Blood

by Chey Rowland [1]

Words within the context of culture hold a deep history with complex meanings, a fact that holds true for a lot of vocabulary within NAIS. The purpose of this paper is to give a snapshot into the complexity of the keyword ‘blood’ within the context of Indigenous Studies (NAIS). Blood is most often associated with Blood Quantum within NAIS, which is itself a very complex topic, but I will be branching away from Blood Quantum in the beginning and then eventually coming back to it as it is so intertwined with what blood means to NAIS. Blood Quantum in the context of this paper refers to the use of measuring genetic Native heritage through for tribal enrollment purposes. Beyond this, blood has many meanings, namely as a descriptor for violence, generational trauma, colonization, and even decolonization. Blood is a complex keyword within NAIS that deserves to be explored in relation to Indigeneity, not just blood quantum but also settler colonialism and generational trauma.

Blood is a descriptive term that can take on many forms in Indigenous literature. Billy Ray Belcourt uses blood in two poems in his book This Wound is a World. In his poem titled “Love and Other Experiments,” Belcourt paints a beautiful picture of a Native man in love with a white man who does not care for his Native side. He also mentions that at night, he dreams of decolonial love, implicating that it is not something he has in the moment. “i tell him: you breathe us. we are in you. look at the blood on your hands” (Belcourt 27). This use of blood strikes graphic imagery that stands as a reminder to the white man in the relationship that native traumas make him uncomfortable because, at the root, he holds guilt. There is blood staining his hands that has stained generations of hands before him and cannot be washed away. This blood is implied to be that of Native peoples, pointing to the contradictory nature of their relationship. The native man is inseparable from his indigeneity, and the white man cannot truly love him if he does not recognize this fact and see the blood on his hands. In this context, blood is used as a reminder of guilt and the weight of history that we all hold.

Within The Wretched Earth, Frantz Fanon uses blood several times in reference to decolonization. Colonial practices are inherently violent, meaning that the fight for decolonial practices will be just as bloody. Fanon uses words like bloodstained and bloodthirsty as a way to allow blood to take on a connotation involving anger and pain. Blood is what powers life, and to spill blood is to declare that one's life matters more than another, which is exactly what colonizers do. The only way Fanon finds to counteract this is to be just as violent, to spill blood the way theirs has been spilled. Blood is an indicator of generations of death and trauma that cannot be easily cleaned away. Here, the spilled blood demonstrates the world hierarchy. The process of creating the current global hierarchies has been bloody, so the process of decolonization will involve blood too.

Blood Quantum is the most prominent thing associated with the keyword blood in NAIS. Blood Quantum is a highly complex topic within tribes and even outside of them. There are a lot of implications about Blood Quantum because of the origins being directly related to settler colonialism. In Colonialism in Global Perspective by Kris Manjapra, he discusses at length the relationship between Blood Quantum and settlement. The bloodiness of settlement is something else discussed which alludes to the violence of settlement ultimately creating generational trauma which can be felt for hundreds of years. Blood Quantum, which is a relic of settlement that was enforced and continues to have effects on Native communities, is not only felt in emotional ways but also in physical ways.The damages of settlement have drawn an immeasurable amount of blood from indigenous communities not just within the US but across the world (Manjapra).

The fact still remains that all the authors referenced agree that Blood Quantum was established as a ‘legal’ way to rid the United States of Natives so white people could comfortably take their lands. In Native Studies Keywords, Stephanie Teves and others examine the origins of Blood Quantum historically. The Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 instituted Blood Quantum, which allowed tribes to determine eligibility for allotment of land, but later in the twentieth century, Federal officials began using ‘competency’ as a factor based on blood percentage for determining eligibility. When the Allotment Act began, it also took down individuals' blood percentages along with their maternal and paternal percentages, which demonstrates the US’s desire to constantly have a hand in tribal sovereignty. Indigenous people face the highest amount of exogamy (the social norm of mating or marrying outside one's social group), and using a percentage of race can be just another way to eventually take away Native status, a genocide with no news coverage. While the one-drop rule applies for Black people, the opposite goes for Natives in an effort to make it much harder to qualify to be labeled as Native, regardless of your identity. This can demonstrate how Blood Quantum, at times, can be intertwined with anti-blackness and racialization, which happens to be something colonizers and settlers obsess over. Singling out races can be another way to separate them and have white people benefit from the lack of unification (Teves et al. 199-207). To end their section about the keyword blood, Teves and others say, “A product both of U.S. colonialism and tribal sovereignty, blood quantum remains a vexed criteria that constrains and produces Native communities” (Teves et al. 207), communicating with the reader that Blood Quantum remains a complex topic that can both help and hurt the Native community.

