idk what traumatized or mentally ill person needs to hear this but dreams (especially the really disturbing ones you dont want to talk about to anybody) arent some deep peek into your psyche or a sign of your True Desires or whatever theyre quite literally your brain making fruit salad with whatever it can find on the shelf. just putting all that shit in a blender and hitting obliterate. its fine, youre fine, youre not a weirdo for it
Actually forget what I said. This dream is more important than anything
Blood quantum is how much native blood you have in you and it needs to be a certain threshold to qualify you as a tribal member. Blood quantum varies from tribe to tribe.
It means my mom is a tribal member but because my dad is outside of my tribe… I don’t have enough tribal blood to enroll. Neither does my daughter. Our “official” indigeneity ended with me.
My dad is still native tho. Just southern native. Others have two parents enrolled in separate tribes and can’t enroll in either one despite being Full native because their parents were mixed with other tribes so they don’t have enough blood of Any tribe to qualify.
And to what end are they doing this?
Under the treaties the US govt can lay no claim to native land. So how do they fix that? Get rid of the natives, of course.
And since they can’t slaughter us in broad daylight anymore they did the next best thing. What the colonial government has ALWAYS done to us and other poc.
Made up a bunch of arbitrary laws to restrain and limit our power and numbers.
And this can’t continue. We are the only race who needs to apply to be part of the community we were born into. The only race who needs to prove our blood.
And that’s the thing: it’s not even based on blood. Racist scientists defined who was a full-blooded native based on things like shoe size, head circumference, and skin pigment.
Not blood. And besides that it wasn’t uncommon for outsiders to become part of a tribe!! You didn’t need to be native by blood to be native! Blood quantum has made it IMPOSSIBLE for them to qualify and made it impossible for tribes to practice that long time aspect of our culture.
So please share this post. So many people legitimately think natives are extinct and even less are aware that we do more than just sit around drinking all day. Few people have good feelings about us and within that there are a few who actively help. Please be one of those few.
We need support and allies and for our voices to be heard. Please don’t let this post just be me screaming into a void. We need people to know what blood quantum is, how archaic and harmful it is, and to help us spread awareness to people who otherwise would ignore us. Use your privilege.
At the center of this is blood quantum, the system imposed by the U.S. government to determine tribal membership. A new Wilder Foundation Research study projects that unless there is a major change to the criteria, Red Lake, like many tribes across the nation, faces catastrophic population loss in coming years.
Wilder Research scientist Nicole MartinRogers is blunt about what’s ahead for the Red Lake Nation.
“A tribal population that is right now about 16,000, is going to drop to 1,000 people potentially or under in the next 100 years, if they continue to maintain their current enrollment criteria of one-quarter blood quantum,” she said. “That’s a pretty scary thing.”
blood quantum was designed to eliminate native americans while the one drop rule was intended to keep african americans slaves in perpetuity
“but you can’t Really be Native, you look white!!!” yeah dumbasses, and why exactly do you think Natives might have a lot of descendants who have white features? it’s infuriating how so many non-natives will act like they have the right to determine who among us deserves to be called native without question. it’s infuriating how so many gd taibo feel entitled to looking at natives who don’t “look like natives” and think they have the privilege of deciding whether or not i’m native enough/not native enough for them. race is just a social construct until it’s suddenly inconvenient because you can’t judge someone’s race by glancing at them. white-passing people of color are legitimate and valid until people think they’re “too white”. it’s all just the same bullshit wrapping itself up in different language.
Kind of hard to believe there was once a time where a legitimate genre of post was “my mom says if this gets 2k notes she’ll buy me a doughnut” and everyone would just. go ham
I vote we revive this shit.
Y’all, if this post gets 2k notes I’ll buy my own damned self a doughnut.
Y’know what? Yes.
If this hits 24k by the time I wake up on 21 June 2023, I’ll get myself a dozen. And a big ol’ coffee to go with them.
