How much "native" blood is in you?

NOTE: I'm not too sure on cultural protocol on Indigenous issues in other countries so please forgive me if i unintentionally offend anyone.

Over the past few days, I have become extremely obsessed with learning about American Indians and First Nations people. It’s so interesting to read about other Indigenous peoples in first world countries and compare them with Australia. From what I can see, although Australia is by far the worst in relation to their treatment of Aboriginal people, it isn’t much better in America and Canada.

But one of the main things I’ve been interested in is how people in these countries claim their identity as Indigenous peoples. In Australia, it is considered racist to label anyone full blood or half caste or two/eights Aboriginal. It’s just not done because it’s no ones place to determine your identity. I remember when the Herald Sun’s controversial and extremely right winged columnist, Andrew Bolt, took pen to paper in attacking the Aboriginal Camp Sovereignty at the Melbourne Commonwealth games, he made the comment that a fair amount of the people protesting Aboriginal rights were barely even tanned – implying that they were not real Aboriginal people.

He’s wrong of course. To be Aboriginal you must satisfy the criteria.

1. You must have Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage (that’s a given)
2. You must recognize yourself as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.
3. You must be recognized by the community as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.

So by the criteria, you could have a grandma who is Aboriginal and the rest of your family be white – if you are recognized by the community as being such you can claim your Aboriginality (or Torres Strait Islander). So there are a lot of pale Aboriginal people out there and most of the Tasmanian Aboriginals are that way – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t Aboriginal.

But in the good old US of A and beautiful Canada (yes, I have a weakness for Canada), it seems to be vastly different.

The United States Department of Justice says an American Indian or an Alaskan native is “is a person who is of some degree Indian blood and is recognized as an Indian by a Tribe and/or the United States. No single federal or tribal criterion establishes a person's identity as an Indian.” So it draws a lot of parallels to Australia about how to determine an Indigenous person.

But what I found so amazing when I was looking more into it, was the different scholarships and benefits available to Indigenous peoples based on their percentage of Indian blood. For example, on the website FinAid – which is a public service website aiming to provide correct financial advice to students – eligibility for different things seems to be divided into the amount of Indian blood which is in you.

Examples include:

“Native American students with at least 50% Indian blood who were born in Canada are eligible for Title IV federal student aid under the jurisdiction of the Jay Treaty of 1794, subsequent treaties, and US Immigration Law. They are not required to obtain documentation from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).”

“Students who are more than 1/4 Indian blood should be eligible for Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) scholarships. BIA/OIEP funds may only be awarded to a person who is a member of a federally recognized Native American tribe.”

Besides that, I have read a lot about American Indians who proudly proclaim themselves full blood or “3/4” etc.

It’s interesting to me because I can safely say if I were to come out and say my friend is only 1/8th Aboriginal, it’s fair to say that I would be chastised. To me and many others it seems completely disrespectful and racist. I wondered why it was ok to say it in America and Canada and not here.

I think all of what I think is summed up in these few paragraphs here from a report on Aboriginal identity.

“11.12.4 No area of research and commentary by non-Aboriginal people has such potential to cause offence as does that which attempts to define 'Aboriginality '. This determination of non-Aboriginal people to categorise and divide Aboriginal people is resented for many reasons, but principally, I suspect, because the worst experiences of assimilation policies and the most long term emotional scars of those policies relate directly to non-Aboriginal efforts to define 'Aboriginality' and to deny to those found not to fit the definition, the nurture of family, kin and culture. To Aboriginal people there appears to be a continuing aggression evident in such practices. Coral Edwards poses the question which would be familiar to many Aboriginal people.

How many times have I heard said, 'How can you really consider yourself an Aboriginal person when you had a white father, or if you've got white blood in you?' You cop it all the time from white Australians and l just say to them, 'Look, you are what you are and I am what I am. I'm an Aboriginal person. What are you?' 'I'm an Australian', they say. But what are they really? What are white Australians? They're always questioning our identity and we always have to prove our Aboriginality, but when have white Australians ever proved their identity?

11.12.5 McCorquodale has recorded that since the time of white settlement there have been 'no less than 67 identifiable classifications, descriptions or definitions' used by governments to determine who was an Aboriginal person. 133

11.12.6 From the late 1960s the world has seen a resurgence of ethnicity. It has also seen a resurgence of Aboriginality, based mainly in the Americas and Australasia, but manifesting itself globally as the Fourth World.

Governments who had been left free for generations to exterminate Indigenous cultures and even Indigenous peoples in the name of progress, have found that they must now answer to opinion in the advanced liberal democracies which see virtue in supporting Indigenous rights. Although the changes are not always so marked on the ground, the new pluralism does recognise in principle the right of Indigenous peoples, not only to maintain cultural difference, but also to recover some of what was lost under previous regimes, including those members who were lost through displacement and assimilation. Indeed, once Indigenous peoples began to raise their voices in national political life, leadership has come from precisely these elements, since it is they who have the skills required to engage with the State. Thus, while there has been a revival of Indigenous tradition, the Indigenous community has become more diverse, particularly when viewed nationally.”


So I’m left wondering why Indigenous peoples in the Americas can classify themselves by the amount of Aboriginal blood in them? It’s something I’m really curious about because I’m sure non-Indigenous people would have done horrible things to them as well (for example, the withholding of wages) and tried to classify them as something they weren’t in the same vein as Australian Aboriginal people. Hopefully someone can explain it to me? Is it just the cultural divide and the different histories? Surely there wouldn’t be too many variables?

Luv Amy

P.S. This came about from reading a blog denouncing Rudy Youngblood’s Native American blood. The author had the nerve to even describe him as Rudy No blood. To me this is one of the most racist and disrespectful nick names I have ever heard, especially considering it isn’t coming from a white person, but a proud Native American man. Go figure.