Horse, Perry G. “Native American Identity.” New Directions for Student Services, no. 109, © Wiley Periodicals, Inc, 2005. Pp. 61-68.

In this article, Perry G. Horse, identifies and breaks down how native American acknowledgement is overrated. In today's society, it feels as if we are living in the white man's way because we have adapted to the living conditions. Although we are all born native, the recognition of being a ¨true¨ native American is based on the amount of Indian blood you have, also known as Certificate of Indian Blood. ¨Legally, Indianness is a political proposition. It is a matter of citizenship in a given tribe. However, all tribes assess one’s tribal membership eligibility based on blood quantum¨(Horse pg4), the author states this in order to emphasize the unfairness that this brings to some Natives who do not meet that blood quantum. This article also talks about the shift in cultural doings because of the impact modern society has.

Watkins, Joe E. "Background Essay." The American Mosaic: The American Indian Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2021, americanindian.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1818242. Accessed 2 Feb. 2021.

The author of this essay talks about how greed and prejudice may be two of the major causes of an unfair enrollment system. Tribes are sovereign nations, therefore they operate under their own rights. The two most common ways to determine tribal membership are having a minimum amount of Indian blood and/or to document a linear relationship to a tribal member. The idea of blood quantum became a crucial role in enrollment, your blood quantum was recorded to identify ¨how much of an indian you were¨. Tribes tend to argue that greed and power do not motivate their disenrollment proceedings. The unfairness of being sovereign is that the tribes themselves have the right to determine who their members are and the federal government cannot take action against them.

Jarvis, Brooke. "The Disenrolled." The New York Times Magazine, 22 Jan. 2017, p. 52(L). Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A478504294/AONE?u=nm_p_elportal&sid=AONE&xid=f539e9cb. Accessed 12 Mar. 2021.

This article talks about how one family was unfairly disenrolled from the Nooksack Nation of Washington. Tyler St. Germain had enrolled his 5 children in the nation. After a few months of the application not going through, St. Germain contacted the council and found out that ancestors were incorrectly identified. This resulted in the thought of Terry´s children claims to tribal membership could be substantiated. Chairman, Bob Kelly, decided to do some digging into the past to see where things went wrong, After searching, Kelly found reason to doubt the legitimacy of more than 300 enrolled Nooksack members related to St. Germain. The cause of the misidentification of these members was in 1983 when the Nooksack chief of the time allowed the enrollment of non native members because of marriage. ¨The new constitution restricted Nooksack membership to recipients of early land allotments, recipients of a 1965 government settlement or people who appeared on a 1942 tribal census.¨

Welch, Deborah. “Tribal Sovereignty and Governance.” Political Issues, Revised Edition, Facts On File, 2019. American Indian History, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=18626&itemid=WE43&articleId=190556. Accessed 29 Mar. 2021.

The universal theme of my topic is the unfairness that the world tends to spread not just on Native Americans, but also upon many other races and religions. The issue shared with communities across the globe is the idea of blood quantum and CIBś. The idea of these came from the Supreme Court and the Nations and Tribes themselves decided to enforce it more throughout the years. This is how they determined who could be enrolled or not. Centuries of U.S. government separating Natives from their tribes has resulted in a large number of people claiming to hold Indian blood. My community, Santa Clara Pueblo, is not doing much to address this issue. Instead, they are enforcing these enrollment requirements and being unfair towards many families. The main obstacle that is in the way of changing the unfairness of this enrollment system is the opinion of other Native families who think they are high and mighty.