People who identify as Indigenous seem to be torn on the subject of Blood Quantum, as it can have both good and bad implications. On one hand, Blood Quantum is an incredibly colonial structure, but on the other, it can protect Native folk from having their resources used by greedy white people. Blood Quantum can also oftentimes make people feel they are not enough within their culture. Emma Hodges discusses an incident she had at work in her article “Indian Enough” for Oregon Humanities, where a coworker asked, “So what percentage are you?”(Hodges). Percentage is a very loaded question for someone who does not feel as connected with their culture or even feel like can physically connect. Hodges's percentage does not make her any more or less Native than she views herself, and it is an incredibly inappropriate question. “I wonder how he’d react if I asked about his ethnicity, what “percentage” he is or who the last “full-blooded” person in his family was” (Hodges). This quote from Hodges shows just how much white people are able to remove themselves from being considered a racial group but still benefit from the racialization of others, like what percentage an Indigenous person is. White people are completely removed from any questions about their lineage or ancestors because it does not matter; even being viewed as white is an advantage because it can stop these questions.

Kylie Rice explains her view of the role of Blood Quantum in Indigenous identity. “Also, unlike any other ethnic group, Native Americans have to continuously prove their identity” (Rice). She brings up this outstanding point that Indigenous people are the only people who have to constantly prove their identity, unlike other racial groups. “Does any other ethnicity have to enroll to be a member of their own ethnicity? Do you have to enroll to be White?” (Rice). This quote just further demonstrates how white people benefit at the hands of the racialization of others. No other ethnicity has to enroll to get the benefits afforded to them; you can check any other racial box and need no proof to check it. While tribes can institute their own enrollment requirements, all involve some form of lineage, whether it be Maternal blood or otherwise. “The use of Euro-American definitions of identity is outdated, as is blood quantum” (Rice). In the context of trying to dictate Native identity, the word "blood" in blood quantum takes on new connotations. Here, it is intended to be scientific and a determinant of heritage. However, identity, heritage, and lineage are determined by much more than one's blood. The use of Blood Quantum takes away Indigenous peoples' right to self-determination, which is deeply important to racial identity and to Native sovereignty. This begs the question: why is the US government so obsessed with the enrollment of Native peoples?

The United States government often uses Blood Quantum as a way to interfere with tribal sovereignty and to overstep their bounds. This has been clearly witnessed by the need for the United States to have a hand in documenting enrollment or to even have actually records of enrollment to track the number of Natives in the US. The U.S. Department of the Interior has a special part of its website on how to enroll as Native American. They call it “Establishing Indian Ancestry.” Why does a federal government website tell others how to enroll as Indigenous? It seems as though Blood Quantum can be a tremendous violation of tribal sovereignty. The federal government should have no hand in how Native communities regulate their enrollment, or even if they choose to, that should be up to the communities themselves. The US government does not have a hand in how Mexico chooses to identify its citizens, so why would it be different for a sovereign nation? While Blood Quantum can have positive uses, the biggest negative use can be the level it has become normalized for the United States to overstep sovereignty in this matter (“Establishing Indian Ancestry | U.S. Department of the Interior”).

To conclude, the keyword Blood has deep and complex ties in NAIS. Blood has several uses and can be a useful and powerful descriptor for generational trauma, anger, and guilt. While blood can be a tool used to communicate strife and the damages of bloody settlement, it can also be a physical tool through Blood Quantum. Blood Quantum itself is a very complex topic within Indigenous communities as it can be seen as a positive way to protect resources but also as a remnant of colonialism that still seeks out the erasure of Native peoples within the US. The US should not be overstepping the bounds of sovereignty within Tribal Nations by having a hand in how they register enrollment or even being concerned with Tribal enrollment. White people benefit from things like Blood Quantum that push certain people into a group because they themselves never have to worry about being grouped. They reap the benefits of not being considered a racial group or being considered the 'default' identity. Blood Quantum can be a very damaging thing to Indigenous communities within the United States, not only physically but also emotionally, with self-determination. Blood itself is a complex keyword within indigenous studies. Outside of Blood Quantum, it still holds a lot of weight and deserves to be viewed in all of its complexity, not just within the confines of Blood Quantum.

[1] Click through image, “Family Portrait” by Maggie Thompson

Works Cited

Belcourt, Billy-Ray. This Wound is a World. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

“Establishing Indian Ancestry | U.S. Department of the Interior.” DOI.gov, https://www.doi.gov/tribes/esablishancestr. Accessed 21 February 2024.

Fanon, Frantz. The wretched of the earth. Grove Press, 1963.

Hodges, Emma. “Indian Enough — Oregon Humanities.” Oregon Humanities, 28 February 2020, https://www.oregonhumanities.org/rll/beyond-the-margins/indian-enough/. Accessed 21 February 2024.

Manjapra, Kris. Colonialism in Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Rice, Kylie. “Blood Quantum and its role in Native Identity — The Indigenous Foundation.” The Indigenous Foundation, 30 May 2023, https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/bloodquantum. Accessed 21 February 2024.

Teves, Stephanie Nohelani, et al., editors. Native Studies Keywords. University of Arizona Press, 2015. Accessed 20 February 2024.

Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2006, pp. 387-409. Taylor and Francis Online, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240. Accessed 20 February 2024.