Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 10-13-13

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor  
10-13-13
Robert C. Juneau 

To the Editor:  
In order to be truly sovereign a tribe must define for itself what 
criteria to use for it's membership.  Nations do not decide for 
other Nations what the content for their membership criteria 
should be.  Only the colonized have their membership criteria 
decided for them by a outside power.  Recently I was reading 
an article called A Closer Look At Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez:  
Membership By Sex, By Race, And By Tribal Tradition by 
Lucy A. Curry published in the Wisconsin Women's Law 
Journal and on page 190 it says,"However entrenched in 
ideologies was the subordination of races during colonization, 
"racial lines were neither consistently nor sharply delineated 
among or within all social groups." "The social meanings and 
legal entitlements that were breathed into racial identity in the 
race trials of the nineteenth-century South provide a context 
in which to illuminate the similarities between the ways in which 
Anglo-American whites have historically tried to preserve their 
racial purity and privilege and the ways in which Congress has 
and still does establish criteria for the requisite "Indian-ness." 
On page 162 Curry says,"Accounting for the ancestry and 
blood quantum of an individual to define one's identity has a 
long, disastrous history in U.S. law.  While it is unclear when 
the importance of blood quantum gained acceptance among 
certain Indian tribes, the federal government has pressed for 
its use as an organizational tool since the General Allotment 
Act of 1887." Curry goes on to say on page 194,"The legislative 
obsession with ancestry marked the beginning of the statutory 
regime of blood quantum, whereby "Indian" status was codified 
as a racial identity, not a political identity." The Blackfeet people 
as a whole should decide what criteria they want to use for 
Enrollment.  I believe the Blackfeet Enrollment Amendment 
Reform (BEAR) Petition gives our people a chance to do this 
and I encourage all Enrolled Blackfeet to sign it.