American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Don't we have enough headaches trying to unite without . . . additional headaches? Why must people be categorized as fill-bloods, mixed-bloods, etc.? Many years ago, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided to establish blood quanta for the purpose of [tribal] enrollment. At the time, blood quantum was set at one-quarter degree, [a matter which] caused many people on the reservation to be categorized and labeled. The situation was caused solely by the BIA, with the able assistance of the Interior Department. -Tim Giago Among the most vexing issues afflicting Native North America at the dawn of the twenty-first century are the questions of who does or does not hold a legitimate right to say he or she is American Indian, and by what criteria-whose definition-this may or may not be true. Such queries, and the answers to them, hold an obvious and deeply important bearing not only upon the personal sense of identity inhering in millions of individuals scattered throughout the continent, but in terms of the degree to which some form of genuine self-determination can be exercised by indigenous nations in coming years. Conversely, they represent both an accurate gauge of the extent to which the sovereignty of North America's Native peoples has been historically eroded or usurped by the continent's two preeminent settler-states, the United States and Canada, and a preview of how the remainder stands to be eradicated altogether in the not so distant future. Defining for itself the composition of its membership (citizenry), in whatever terms and in accordance with whatever standards it freely chooses, is, of course, the very bedrock expression of self-determination by any nation or people.