What does the future hold for a growing mixed-blood population?
A good, brief overview of the tribal enrollment process and it’s complexities and challenges for Indian Country.
Native scholars have asserted that as ‘American Indian’ people, we occupy a liminal status in the United States, neither fully part of the status quo or apart from it, due to our tribal ‘sovereignty’ or government-to-government relationship with the feds. Additionally, as ‘American Indians’ we are held to a system of federal enumeration, often on the basis of blood quantum for membership into a tribe. If we meet the respective benchmarks of our tribe’s enrollment criteria, we are granted the ‘esteemed’ Certificate of Indian Blood (CIB) or tribal enrollment card along with a census number. We are the only segment of the American population that requires proof that we are ethnically who we say we are.