By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
“We’re in a great battle across this nation and it’s around identity, it’s around this federal recognition process – something that, over the past couple weeks, we’ve spent a lot of hours meeting with our Congressmen and Senators and Department of Interior. Some of the ears that we’re talking to are hearing us and some aren’t. But it’s a battle. This thought of being a tribe versus being a group or a fake tribe is something that we can’t take lightly anymore. Just the thought of our language and making sure that we’re progressing with culture and traditions, knowing who we are, and handing that down to these younger folks so that they can continue to educate and continue to make sure the traditions stay alive is extremely important. And, I think, more important today than it’s ever been. Our work is cut out for us. We must be stronger than ever. We must be united…we must find ways to protect our identity…we have a long history, but going back, less than 200 years ago, our history was threatened. As a tribe, as a group of tribes, we must continue to make sure that we’re heard.” – Ugvwiyuhi (Principal Chief) Michell Hicks
The way we count ourselves as Cherokee on the Qualla Boundary is a path to extinction. Grading ourselves based on blood quantum trailing from the Baker Roll will either need to be modified, replaced or we will end up with blood degrees so diluted that it will be impossible to maintain a legitimate tribe. There are other ways we define ourselves as Cherokee, even Eastern Band Cherokee, and we must address this as a people, or we will jeopardize our identity.
Similarly, there is another effort by unaffiliated and state-recognized tribes to dilute what it means to be federally recognized as a tribe. Ironic as it is, the federal government, the conquering migrants who took the land of the indigenous peoples of America, set out a plan for reparations for native peoples in the federal recognition program. It was a way to codify and restore rights previously stripped from indigenous peoples. It was also meant to bring a level of sovereignty back to those tribes who occupied the land before the migration of the outside world into the Americas. Yes, I said a level of sovereignty. We try to believe and perceive that we are autonomous nations as federally recognized tribes, totally sovereign. But if we were truly sovereign, then we could make law on our land as we see fit. We cannot. We may only govern ourselves to the standard of the federal government and we may not make laws that are contradictory to theirs. Does that sound like sovereignty to you?
Allow me a personal example of the importance of reality over presumption. When I returned to the Boundary to serve 23 years ago, I was blissfully unaware of a hard cultural standard of our tribe. You see, I presumed I had a clan for the first 30-plus years of my life. I wasn’t sure about my birth father, but I knew his father’s clan and I thought that was my clan. But, as many of you know, the Cherokee people are a matrilineal society. Clan affiliation is passed through the mother of the family. And my father’s mother was not a Cherokee and neither was my mother. The chain of clan affiliation was broken when my paternal grandfather partnered with a non-Indian woman. It wasn’t until I arrived at the tribe that a colleague told me, as I was expressing my pride as being a part of that clan, that since the chain of clan affiliation had been broken by my grandfather, I was not eligible and did not have a clan, even though I was on the roll of the Eastern Band.
Now this colleague told me this so that she could feel better about herself. In fact, I could characterize her behavior as “being a bully” because the only gain she achieved from telling me my error was to get pleasure from my disappointment and to feel superior because she did have a clan. I could stomp my feet and hold my breath because somehow that might change that cultural norm. I could gather support from all of those in the tribal membership who were in the same boat and petition the tribe to make a rule that we are accepted even though we don’t meet the criteria. I could call those who didn’t agree that I have a clan, bullies, and mean-spirited.
But I wouldn’t and I won’t. First, my fellow tribal members would think that I was the one who was trying to be a bully by attempting to change or bypass that centuries-old community standard. It is so ingrained into the culture that it is not a matter of law; it is an understood right of our culture. And I would be attempting to destroy a cultural norm that has been in place for centuries. Even if I succeeded, the clan system as we all know it as a tribe would be diluted so badly that it would be unrecognizable to our ancestors.
