Nez Perce tribal members to vote on blood quantum

Members of the Nez Perce Tribe are scheduled to vote on a constitutional amendment this week that is central to tribal identity and membership.

At the conclusion of the General Council meeting that started Thursday and wraps up Saturday, tribal election officials will tally votes on an amendment that, if approved, will eliminate the blood quantum requirement for tribal membership and in its place adopt a system of lineal descent.

Today, the tribe’s constitution requires people to be at least one-quarter Nez Perce to be an official member. If the amendment passes by a two-thirds margin, people may enroll if they can show they are directly descended from a member of the tribe — or put another way, that they have any Nez Perce blood, no matter the quantum. Enrolled members are able to participate in tribal government, receive tribal services and exercise rights reserved in the Nez Perce treaties of 1855 and 1863.

Blood quantum is a contentious and emotional issue that legally defines what it means to be Nez Perce. But supporters of the amendment that arose out of last spring’s General Council meeting say it doesn’t take into account a person’s cultural or family connections to the tribe.

“Blood quantum should not define our identities as Indian people. We have people who might not meet (the blood quantum requirement), who are giving back, who are going to ceremony, speaking the language, going to powwows, helping out elders,” Derek Red Arrow said. “We have people out there doing that, who are part of the community, who are truly Indian in every sense of the word but don’t meet the blood quantum requirement.”

Red Arrow, an enrolled member of the Nez Perce tribe and attorney at Yakima specializing in federal Indian law and treaty rights, said the blood quantum threshold was established by cookie-cutter constitutions the federal government pressured tribal nations to adopt through the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

But government-recognized enrollment dates back to the Dawes Act of 1887. The legislation was designed to break up reservations by privatizing land held in common by individual tribes and also facilitate the assimilation of tribal people into the society and culture of white settlers.

To acquire an allotment of what was once communal land, tribal members had to register by entering their names on “Dawes rolls.” Those who did, received parcels averaging between 40 and 160 acres. Land that was left over was often sold to settlers by the U.S. government.

A secondary aim was to turn tribal members into farmers. But they were sometimes given the poorest quality land available while the best parcels were set aside to be sold to settlers.

Many tribal members had little desire to farm the land, lacked the means or the land was untillable. As a result, many of them ended up selling or losing their land, and the Dawes Act is now viewed as having been extraordinarily harmful to tribes and tribal people.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ended the allotment process and for many tribes ushered in the system of blood quantum. Red Arrow, who does not work for or represent the Nez Perce Tribal government, said Congress, through the act, retained the goal of assimilation or making Indian people “more white.”

“They developed IRA constitutions and said ‘hey tribes, you know all those things we promised you back in the day, we would like to give them to you now. We know we have lied to you for a long time but if you sign this document, it’s called a constitution. It’s going to set up a government. Review it, sign it and pass it. Once you do that we can engage with you in a more legitimate way. ’”

The Nez Perce Tribe adopted the constitutional form of government that included the one-quarter blood quantum requirement for membership. Chantel Greene said blood quantum is a construct of the federal government that, by design, attached a shelf life to tribes.

“The government placed tribes with the blood quantum, fractionated system that at the end of the day was meant to separate, divide, destroy and take — and it’s done its job, unfortunately,” she said. “But we have the ability to affect change and that is through voting, through self determination, to exercise our own rights and how we want our community to be and how we take care of our community.”

Fast forward 90 years and the fear that the blood quantum requirement would diminish tribal ranks is starting to play out. Greene, a former member of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee who with Red Arrow has led the drive to change the constitution, said 98 percent of the tribe’s 3,500 members are mixed.

“So there is 2% (of tribal members) that can be identified as four-fourths (Nez Perce),” she said. “Down to the numbers there are only like 70 left and the youngest is, like, 35. So being able to continue with our bloodline with this fractionated system was not ever going to happen and that was the intent.”

Through intermarriage with non-Indian people and marriage between people of differing tribes, there is an increasing number of young people who fall short. Red Arrow said those people, including his own daughter, are often immersed in tribal life and culture but can’t join.

“We have Nez Perce blood, Klamath blood and Yurok blood. She is Indian but does not have enough blood of one tribe to be enrolled in any tribe. Regardless, she is powwow royalty at the Seafair Powwow,” he said. “She makes regalia with me. She goes to ceremony. She goes to the reservation and cleans grave sites. I have assigned readings to her on the tribe’s history. She understands it. She gets it. For her to be told ‘you don’t belong’ is so crazy and she is just one story. There are thousands of these stories across the country, not just in our tribe.”

Greene said the tribe can now use the constitution to define for itself what it means to be Nez Perce.

“This is the ultimate way to exercise our sovereignty, to get out and vote, and for us to self determine what we see fit for our community,” she said.

Some people agree the blood quantum requirement needs to change but think the proposed amendment goes too far. Eric Holt, chairperson of the Tribes Fish and Wildlife Commission, said there are too many unknowns for him to support it.

“More data is needed for tribal members to make a change of this magnitude,” he said. “I think there is a different way and a better way for the Nez Perce to go forward.”

For example, Holt contemplated a change that would allow people to count not only their Nez Perce ancestry but also ancestry of other tribes that speak Sahaptin languages, which includes tribes of the Columbia Plateau and other parts of the Northwest, to qualify for the blood quantum.

“At one point in time we all spoke the same language. We were all connected,” he said.

Holt and others question how bringing more people into the tribe will affect the availability of services and the management of resources that treaty rights like hunting and fishing are based on.

Red Arrow counters that the tribe can structure the future enrollment process any way it wants. He said some tribes that have made the change from blood quantum to lineal descent have opened enrollment for a set amount of time, like two to five years, during which nonmembers who meet the new requirement can apply. After that period, open enrollment closes and then only the children of tribal members can apply for enrollment.

Greene noted that services like medical care through Nimiipuu Health are already available to tribal people even if they are not enrolled members and Red Arrow said a lot of funding is passed on to tribes through grants that are based on population.

“So the more members a tribe can claim, the more money it can claim,” he said.

Voting, which runs from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, is open to enrolled members who are at least 18 years old. Polling places will be set up Saturday at the Pi-Nee-Waus in Lapwai, the Wa-A’Yas Community Center in Kamiah and the Teweepuu Community Center in Orofino. Absentee ballots must be received or placed in a drop box by 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.