Who is Native American?
In a February 9 tweet US President
Donald Trump is referring to not only Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth
Warren's enduring claims of Native American identity, and the
pushback she received from various native communities, but also one of the most
infamous and traumatic events in Cherokee history, the Trail of Tears - the
forced relocation of Native Americans in the 19th century that caused thousands
of deaths.
Trump's tweet sparked much debate
over whether it is ever acceptable for a US president to use a racial
slur or a genocide reference to attract attention to a political
opponent's alleged past indiscretions. However, the public discussions largely
left out the very real complexities of Native American identity and history
unexplored. The truth is, many Native American nations have struggled to
define belonging for decades.
False claim to tribal membership
The controversy about Warren's
claims to Native American identity first surfaced in the public domain during
her 2012 Senate campaign, when her opponent accused her of having lied about
her heritage to gain an advantage in her academic career.
Consequently, an investigation by
the Boston Herald revealed that Harvard Law School listed her as Native
American in its federal affirmative action forms from 1995 to 2004. Further
inquiries demonstrated that she also claimed Native American ancestry while
working at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and identified herself as
"American Indian" on a Texas bar registration card in 1986.
In response to accusations that she
fraudulently assumed a minority identity for professional gain, Warren
maintained that she based all her claims to "family stories" passed
down over generations, and that she never furthered her career by using her
heritage to gain an advantage. An expansive Boston Globe investigation in
September 2018 appeared to confirm that Warren did not profit from the claims
she made about her ancestry. However, the expose failed to stop President Trump
and other Republicans from continuing to accuse the senator of lying about her
heritage.
The storm over Warren's ancestry claim
only deepened when she sought to neutralise the attacks by releasing a DNA
analysis in October 2018, which said that she had a Native American ancestor
"six - 10 generations ago". The Cherokee Nation blasted Warren for
the test, which they said was a false claim to tribal membership, leading the
senator to apologise.
But why does it matter if Warren
alleges that she is Native American? And why did the Cherokee Nation denounce
her claims?
Who is Native American?
By claiming to be of Cherokee
heritage, Warren tapped into a long-running trope in American history:
phenotypically white people, privy to all of the privileges associated with
whiteness in the US, claiming a Native American identity.
From the colonists at the Boston
Tea Party to the hippies and hipsters of today, white Americans take on Native
American accoutrements (feathers, buckskin, headdresses) or Native American
ancestry (almost always a small percentage - enough to make them interesting
and exotic, but not enough to actually make them a person of colour) as easily
as putting on a pair of shoes, using it to signal independence from state
structures and responsibilities, a connection to the Earth, a certain brand of
spirituality (often used to make a profit), or a desire to return to a bygone
era.
By participating in this
roleplaying game, these white Americans demonstrate that they view native
people as exotic artefacts from an imagined past, rather than modern-day
citizens who wear the same clothes, listen to the same music and deal with the
same contemporary issues as themselves.
While Senator Warren grew up in
Oklahoma, the state with the highest percent of Native Americans in the nation
and one where the Cherokee are the largest minority group, she was raised as a
white person, not as a Cherokee. She did not learn about Cherokee culture,
language, or history, and shared no formal or informal ties with the Cherokee
Nation.
While she may be able to show that
she possesses some degree of Native American DNA, this does not necessarily
make her any more Native American than all the clueless white youths wearing
feathers and headdresses as fashion accessories at music festivals. Besides,
tying DNA to a specific tribe is almost impossible, as
North American indigenous people consistently migrated and intermarried, and
DNA companies use databases that overwhelmingly feature European genetic data,
with small sample sizes from Native Americans and other people of colour.
Claims of Native American ancestry
are closely tied to tribal citizenship rights - a sensitive issue
combining identity politics with economics and political jurisdiction.
"Native American" is not
just a racial category, it is also a political identity because tribal
nations are acknowledged as sovereign governments in the US. When someone
claims to be Native American, he or she also claims access to political and
economic benefits hard-won by native governments in brutal legal battles over
tribal sovereignty.
This is why the Cherokee Nation
denounced Warren's DNA test as "inappropriate and wrong" and accused the
senator of "undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of
tribal heritage".
