Quinn emphasizes that the federal acknowledgment
criteria represent the definition of tribe within
the meaning of federal law. He contrasts this with
three other definitions of an Indian person—legal, genetic (or biological), and ethnic (or cultural)—giving examples
of each. He explains why some petitioning groups
in the Southeast have been turned down. They
may be extended families with Indian ancestry, rather
that true communities; or Indian descent recruitment organizations
composed of people who probably don’t know each other and whose
claim to Indian ancestry has not been questioned.
Quinn notes that the issue of triraciality
is a sensitive one for Southeastern tribes. He states that according
to the federal acknowledgment criteria, “triraciality is a non-issue”
( p. 9). He notes that, as of this writing, two triracial groups have
been recognized (from Rhode Island and from Massachusetts). Their
triraciality was dealt with directly in evaluating their petitions,
since the criteria of ancestry, distinctness, and community identification
would bring it into discussion anyway. He notes that blood quantum
was also a concern for Eastern and Southeastern groups “because
of the length of Anglo-Indian contact and the extent of miscegenation
which occurred in these regions, in contrast, for example, to the
same phenomenon in the trans-Mississippi West” (p. 268). There
is no requirement of a minimum blood quantum for federal acknowledgment.
Such a requirement was considered at one point but was abandoned because
it seemed unreasonable to require unacknowledged tribes to meet a
degree of Indian blood that many tribes which are already acknowledged
could not meet. (Quinn notes that some acknowledged tribes have members
whose degree of Indian blood is in the hundredths.) Another reason
the idea was abandoned was that having unacknowledged tribes gather
such data, and checking it, would be a research nightmare.
He concludes, “The quanta of Indian
blood in members of unacknowledged groups petitioning
for federal acknowledgment is therefore never a substantive issue
for the Branch of Acknowledgment Research, regardless of its relatively
small percentages in various petitioners. The issue is perceived much differently by the American public, however, which
seems perfectly willing to accept claims of ‘full
blood,’ and which, apparently, does not realize
that as such claims increase, true full-blood Native Americans represent an ever-decreasing percentage of the
national Indian population” (p. 268).
Quinn makes some perceptive observations
on “pan-Indian” organizations, events,
and regalia. He concludes that “for those unacknowledged
groups petitioning for federal acknowledgment
which otherwise meet the criteria in 25 CFR
83, the adoption or lack of adoption of such explicit pan-Indian
forms of Indian identity is irrelevant. The petitioners with socially and politically distinct communities which
have maintained tribal cohesion since historic
times will be successful, regardless of these
trappings. Conversely, the recently formed groups with all the pan-Indian cultural fanfare will not” (pp. 270-271).
