A young man was riding the subway in New York City when an older white man jumped on the train in Harlem. As the train made its way through the city, the young man felt the white man's eyes on him. The white man stared, saying nothing, until eventually the sheer awkwardness prompted the young man to greet the stranger.
The young man was Gyasi Ross, a now 42-year-old Native American man and citizen of the Blackfeet nation located in northwest Montana. He was in school at the time and wore his dark hair in braids and sported a beard.
The white man asked Ross if he was Native American. When Ross said he was, the man responded: "I thought so, but Native Americans can't grow facial hair."
All too often, white people presume to know what it means to be Native American, according to Ross who described this offensive incident in discussing Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Oct. 2018 release of DNA test results. Warren's test results, that showed she likely has a distant Native ancestor, have sparked a renewed conversation in Native communities around what it means to be Native American.
- Event attendee at the 2018 Pow Wow at Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles. (Photo by Arlissa Norman)
Like Warren, the strange man on the New York subway showed a remarkable lack of understanding of Native culture and identity.
"[Warren] stepped into a place that has been occupied by literally thousands of non-Native white people before her – which is to manipulate native identity," Ross said. "In that place, she positioned herself an an authority on Native identity."
After years of being called "Pocahontas" and bullied by President Donald Trump about her claims of having Native American heritage, Warren chose to take a DNA test to prove that her declarations were true. Warren grew up in Norman, Okla., and has referred to family stories that suggest Cherokee and Delaware tribal ancestry.
For Native Americans, non-Natives' claiming their heritage isn't anything new and is often seen as relatively harmless. The reason Warren's DNA test resulted in such backlash from Native American communities is because her public declaration of Native ancestry was interpreted as an attempt to use that identity to challenge legitimate citizens.
"It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven," said Chuck Hoskin Jr., the Cherokee Nation Secretary of State, in a statement published by the Washington Post.
Warren used ancestry as a campaign prop, according to Ross. "[Ancestry] is literally one of the most intimate parts of being Native, however people define. There's a lot of different views on how you define Native identity."
Before apologizing for releasing DNA test results that showed she has distant Native American ancestors, Warren told The New York Times, "I put it out there. It's on the internet for anybody to see. People can make of it what they will. I'm going to continue fighting on the issues that brought me to Washington."
Although Warren did not claim to be a citizen of any particular Native Nation, her approach alienated Native Americans from an important conversation about Native identity – an issue she will have to readdress since announcing her presidential campaign in 2018.
Not all Native Americans were upset by Warren's Native identity claims. Norbert Hill, a citizen of Oneida Nation, has a different view. Hill, a co-author of the anthology, The Great Vanishing Act: Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations, says that he's actually thankful for Elizabeth Warren's DNA test.
"What she claimed was Indian ancestry, but it didn't prove citizenship," Hill said. "What happened is that it provided a deep conversation in Indian country about DNA, about blood quantum, about sovereignty, and about belonging. We're not members of a club, we're citizens of a nation."
- Event goer at the 2018 Pow Wow at Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles. (Photo by Arlissa Norman)
Blood quantum is a method of measuring how much Native DNA a person has. A byproduct of colonialism, this system of identification was implemented at the turn of the 20th century by the U.S. government. Native Americans had to be able to prove they met the required blood quantums standards to be eligible to enroll in a federally recognized tribe.
Calculated using Native American census records from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, individuals can trace their lineage to their ancestors listed on those documents, often referred to as "rolls." An individual's blood quantum is calculated based on how many generations removed they are from the originally documented family member.
Hill referenced a quote from Anthony Higgins, a U.S. Senator from 1889 to 1895.
"It seems to me one of the ways of getting rid of the Indian question is just this of intermarriage, and the gradual fading out of the Indian blood; there is then every reason why they shall go and take their place as white people do everywhere," Higgins said during a congressional testimony in 1895. According to Hill, blood quantum was a tool that was intended to "terminate us."
Today, many tribes still use blood quantum as the standard qualifier of Native American identity, but some recognize that this method of determining tribal affiliation is not sustainable.
Every so many years, all the Comanche grandmothers get together to discuss lowering the blood quantum requirements when they realize that their grandchildren won't be eligible for tribal enrollment," says Laura Harris, executive director of Americans of Indian Opportunity. If the tribe doesn't figure out a different way of identifying their citizens, it's estimated they they will disappear by the year 2050, Harris said in a phone interview.
"It was full-blood, then it was half, and then it was a quarter, now it's one eighth, which is wonderful because that means my son can be on the rolls. He's part Inuit and Comanche, but now my 3-year-old granddaughter is not going to be eligible," Harris said. "So it's going to be my generation that is going to have to figure out what we do."
Not all Native American tribes use blood quantum. Other nations have chosen to use lineage as a definitive way to identify members of their tribe. Cherokee Nation along with the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole tribes, specifically use documents called the Dawes Rolls. The process of classification is unlike those faced by any other American.
"One of the most frustrating things that I encounter when people are talking about tribal enrollment is that they compare us to dogs, horses, and our pedigree. You're like a dog in that you have to prove all this ancestry," said David Cornsilk, a genealogical researcher, historian and citizen of Cherokee nation.
Similar to blood quantum, the Dawes Rolls were created by the American government in 1898. These systems imposed by the U.S. government have caused confusion amongst Native American peoples about their own identity.
"When the United States created the Dawes Rolls, it assigned blood quantum and converted us from a people of citizenship to a people of blood," Cornsilk said. "We've had over 100 years of the federal government telling us we're defined by a fraction and that's not how the Cherokees ever saw themselves."
Although Cherokees were well documented prior to its establishment, the Dawes Rolls has remained the gold standard for determining tribal membership. To gain membership you have to be able to present birth and death records tracing your ancestry back to an individual listed on the rolls. Proving any measurement of blood quantum is not a requirement.
There are more than 500 federally recognized tribes. Unlike identifying with a particular race or ethnic group, Native identity is a political one and each Native nation operates with the political autonomy to determine tribal membership and belonging for itself.
- Event goer at the 2018 Pow Wow at Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles. (Photo by Arlissa Norman)
"You might see Native people disagree. This person believes in blood quantum. This person believes in a DNA and that's all fine because those people are Native people and they are empowered, emboldened, and have standing to even have a voice," said Ross. "That's an internal conversation, but it's none of non-Native people's business whatsoever. That's 100 percent our concern."
Conversations around defining Native American identity were already being discussed within the Native American community. However, Warren's DNA test revived the sense of urgency for Native peoples to take control of the narrative and define Native American identity for themselves.
"I hate to say this and admit it," Cornsilk said, "but [Warren] was a sacrificial lamb to get this issue off of high center and to bring it to Indian country in a way that they could see it and understand it."