x millions. That is the actual problem.
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There was a time, when Oklahoma was still Indian Territory, that the only way a white person could open a business in the Cherokee reservation was to become a member of the tribe, often by marriage. So as you can imagine many white men made their fortunes opening stores and lumberyards and mills with the money they brought west to make their fortunes with. (Donât even get me started on the Osage, the one tribe who played it right, until the oil boom made them rich as Croesus.) Eventually the reservation was divided up into allotments with the purpose of destroying the power of tribal polity. Before (during?) the Trail of Tears there was a civil war between factions that basically boiled down to assimilationists who wanted to remain in their homelands and hope the white people wouldnât destroy them, and those who read the writing on the wall and lit out for the territory ahead.
The history of forced integration is shameful and sickening. I canât help but think of it every time I read or hear another story about the forced separation of children of refugees and immigrants, because we have been down that road before. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Indian children in Oklahoma were forced to attend boarding schools where they were supposed to be âwesternizedâ. Their language and culture was literally beat out of them; many died of malnutrition and neglect as they simply refused to conform to their assigned culture. I once had a job that involved cataloging hundreds of photos of these places, including before and after images - the healthy, obviously loved children in their best clothes, moccasins and braids and beaded adornments, and after, their hair chopped, wearing badly fitted shirts and dresses, distraught faces, squinting at the camera.
In many ways the culture and languages were barely kept alive, shamed and discriminated against certainly until the fairly recent past, even when there was a romantic idea of being Indian. I can totally believe that there is skepticism and resentment of white people who can opt in at their convenience, without ever having played any part in the actual reality of being a part of a culture under attack and then clawing its way back to sustainability.
One thing though that is particularly critical here: the whole idea of blood percentage being a marker of tribal membership is largely one imposed by white racists a couple of centuries back, and played a large part in the attempted genocide. The Cherokee Tribe was a political entity, not a racial one. Claiming or denying membership based on the amount of Indian blood is seeing the issue through the white oppressorâs lens, using the white oppressorâs old lists of who they thought ought to be separated from their own lands and culture. I could be wrong, but I think most tribes now do not use blood percentage as a qualification for membership, as it is often so diluted by intermarriage as to be meaningless when compared to heritage and ancestry.
I once got in a bit of trouble for arguing that point at a wealthy lady book club discussion of The Bell Curve I happened to get invited to back in the day. Fresh out of college, I had my head full of facts and statistics on the subject and after trying my best to politely make my point, someone turned to me and remarked, âYou have such lovely long fingers - do you play the piano?â Lol. Apparently I wasnât supposed to be offended by the presumptively racist ideas a couple of them espoused.
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I understand about the Cherokee. They were very advanced, had an alphabet therefore a written language, they published newspapers. They had a sophisticated culture that got more or less obliterated by President Jackson.
And I understand how sensitive it is for Native Americans, the question of how Native American someone is.
I get how sensitive the whole thing is from every angle - I live around or with Native Americans for 5 months of the year. Used to be you couldnât even marry onto a pueblo if you were white - both of you got thrown out. They modified that here finally but I am aware of all of the rather explosive issues and tensions that exist. I understand how anthropologists have exploited Native Americans and archeologists as well.
I understand about dying languages - New Mexico is a world hot spot for dying languages. Itâs so fucking sad but they are doing what they can to try to save what they can. It wonât be enough but the ones that are left are a tiny fraction of the languages once spoken just in this area of the country. Weâve lost whole tribes - hundreds if not thousands of them. Many here were lost to the Spanish very early. I donât know how we can go back now and fix this.
Itâs endless, the exploitation, weâre totally guilty. But I still think the Cherokee Nation is wrong to say the DNA test isnât real. And to tell someone else that they shouldnât talk about their heritage and test results.
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Cherokee Nation secretary of state Chuck Hoskin Jr.: "[DNA testing] doesnât narrow down the scope of who your ancestors were to any identifiable tribe.â
That may be; I can not speak to it. But it does determine if you have Native American ancestry. And that is all Warren was documenting and reporting. Yes, she has Native American Ancestry. Itâs a fact. Not only is she entitled to find this out and state it, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with doing that.
Chuck Hoskin Jr.: âWe need to be clear about what it means to be a Native American and Indian in this country. And it comes down to a legal status that we frankly have fought long and hard for and are very proud of,â
OK. Itâs a legal status thing, apparently disconnected from DNA. So it would be possible, in principle, to have a lot of Native American ancestry, arguably up to 100%, and not be a Native American. That sounds completely mad, but thatâs the argument. It should be noted that Warren was not claiming to be a member of any tribe. I donât think she was claiming to be Native American either. But, she most definitely is claiming to have Native American ancestry, and she is correct about that.
Chuck Hoskin Jr.: âWe donât think itâs particularly useful to have them in a back and forth about a DNA test, name calling and that sort of thing.â
This kind of boilerplate is not helpful. Warren established her ancestry, demonstrating that some of it is in fact Native American, and cornering the bully asshole president, who now, as a result, owes $1million to a charity of Warrenâs choosing. It would be more appropriate for Chuck Hoskin Jr. to focus on the real issue here, which is the president being an asshole, including insulting Native Americans â which is partly the point of his idiotic jab at Warren â and being misogynistic. She was right to call Trump out on his assholery. Chuck Hoskin Jr. is wrong to then have a go at Warren for behaving in a perfectly reasonable way.
There is an underlying issue here of brittleness on the part of Chuck Hoskin Jr. regarding Native American identity. Warren did not transgress any boundary: she did nothing wrong. Chuck Hoskin Jr., however, has not only missed what was going on, but screwed it up and missed an opportunity.
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Is the Cherokee nation a bunch of morons? They need to get off the reservation for modern education in science. DNA doesnt lie (except with OJ Simpson).
They misrepresented what Warren claimed. It was Trump who made it an issue that she was right in resolving.
As a genealogist i applaud what she did. It proves her past statements 100%. She has never clained tribal membersip and she always said ancestry was distant. The important part was the story of racism that forced her ancestors to elope. Much of thst remains.
She is a senator from Massachusetts representing their interests on a national level, not the Cherokee nation.
What idiots .
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Maybe the good thst can come from the Cherokee statement is to admit that membership in their tribe is like a private club, and it should have no public support. Time moves on.
Is that what he said? (I guess I could re-watch his comments.) Anyway, my impression is that he was speaking as a representative of the Cherokee Nation, so in that role it makes total sense to me that he would emphasize the difference between genetic ancestry and legal membership. Itâs particularly ironic though in light of recent controversies regarding the autonomy sought by the Delaware Tribe (an unrelated group which was grafted on to the Cherokees by nineteenth century bureaucrats) and the expulsion a few years ago of the Black Cherokee, descended from slaves brought by the tribe to Oklahoma. My point is that they have quite a history of telling other people they shouldnât talk about their heritage and genetics.
SOS of the Cherokee Nation is a political office, and heâs a politician, in Oklahoma. Iâm not defending his take, but I do understand why heâs coming from where he is on this, and why he shied away from confronting Trumpâs racial slurs.