Membership in a Tribal Community

Indigenous Anthropology ANTH 2301 Membership in a Tribal Community Indigenous people of mixed races living in the United States are regulated by a set of rights that were first established by federal laws and regulations and then subsequently embraced by certain tribal governments. With each tribe establishing its own blood quantum requirements for membership, tribal countries now have the autonomy to oversee their own membership laws and regulations. A person's blood quantum is their lineage back to their original tribal group. Half-blooded Native people have parents or grandparents who have at least 50% Native blood, but full-blooded Native people are descended from parents who are both full-blooded members of a tribe. Even if a person has parents from two different tribes, they may still be full-blooded Native Americans, but the tribe they are enrolled in may only recognise the Indigenous ancestry from the tribe in which they are enrolled (Ellinghaus 2017). Mestizo, which is popular in Latin America, and Métis, which is prominent in Canada, are two words used to describe individuals of mixed descent in the Americas. People of mixed Indigenous descent are given separate privileges in some countries, like Canada, where Métis groups are given different rights than First Nations populations. Pure Indigenous bloodlines are increasingly rare, despite the fact that most Native communities value Indigenous ancestry. This is due to the high incidence of outmarriage. The majority of Native Americans in the US are of mixed ancestry. One notable exception is the Navajo Nation, which has a population of over 300,000 people and hence includes a sizable proportion of full-blooded Navajo members. Typically, in order to become a member of a tribe, an individual must demonstrate that they possess a specific proportion of blood. Only the lineages that originate inside that tribe must be strictly accounted for under certain tribal regulations. Some tribes accept any Indigenous ancestry as credit towards their membership criteria. The latter approach is more in line with the traditional customs that many Native Americans adhered to prior to becoming federal wards. Many tribes had a practice of adopting newcomers who settled nearby and assimilated into their culture. Furthermore, all tribes' marriage customs, which forbade marriages between people who were too closely related, pushed people to be married outside of their community or tribe. Adopted spouses in a community would get equal adoption treatment. Women in Oregonian tribes would typically visit their husbands' communities. In certain civilizations, like the Seneca of the Northeast, males would relocate to the communities where their women lived. According to some academics, blood quantum is a tool used by the US government to stop people from claiming their tribal ancestry, which eventually leads to tribes self-terminating. It is not the opinion of every tribe member. In order to determine tribal citizenship, blood quantum was incorporated into the majority of tribal constitutions throughout the 1930s. Due to this strategy, tribe members may try to marry their cousins in order to "marshal" their blood, or increase or preserve the proportion of blood quantum in their progeny, which has led to a number of issues in modern societies (Nenemay 2005). Although most blood quantum requirements are already considerably below half, scholars have warned that most tribes would continue to lose members due to outmarriage until membership standards are modified. A lot of tribes are changing their laws to allow people to become members by proving they are descended from an enrolled tribe member (Thornton 1997). A 1/16 blood quantum of Grand Ronde blood and an ancestor or parent who was previously listed on a tribal roll or record are prerequisites for joining the Grand Ronde tribe in Oregon. The tribe only considers relationships based on genealogy to the founding tribe members who lived on the reserve. Regrettably, a lot of individuals have come and gone from the reserve throughout time, and documentation has not kept up to date. It is challenging to prove previous residency on the reservation. Furthermore, since 1999, increasingly stringent modifications to the membership prerequisites have resulted in a decline in membership. A contentious 1999 amendment stipulates that a prospective new member's parent had to be enrolled in the tribe at the time of the prospective member's birth. Children of people who became members after having children and children born between 1956 and 1983—a time when tribe rolls were not kept up to date—are not eligible for membership as a result of this shift. Split families are a consequence of this, where younger children born when their parents were on the tribe register are considered members but their elder siblings are not. On the reservation, the matter has taken on a political bent as some enrolled members are worried that an influx of new members might negatively affect services and finances, while others want to increase membership to welcome more descendants into the tribe. Political and social identity issues will probably be hot topics of discussion in the ensuing decades since many tribes recognise that if they don't alter their membership standards, they could eventually vanish.