Challenging, Defining, and Changing the Exclusivity of Blood Quantum–Based Tribal Enrollment

• In Event: Asserting Sovereignty and Self-Determination Through a Tribally Based Doctoral Cohort

Abstract

Many Indigenous Tribes are now seeing the need to make changes to an antiquated enrollment system that continues to base Tribal Enrollment on the varying degrees of blood quantum requirements. Generations after the creation of reservations and the policies of assimilation, how are Indigenous Tribes continuing to define who is eligible for Tribal enrollment, by not basing it on blood quantum? How does removing the concept of blood quantum based tribal enrollment help Tribes continue the process of acculturation to ensure success when reviving culture, language, and the individual and distinct lifeways of their Tribal people. Do these changes continue to preserve and support the definitions of place, the idea of community, and the re-creation of our Tribal histories for the future?

Author

• Ronee K Wopsock Pawwinnee, University of Washington - Tacoma
  Presenting Author