5 ms·

It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to admit to being part Native. My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood qu

It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to admit to being part Native. My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood quantum -- and a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum, but that's probably more than people here want to know -- and I grew up in a house in the 'burbs bought the summer I turned three with his military mortgage benefits. In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill He never said much about his Native heritage. I think he did so to be white-passing in a world where lynchings still happened. I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically. Dismissing the interest in their heritage of people like me is just more erasure of Natives and Native culture. It actively reinforces racism in subtle ways. The subtlety helps make it insidious and hard to combat, unfortunately.

ivan_gammel 5y ago
This reminds me of people in Soviet Union who chose to write “Russian” as their ethnicity in passport despite different ancestry (yes, there was such section in Soviet and later Russian passports until 1990s). Indigenous people of Siberia or Caucasus, Germans and Jews too familiar of ethnic prejudices were redefining their identity to open career opportunities. You could take either ethnicity of your father or your mother, being Russian was often considered the safest bet.
causi 5y ago
I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied Speaking as someone who is also 1/32, same as you, people like us need to stop pretending having a sliver of genetic material somehow entitles us to a "cultural heritage". 1/32 is five generations. That's three percent. For comparison, the average European-American's DNA is 3.5% African. White people are blacker than you and me are Native American.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  I think mixing of socially constructed races and genetic ethnicities is a recipe for disaster. The only thing the latter is good for IMO is to highlight how the former is a social construct. With that in mind, tying cultural heritage to "where did my close ancestors come from" seems like a more sensible approach than genetic percentages, since that actually connects to a social context. Having said that, cherry picking one out of thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents over the thirty-one others sounds pretty absurd. But I'm not from North America so I probably miss some social context to understand the logic behind that.
  - causi 5y ago
    But I'm not from North America so I probably miss some social context to understand the logic behind that. It's a combinational effect of many minor causes stacking upon one another. People wanting to feel special. The feeling modern society is destroying the world and the sense Native American culture is the opposite of that. The mild but persistent impression that white heritage isn't something to celebrate or positively self-identify with.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      What exactly is "white heritage" anyway? It only brings to mind white supremacy to me. But I do celebrate my Finnish heritage, as well as my Irish and English ancestry.
      - krapp 5y ago
        "white" as a claim of culture or heritage, only exists in the context of white supremacy. The concept of "whiteness" was invented during the days of the slave trade as a means of establishing racial classification and hierarchy - to contrast the superior "white" race with inferior "non-white" races, which is why it traditionally excluded people like the Irish and Italians, along with the obvious African peoples traded as slaves, who unlike the former groups can never "ascend" to "whiteness" no matter how much political or cultural capital they accumulate. In the modern day, it has lost much of its explicitly racist connotations (except, obviously, when explicitly used in the original context by racists,) but just tends to mean "a person who looks white (until proven otherwise)" or "of European descent," the former of which isn't really related to culture, and the latter being so vague as to be useless as a cultural referent.
wombatmobile 5y ago
> It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to admit to being part Native. More people are proud to proclaim being First Nations people.
jboynyc 5y ago
Thanks for sharing your perspective!
pram 5y ago
I mean maybe he never said anything because it's so tangential. My family is from Mexico and I'm 1/4th native. I've literally never heard anyone mention anything about it because it's practically meaningless. It doesn't afford any special treatment in the US, and DEFINITELY not in Mexico. The only tribe I ever hear this brought up about is Cherokee lol
coldtea 5y ago
>I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically. At something like the 1/16th level, it doesn't mean anything anyway (not even to white supremacists, but much less so as a real heritage). A heritage is the shared experiences, raising, and cultural connection, not about some miniscule bloodline/dna. Unless we're talking about isolated inter-breeding populations, almost all people several 1/16ths of one or another ethnicity, that they have absolutely no connection with in any way (or ever cared about).
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  You seem to be mistaking "I want to know about the history of the people I come from" for "I want to know how the history of the people I come from impacts my everyday life". It's entirely possible to be curious your ancestry because it's part of the long path that leads to you existing.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  I don't generally talk about my 1/32nd heritage, but there is a photograph of my great great great grandmother on the wall of my parents' house and I grew up with it there. Your dismissive attitude is entirely inappropriate. I think it is commendable to be interested in learning about the parts of your family history that may have been suppressed out of racism or fear or racist retaliation.
  - Thiez 5y ago
    Was it really suppressed? I literally couldn't tell you anything about any of my great great grandparents, and the only thing I know about my great grandparents is that two of them used to own a bakery. I don't know any of their names. Sometimes history is just forgotten without any nefarious reasons, it's just stuff that doesn't matter anymore and the people it's about are long dead.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      Different families and people place different priorities on passing those stories along. I personally had the good fortune of having one great grandmother who lived long enough for me to have many memories of her. I'm also lucky that other people in my family have taken the time to document many of tge stories that I don't know. There are many reasons why these stories aren't passd on (often is is just that younger generations don't ask enough questions) but there is no reason not to take Doreen at her word about why her didn't talk about that part of the family tree much. There certainly is no call to belittle people's interest in their heritages and family history, especially when they could learn stories about their family history that might be lost. I sincerely advise to to ask any older living relatives to tell you what they can about your great grandparents (and consider recording those stories). You might not care now, but those stories do disappear with time and you or future generations of your family could find them very valuable.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
It's not the 1/<big number> that annoys people. It's the "claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc)" part that annoys people. And when someone is called out for this the inevitable response is "blood quantum is deeply offensive" crap which misses the whole point. If you sever ties with a culture for many generations you cease to be that culture. Someone who's great^N granddaddy banged a slave is no more African than an Nth generation American is <insert European culture here>
- cat199 5y ago
  > Someone who's great^N granddaddy banged a slave is ... the great grandchild of a slave? if that were me i'd have many questions about the situation and how it impacted the next generation, etc. this is the problem with dismissal - it facilitates or accelerates the process of suppressing the history.
xdennis 5y ago
> a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum Not to be too rude about it, but everybody outside the US hates it. Go to any European forum and see how they roll their eyes when an American says "I'm half Irish, quarter Norwegian and 342/2636ths Italian." There's a tendency to treat ethnicity as a clothing accessory rather than a culture.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gambiter 5y ago
  There's a reason for people to hate it... it's a tool used for something similar to genocide, only instead of killing the individuals (like they did in the past) it is used to reduce the population out of existence over time. To get benefits as a tribal member, you need to have a blood quantum over a certain amount. That means native populations are guaranteed to shrink because there are fewer and fewer 'full bloods'. It's also incredibly racist, when you get down to it. Does a white person need to be able to trace their lineage to claim they are white, or any other race, for that matter? When you talk to Cherokee people, most of them are very clear that if you are part of the Cherokee culture, you're Cherokee. Throughout history, they have 'adopted' people of other races into their tribes, and those people married and had children. If an adopted white man married and adopted white woman, their children would be considered full blood, regardless of their skin color. So from a Cherokee perspective (and I assume any tribes that behaved similarly) the measure of a Cherokee is whether they are a part of the Cherokee culture, rather than what their genealogy shows.
donovanallen 5y ago
How do you go about learning more? I'm trying to do the same
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I follow Natives on Twitter and by far I mostly read rather than engage. It's hard to figure out how to publicly engage with someone I don't know on what is inevitably a touchy subject, so I try hard to not be one of those white assholes making demands. I try to listen and absorb instead of inserting myself. But I feel like listening to actual Natives is one of the better things I can do to learn about Natives. I follow some Reddits. I read articles. I keep notes and periodically try to do a little writing for my own edification, to help me process the info. Because there are two parts to the equation: someone "talking" and someone listening and it can be hard to clearly understand something when a lifetime of bias and what not is garbling your perception. I've done a lot of therapy and I'm familiar with the process of taking some time to let it sink in and become clearer to me what I'm looking at as opposed to what I'm projecting onto it.

