Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 7-20-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor
7-20-12  
Robert C. Juneau   

To the Editor: 
The Blood Quantum is rooted in English Common Law and Sceintific Racism yet many 
Native Americans continue to believe it comes from Native Tradition. Authors John Rockwell 
Snowden, Wayne Tyndall and David Smith say in their Nebraska Law Review article entitled 
American Indian Sovereignty and Naturalization: It's a Race Thing on Page 175,"Descent and 
blood quantum are a particularly European fascination used most often to justify and maintain 
the oppression of others. Like colonialism, its hand-maiden, racism is generally prohibited among 
the world's nations. As a result: [S]ubterfuge designed to create false appearances are an essential aspect of maintaining and perfecting the order of colonial rule. Hence, it is necessary for the colonizer not merely to preempt the sovereignty of the colonized, but to co-opt it, inculcating a comprador consciousness among some segment of the subaltern population in which the forms of dominion imposed by colonization will be advocated as a self-determining expression of will emanating from the colonized themselves. Paul Spruhan in his South Dakota Law Review article entitled A Legal History of Blood Quantum In Federal Indian Law To 1935 said on Page 4,"To understand the federal use of blood quantum, it is important to recognize its antecedents. The use of fractional amounts of blood to describe ancestry long predates the question of mixed-race ancestry. An ancient rule of English common law distinguishes between "whole blood" and "half blood" relatives for purposes of inheritance." One of the earliest examples of Blood Quantum Law is a 1705 Virginia Statute that defined a Mulatto as being the child of a Indian or the child, grandchild, or great-grandchild of a African-American. On Page 5 Spruhan says Virginia defined Indian as being,"every person, not a colored person, having one-fourth or more of Indian blood." When slaves began to file emancipation suits in state courts claiming a maternal free white or Indian ancestor state courts applied a common law rule known as partus sequitor ventrem or the offspring follows the mother and granted them freedom. Later partus sequitor patrem would be applied and according to Spruhan on Page 23,"would become the most important test for the status of mixed-bloods up to the beginning of the twentieth century." The patrem rule, as it was called, says those who have a non-Indian paternal ancestor are non-Indian. Then the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act came to define who was a Indian for those tribes who accepted it. The reality is the Blackfeet have one of the 
strongest treaties with the United States Government and do not have to accept Blood Quantum 
as a Enrollment Criteria if they do not want to. But for those who would rush to embrace it 
I would say go take a look at what the Blood Quantum really means and the History of where 
it came from.