What makes someone Native American? Is it appearance, clothes, family, land? How about blood?
This question was brought to the forefront this month when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a DNA test to claim Cherokee heritage. This DNA test found possible ancestry 6-10 generations ago. Citizens, the President, and even the Cherokee nation have voiced their disapproval of her claim—is DNA a marker of identity? Is heritage enough?
The newly released book Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy by Katherine Ellinghaus, examines this connection between descent and identity specific to Native allotment policy of the 1890s.
The Dawes Act of 1887 initiated Native land allotment. The U.S. government allotted land that was typically farm land, to help Native people assimilate into Western farm culture. Yet the government wanted to award land and special protections to Native people; they did not want to hand out benefits to someone claiming false heritage. Without any definite distinction between Native and non-Native, the U.S. government adopted distinction by blood.
This policy was known as blood quantum, referring to the amount of Native blood possessed by any person. Yet in the 1890s and early 1900s, there was no scientific capacity to accurately test Native blood. Government officials assigned blood status based on stereotypes of Native people; those who fit the physical and racial stereotypes were considered Native. The extent to which a Native person fit into these stereotypes arbitrarily determined blood status. Other officials used crude family trees to decide descent and blood, and some used racial pseudo-science (eugenics) to decide. While deeply subjective and problematic, blood quantum factored heavily into policy decisions.
Ellinghaus’ book uses case studies to demonstrate how allotment processes policed blood status and resulted in land loss. For example, in 1889, a commission in Minnesota began to work with the native Anishinaabe people to begin allotment under the Dawes Act. To receive allotment and government benefits, Anishinaabe people had to complete an application and be approved by the commission as truly Native. The application was confusing and arduous, with page after page of legal jargon that alienated the Anishinaabe—many did not speak English, few were educated enough to understand, and most did not even understand the concept of blood status. Anishinaabe identity was deeply rooted in culture and tradition, not descent and blood. Applications were denied by white lawmakers, who wanted to give less land to Natives in order to keep it for themselves. Many Anishinaabeg were left off official tribal rolls, breaking tribal nations into pieces. The government denied tribes the right to decide blood status themselves and in effect, nations lost official land, population, and sovereignty.
Throughout the book, Ellinghaus outlines common notions of Native identity held by white government officials that heavily shaped the allotment judgement process. Those believed to have ‘full’ Native blood were considered poor helpless victims, deserving the government’s help. Those thought to have ‘mixed’ Native blood were perceived as exploitative, cunning, and stealing from the government and the helpless ‘full-bloods’.
Based on such common misconceptions, Congress amended the Dawes Act to include ‘Competency’ in 1906. This claimed that ‘mixed-bloods’ were ‘competent’ enough to live without land protections and benefits—it also meant that ‘mixed’ people could sell or lease their land as any white citizen could. But many Indians were financially vulnerable and unprepared for lifted land regulations. Their land was seized, mortgaged, or sold out of desperation. Ellinghaus notes how this was a “clear instance of a settler nation using citizenship as a means of dispossession” (69). In Minnesota, Senator Moses Clapp used this amendment to force all ‘mixed’ blood people to be labeled competent without consent—rather than awarding Competency by choice as in other Nations. This amendment led to widespread fraudulent land transfers from the Anishinaabeg to white settlers. By 1909, 90% of the original Anishinaabeg tribal land was owned by settlers.
Other case studies in Blood Will Tell reveal similar stories of fraud, confusion, arbitrary policy, and most of all, bureaucratic failure.
In this book, Ellinghaus parses through the complex allotment policies and the consequential land loss very effectively. Yet the conclusion was underwhelming. In the mere 5-page conclusion, Ellinghaus brings up entirely new consequences of assimilation-driven policy, such as assimilation boarding schools for Native children and language bans. Determining which children would be taken from parents and sent to boarding schools was likely based on blood quantum, so why would this be left out of the larger narrative of the book? Social consequences alongside land loss would show how assimilation policy and blood quantum affected all parts of Native lives.
Overall, Ellinghaus successfully demonstrates the awful intricacies of Native assimilation policy. These turn-of-the-century decisions are still clearly affecting Native lives—the allotment era marked sovereignty, culture, and land forcibly taken from tribal nations across North America. Tribal nations still fight to gain back lost land and consolidate reservations, and the fight for Native identity still carries on.
Elizabeth Warren is a prime example of identity decisions made by the wrong people in the wrong ways. While she may have Native ancestry, that does not make her a Cherokee woman, and exploiting that heritage to make a point makes deeply cultural Native identities seem trivial. Native people need the right to define their own identities on their own terms.
Cover Photo:
Maggie Thompson weaves together her Indian identity in ‘Where I Fit’