ivan_gammel 5y ago

This reminds me of people in Soviet Union who chose to write “Russian” as their ethnicity in passport despite different ancestry (yes, there was such section in Soviet and later Russian passports until 1990s). Indigenous people of Siberia or Caucasus, Germans and Jews too familiar of ethnic prejudices were redefining their identity to open career opportunities. You could take either ethnicity of your father or your mother, being Russian was often considered the safest bet.

causi 5y ago

I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied Speaking as someone who is also 1/32, same as you, people like us need to stop pretending having a sliver of genetic material somehow entitles us to a "cultural heritage". 1/32 is five generations. That's three percent. For comparison, the average European-American's DNA is 3.5% African. White people are blacker than you and me are Native American.

vanderZwan 5y ago
I think mixing of socially constructed races and genetic ethnicities is a recipe for disaster. The only thing the latter is good for IMO is to highlight how the former is a social construct. With that in mind, tying cultural heritage to "where did my close ancestors come from" seems like a more sensible approach than genetic percentages, since that actually connects to a social context. Having said that, cherry picking one out of thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents over the thirty-one others sounds pretty absurd. But I'm not from North America so I probably miss some social context to understand the logic behind that.
- causi 5y ago
  But I'm not from North America so I probably miss some social context to understand the logic behind that. It's a combinational effect of many minor causes stacking upon one another. People wanting to feel special. The feeling modern society is destroying the world and the sense Native American culture is the opposite of that. The mild but persistent impression that white heritage isn't something to celebrate or positively self-identify with.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    What exactly is "white heritage" anyway? It only brings to mind white supremacy to me. But I do celebrate my Finnish heritage, as well as my Irish and English ancestry.
    - krapp 5y ago
      "white" as a claim of culture or heritage, only exists in the context of white supremacy. The concept of "whiteness" was invented during the days of the slave trade as a means of establishing racial classification and hierarchy - to contrast the superior "white" race with inferior "non-white" races, which is why it traditionally excluded people like the Irish and Italians, along with the obvious African peoples traded as slaves, who unlike the former groups can never "ascend" to "whiteness" no matter how much political or cultural capital they accumulate. In the modern day, it has lost much of its explicitly racist connotations (except, obviously, when explicitly used in the original context by racists,) but just tends to mean "a person who looks white (until proven otherwise)" or "of European descent," the former of which isn't really related to culture, and the latter being so vague as to be useless as a cultural referent.