In this context, it is easy to see
why Warren's claim of Cherokee identity, as a phenotypically white woman with
no real connection to the tribe, is problematic. However, the Cherokee Nation's
refutation of the senator's claim is also not as honest and straightforward as
it first appears.
Inclusion and exclusion
In his response to Warren's press
release about the result of her DNA test, Cherokee Nation Secretary of State
Chuck Hoskin, Jr stated that a "DNA test is useless to determine
tribal citizenship", implying what determines who is a Cherokee is not
blood, but an individual's proven shared history with the tribe.
Yet, the Cherokee Nation have
denied one group of people - the descendants of their former slaves - who had
this very shared history, generations spent living alongside native people,
simply because they did not see them as native "enough".
Tribal membership has always been
dependent upon induction into a native peoples' community, either through
birth, intermarriage, or adoption. But the formalisation of the idea of
citizenship, a status that can be conferred (or disavowed) by a specific
governmental body, is the product of colonisation.
Largely beginning in the 19th
century, when native nations interacted with the American government to sell
their land and receive annuities for it or distribute it in allotments, the US
would send representatives to compile a list of the people who would then
qualify to receive these annuities or land parcels. These people would then
also be considered tribal citizens. Over time, many nations, such as the
Cherokee Nation, have continued to use these same lists as the basis of tribal
citizenship.
For Indian nations such as the
Cherokees, as well as the Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickasaws, who owned
black slaves the evolution of tribal citizenship was more complicated. Their
black slaves had lived among them, sharing their language, food, and homes, and
this shared history spanned decades and generations.
Yet, many native people considered
the people of African descent who resided in their nations a separate group,
and when these five nations assembled their membership lists in partnership
with the American government, they separated themselves from their former
descendants, creating two categories of citizenship - one for "Indians by
blood" and one for former slaves.
Then, throughout the 20th century,
the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles eventually rescinded the tribal
membership of all the descendants of their former slaves, claiming they had no
place in their nations because they did not have native ancestry.
The descendants of the former slaves of Cherokee women
and men, an estimated 3,000 people, many of whom bear Cherokee ancestry, were
denied the rights and privileges of Cherokee citizenship for years - but they
fought back, filing lawsuits in tribal courts and then in American
courts. In 2017, with the successful outcome of US District Court case, Cherokee Nation v Nash Vann, et al,
these descendants, referred to as Cherokee Freedpeople, have been welcomed back
into the fold.
Following this decision, the
Cherokee Nation turned over a new, inclusive leaf and even celebrated Martin
Luther King, Jr Day as an official holiday for the first time this January, in
honour of their Freedmen citizens. Hopefully, this signals a readiness to
return to traditional definitions of tribal inclusion that acknowledge the
informal belonging and historical connection.
Now the descendants of former
slaves of Creek Indians have filed a similar case in the US federal court, also
seeking to reestablish their tribal membership.
As the largest of the former
slaveholding Indian nations, the actions of the Cherokee Nation and the
reactions of Cherokee Freedmen descendants have received the most publicity.
But all Indian nations deal with
issues related to tribal membership (who should be allowed to be a member, how
tribal resources should be used to provide for every member, etc), particularly
in a historical moment when it is trendy to claim a Native American identity. Indian
nations' answers to these membership questions are shaped by the economic
resources they do or don't have and by their ideas of how a member of their
tribe should live and what they should look like.
There is no one answer to how a
Native American nation should decide tribal membership. After all, it is
largely their prerogative based on tribal sovereignty. It is not the duty of
Indian nations to welcome every person who takes a DNA test and finds that they
supposedly possess native ancestry; it is not their duty to take lightly a
prominent, completely unaffiliated person's claims of belonging.
But as they begin to more publicly
define the parameters of their definitions of citizenship, it should be their
moral obligation to fully acknowledge and rectify the wrongful exclusions they
have made in the past.
And, as Elizabeth Warren's election
campaign gains speed and this controversy, no doubt, resurfaces again and
again, journalists have an occupational obligation to transition this narrative
of Indian identity from a mere punch line to a nuanced conversation about race
and belonging.
by Alaina E. Robert
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