Those Who Belong: Identity, Family, Blood, and Citizenship among the White Earth Anishinaabeg

Abstract

Those Who Belong may well serve as encouragement for those tribes who are facing declining membership due to a constitutional requirement of a minimum one-quarter (or even one-eighth) blood quantum for enrollment. In this work Jill Doerfler explains how one group of Ojibwe, the White Earth Nation of Minnesota, faced the problem of declining numbers and exercised their sovereignty in creating a constitution that stipulated lineal descent, not blood quantum, as the sole qualification for citizenship.Finding herself excluded from citizenship in the White Earth Nation, Doerfler (2007) decided to study the problem of lineal descent versus blood quantum in her dissertation. It is a study of citizenship and identity and the foundation for this book. At first Doerfler explores the various ways in which the members of the White Earth Anishinaabeg understood identity in the early twentieth century, when Congress tried to eliminate the Indians from landownership by relegating as many as possible to the category of mixed-blood and therefore defrauding them of their allotments. The interviews of Ransom Powell play an important part in this investigation of racial ancestry, and reveal that the White Earth Anishinaabeg viewed their identity as tied to religion, economics, and kinship as well as to family and lifestyle.In the second chapter Doerfler describes how the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 put pressure on Indian nations to use blood quantum as the determinant of citizenship and to include this requirement in the new constitutions then being written. Six Minnesota groups decided to create a confederation with its own constitution, which did not specify blood quantum at that time but which in 1963 was amended by the Executive Council to require a one-quarter blood quantum. Resistance to blood quantum continued, however, especially because it deprived so many Anishinaabeg of the government assistance available to Indians.At last it was “time to take their own leadership” (61) in the matter of citizenship. Chapter 3 discusses the actual process of creating the constitution. The White Earth Nation held its first meeting to begin constitutional reform in October 2007. Doerfler was active even before the opening of the constitutional convention, writing numerous articles in the tribal newspaper educating fellow Anishinaabeg on the matter of citizenship. Traditional beliefs, values, and culture enlightened the discussions, and after three more constitutional conventions and a long working period to write the document, the proposed constitution was finally submitted to the vote of the entire nation in 2013. It was approved by nearly 80 percent.Appendix 1 is the Revised Constitution and Bylaws of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and appendix 2 is the Constitution of the White Earth Nation.