties with the nations and paid tribal members benefits or annuities for land cessions.

Many Native American tribes did not use blood quantum law until the government introduced the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Some tribes, such as the Navajo Nation, did not adopt the type constitution suggested in that law until the 1950s. Critics contend that because the blood quantum laws required individuals to identify as belonging to only one tribe, despite their ancestry, some lost multiple tribal memberships, and overall numbers of registered members of many Native American tribes have been reduced.

"The U.S. census decennial enumerations indicate a Native American population growth for the United States that has been nearly continuous since 1900 (except for an influenza epidemic in 1918 that caused serious losses), to 1.42 million by 1980 and to over 1.9 million by 1990." In the 2000 census, there were 2.5 million American Indians. Since 1960, people self-identify their ancestry on the US Census.

For decades, tribes have established their own requirements for membership. In some cases, they have excluded members who had long been part of the tribe. An example of a tribal membership requirement is one based on documented lineal descent from a Native American member listed on the Dawes Rolls, or an early 20th century census. Unlike the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act, many tribes allow members to claim ancestry in more than one tribe.

Tribes have established their own criteria for membership. Given the new revenues which 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.

Such actions have led to charges of racial injustice and controversies such as that of the Cherokee Nation's 2007 vote to exclude those Cherokee Freedmen with no ancestors on the Cherokee-by-blood Dawes rolls, although the Cherokee Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that they were legitimate members of the tribe in 2005. Similarly, in 2000, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma's attempted to exclude two bands of Seminole Freedmen from membership to avoid including them in settlement of land claims in Florida, where Seminole Freedmen had also owned land taken by the US government.

Since 1942, the Seminole have at times tried to exclude Black Seminoles from the tribe. The freedmen were listed separately on the Dawes Rolls and suffered segregation in Oklahoma. More recently, the Seminole refused to share with them the revenues of 20th-century US government settlements of land claims. 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. By treaty after the American Civil War, the Seminole were required to provide Black Seminoles with all the rights of full-blood Indian members.

"American Indian tribes located on reservations tend to have higher blood quantum requirements for membership than those located off reservation. ... ver 85 percent of tribes requiring more than a one-quarter blood quantum for membership are reservation based, as compared with less than 64 percent of those having no minimum requirement. Tribes on reservations have seemingly been able to maintain exclusive membership by setting higher blood quanta, since the reservation location has generally served to isolate the tribe from non-Indians and intermarriage with them.