Linda
12-18-2001, 08:03 PM
In conversation with a friend of mine the subject of recognition came up, with the usual problem of how recognition seems to involve people becoming distanced and divided. He's a tremendously knowledgeable genealogists/historian and I thought his response was very useful. Here's the gist of it.
...if anybody is upset about not getting membership in a group applying for state or federal recognition they need a major reality check. NONE of the groups with federal petitions pending are allowing ANYONE to join whose ancestors haven't lived in the core communities in recent times (say, since the early 20th century). As you correctly surmise, this is due to the BIA's FAP criteria. One of their big sticks these days--used to bludgeon would-be tribes--is this question of ongoing "community," which for the BIA is intensively geographically based. Even groups like the Miami remnant in Indiana--whose pedigree is indisputable; I mean, they still had native speakers up until the 1950s--have been denied recognition on the basis that they are no longer a functional "tribe," rather a loose collection of scattered tribal descendants. Admitting anyone from another geographical area would severely curtail any chance any group ever had of state or federal recognition under present FAP guidelines. Similar angry complaints have been lodged against the Haliwa, Meherrin, etc. I've encountered a descendant from one of these groups, now living in the Midwest, whose folks left North Carolina in the 1840s. He is very angry that the tribe in question won't admit him; he doesn't seem to understand that here we have two (at least two) very different, competing ideas of "community." His sense--that is, wanting to validate his understanding of his own identity through tribal "membership"--is in fact a threat to the tribe's sense, which involves trying to get that same general sense of validation via the BIA. All of which is very unfortunate and demoralizing, as you point out; but it's yet another chapter of the story of how idea about "Indians" and "Indianness" exist, evolve, are imposed from above, rise up from below, etc.
[This message has been edited by Linda (edited 12-18-2001).]
...if anybody is upset about not getting membership in a group applying for state or federal recognition they need a major reality check. NONE of the groups with federal petitions pending are allowing ANYONE to join whose ancestors haven't lived in the core communities in recent times (say, since the early 20th century). As you correctly surmise, this is due to the BIA's FAP criteria. One of their big sticks these days--used to bludgeon would-be tribes--is this question of ongoing "community," which for the BIA is intensively geographically based. Even groups like the Miami remnant in Indiana--whose pedigree is indisputable; I mean, they still had native speakers up until the 1950s--have been denied recognition on the basis that they are no longer a functional "tribe," rather a loose collection of scattered tribal descendants. Admitting anyone from another geographical area would severely curtail any chance any group ever had of state or federal recognition under present FAP guidelines. Similar angry complaints have been lodged against the Haliwa, Meherrin, etc. I've encountered a descendant from one of these groups, now living in the Midwest, whose folks left North Carolina in the 1840s. He is very angry that the tribe in question won't admit him; he doesn't seem to understand that here we have two (at least two) very different, competing ideas of "community." His sense--that is, wanting to validate his understanding of his own identity through tribal "membership"--is in fact a threat to the tribe's sense, which involves trying to get that same general sense of validation via the BIA. All of which is very unfortunate and demoralizing, as you point out; but it's yet another chapter of the story of how idea about "Indians" and "Indianness" exist, evolve, are imposed from above, rise up from below, etc.
[This message has been edited by Linda (edited 12-18-2001).]