wombatmobile 5y ago

> It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to admit to being part Native. More people are proud to proclaim being First Nations people.

jboynyc 5y ago

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

pram 5y ago

I mean maybe he never said anything because it's so tangential. My family is from Mexico and I'm 1/4th native. I've literally never heard anyone mention anything about it because it's practically meaningless. It doesn't afford any special treatment in the US, and DEFINITELY not in Mexico. The only tribe I ever hear this brought up about is Cherokee lol

coldtea 5y ago

>I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically. At something like the 1/16th level, it doesn't mean anything anyway (not even to white supremacists, but much less so as a real heritage). A heritage is the shared experiences, raising, and cultural connection, not about some miniscule bloodline/dna. Unless we're talking about isolated inter-breeding populations, almost all people several 1/16ths of one or another ethnicity, that they have absolutely no connection with in any way (or ever cared about).

RHSeeger 5y ago
You seem to be mistaking "I want to know about the history of the people I come from" for "I want to know how the history of the people I come from impacts my everyday life". It's entirely possible to be curious your ancestry because it's part of the long path that leads to you existing.
shkkmo 5y ago
I don't generally talk about my 1/32nd heritage, but there is a photograph of my great great great grandmother on the wall of my parents' house and I grew up with it there. Your dismissive attitude is entirely inappropriate. I think it is commendable to be interested in learning about the parts of your family history that may have been suppressed out of racism or fear or racist retaliation.
- Thiez 5y ago
  Was it really suppressed? I literally couldn't tell you anything about any of my great great grandparents, and the only thing I know about my great grandparents is that two of them used to own a bakery. I don't know any of their names. Sometimes history is just forgotten without any nefarious reasons, it's just stuff that doesn't matter anymore and the people it's about are long dead.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Different families and people place different priorities on passing those stories along. I personally had the good fortune of having one great grandmother who lived long enough for me to have many memories of her. I'm also lucky that other people in my family have taken the time to document many of tge stories that I don't know. There are many reasons why these stories aren't passd on (often is is just that younger generations don't ask enough questions) but there is no reason not to take Doreen at her word about why her didn't talk about that part of the family tree much. There certainly is no call to belittle people's interest in their heritages and family history, especially when they could learn stories about their family history that might be lost. I sincerely advise to to ask any older living relatives to tell you what they can about your great grandparents (and consider recording those stories). You might not care now, but those stories do disappear with time and you or future generations of your family could find them very valuable.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

It's not the 1/<big number> that annoys people. It's the "claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc)" part that annoys people. And when someone is called out for this the inevitable response is "blood quantum is deeply offensive" crap which misses the whole point. If you sever ties with a culture for many generations you cease to be that culture. Someone who's great^N granddaddy banged a slave is no more African than an Nth generation American is <insert European culture here>

cat199 5y ago
> Someone who's great^N granddaddy banged a slave is ... the great grandchild of a slave? if that were me i'd have many questions about the situation and how it impacted the next generation, etc. this is the problem with dismissal - it facilitates or accelerates the process of suppressing the history.

xdennis 5y ago

> a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum Not to be too rude about it, but everybody outside the US hates it. Go to any European forum and see how they roll their eyes when an American says "I'm half Irish, quarter Norwegian and 342/2636ths Italian." There's a tendency to treat ethnicity as a clothing accessory rather than a culture.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gambiter 5y ago
There's a reason for people to hate it... it's a tool used for something similar to genocide, only instead of killing the individuals (like they did in the past) it is used to reduce the population out of existence over time. To get benefits as a tribal member, you need to have a blood quantum over a certain amount. That means native populations are guaranteed to shrink because there are fewer and fewer 'full bloods'. It's also incredibly racist, when you get down to it. Does a white person need to be able to trace their lineage to claim they are white, or any other race, for that matter? When you talk to Cherokee people, most of them are very clear that if you are part of the Cherokee culture, you're Cherokee. Throughout history, they have 'adopted' people of other races into their tribes, and those people married and had children. If an adopted white man married and adopted white woman, their children would be considered full blood, regardless of their skin color. So from a Cherokee perspective (and I assume any tribes that behaved similarly) the measure of a Cherokee is whether they are a part of the Cherokee culture, rather than what their genealogy shows.

donovanallen 5y ago

How do you go about learning more? I'm trying to do the same

DoreenMichele 5y ago
I follow Natives on Twitter and by far I mostly read rather than engage. It's hard to figure out how to publicly engage with someone I don't know on what is inevitably a touchy subject, so I try hard to not be one of those white assholes making demands. I try to listen and absorb instead of inserting myself. But I feel like listening to actual Natives is one of the better things I can do to learn about Natives. I follow some Reddits. I read articles. I keep notes and periodically try to do a little writing for my own edification, to help me process the info. Because there are two parts to the equation: someone "talking" and someone listening and it can be hard to clearly understand something when a lifetime of bias and what not is garbling your perception. I've done a lot of therapy and I'm familiar with the process of taking some time to let it sink in and become clearer to me what I'm looking at as opposed to what I'm projecting onto it.