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05 Wolakota Project Video Transcripts and URLs.docx · WP-0201. Imported source record; individual Elder status and tribal affiliation are not inferred.
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Interview transcript
I think that enrollment probably started out in a really bad place because essentially…you know how we have words like “adultism”...there is a word…I’ll call it “bloodism.” And so, it was determined that to be identified as a native… and it was almost like a bloodline…that you had to be assigned a number…like a concentration camp number. And then you had to be…determined how much blood you have. It was actually a very inhumane thing to do. But as time when on in the linear world that we live in, it was tied to the land…that you couldn’t be seen as an Indian unless you had a number and you had blood quantum. And in the end result…at the end of the day, it’s not a good thing because if it’s based on blood quantum…and the way fractions work…if you marry outside of your tribe, eventually the blood quantum is going to go down…and there’s not going to be anymore. There are some literature sites that say that’s what the government intended…that eventually we would bleed out in a sense…and that we wouldn’t have blood quantum…and that the government wouldn’t have that trust responsibility. The way that the tribes are addressing that they’re turning to what they are calling “lineal descendancy” which is stating that if you can tie back to a certain ancestral role… or something will document that you were a part of that tribe…usually it’s a role…then you’re just part of that lineal descendancy…which makes more sense in the long run. And the challenges for that… that the young people that are listening to will have to figure out…is how do you tie that and layer it so that some people will be allowed to vote because they live on the reservation… and who will be allowed to and share land claims… and so that will be a very long discussion that the young people that are listening to this… especially the native young people… they’ll have to really think and pray on that. How do we end up changing that as we go forward in history?