And so it is with federal recognition. If state tribes and others who have organized themselves into “tribal” entities, want to be federally recognized, there is a process and there is a criterion to be met. It is defined in the federal code as to what the U.S. government recognizes as an indigenous tribe of the United States. To the detriment of indigenous tribes and the stability of federal recognition, the U.S. government established criteria for recognition, then convoluted the process by allowing prospective tribes to petition Congress and the federal court system to make exceptions or exemptions to the rules that they themselves established. In the Lumbee Recognition Act (1956), for example, the law points out that “since the abolishment of treaty-making, the United States has recognized Indian tribes by executive order, legislation, and administrative actions by the Executive Branch. Additionally, federal courts may clarify the status of an Indian group, though in many cases, the courts defer to the Bureau of Indian Affairs). This convolution of process opens the door to error. With the sovereign rights of nations at stake, a uniform policy should be adhered to. And a prospective tribe’s response to being required to adhere to basic identification criteria should not be “costs too much or takes too much time to gather”. If it is worth having recognition, it is worth the effort (but only if you can meet the criterion).
Also in the 1956 ruling, “In 1955, the leader of the Lumbee Indians testified before the House of Representatives that the Indians of Robeson County were an ‘admixture’ of seven different tribes of Indians, including Cherokee, Tuscarora, Hatteras, Pamli, and Croatan.” The word “admixture” stuck out to me. Admixture, as it relates to genetics, “occurs when previously isolated populations interbreed resulting in a population descended from multiple sources.” This definition resides in Wikipedia and I found it ironic that one of the source materials backing up the statement was a 2014 article by M. Rius and J.A. Darling titled “How important is intraspecific genetic admixture to the success of colonizing populations”.
Further in the 1956 legislation, “The uncertainty of origins of the Lumbee led past Administrations to oppose federal recognition of the Lumbee Indians as a tribe.” And “Finally, while there appears to be no conclusive evidence of a relationship between the Lumbee Indians and a single historic tribe, there is support for the conclusion that individual members of the Lumbee are Indians.” While the legislation specifically calls out that there is no definitive evidence, there is an ambiguous, circumstantial support for a conclusion of Indian-ness. I’m not sure who drafted this legislation, but I would have hoped for a more factual basis for a decision of this magnitude.
Included in the 1956 Act were these words, “Nothing in this Act shall make such Indians eligible for any services performed by the United States for Indians because of their status as Indians, and none of the statutes of the United States which affect Indians because of their status as Indians shall be applicable to the Lumbee Indians.”
Because there are loopholes in the process of recognition that allow federal recognition without meeting the criteria set forth by the United States, they (the U.S.) have pit those who are recognized and those who seek to be recognized against each other. I am very sure that the federally recognized Cherokee tribes do not hate or want to bully anyone. And I am fairly certain that those of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina do not want to be at odds with any federally recognized tribe. But the federal government made a mistake with the Act of 1956. If they had only removed the conditions that blocked the Lumbee from pursuing the normal administrative process so that the Lumbee could simply apply and prove that they could meet the standards set forth for federal recognition, I believe animosity on both sides of the debate would have been avoided.
But now it is no longer about the security of either side. It has become a political football game being played for constituent votes and bigger cuts of money from appropriations. And the game has serious consequences for the state of North Carolina and funding for indigenous projects in other states. Because when you eliminate or ignore the rules of recognition, you open the process up to political influence. And while the federal political lean may be in favor of one side, all it will take is a bigger carrot to switch their advocacy to the other side. And unfortunately for native peoples, the cost could be sovereignty itself.
Like blood quantum, the definition of what it means to be indigenous in the eyes of the federal government is currently being convoluted. The federal government hasn’t forgotten its goal of making Indians conform to the “American” way of life. And if you’ll remember, when the migrants came to America and took our lands and placed us on reservations and trust lands, they set up boarding schools with the expressed desire to assimilate us into the mainstream new American culture. They tried to take our language, our stories, our history, even the way we dressed. Wouldn’t it be a sad note in our history if the federal government finally achieved their goal of assimilation that tribes have resisted for half of a millennium because they convinced us that they were trying to make us all one big happy indigenous family when they know that once they dilute our individual tribal identity, they are one step closer to assimilation?
