The focus on this article is demographics, but the most important things to tribes are our language, culture, and tribal sovereignty. We are not a box on a census form and never will be.
We are pre-Constitutional sovereigns, recognized by our treaties with the U.S. and Canada. States like Michigan might force our teachers get "foreign language certificates," despite the fact that Michigan is a word from our language[0], but my children speak their language and our culture are pillars of strength and stability in our family. Blood quanta, problems of race in America, what to call us -- that's not our focus.
This trend was noticed in the most recent census. Home DNA tests sold by the likes of Ancestry and 23andme are a contributing factor.
“We find that people who have taken a [mail in ancestry test] are not only more likely to self-identify as multiracial, they are particularly likely to select three or more races,” Johfre said. These differences were most pronounced for middle-age adults, which means the U.S. multiracial population would be growing because of more than just new births, the researchers noted.
Does this mean those are random "1/16th native american" WASPs and such, that claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc) with native americans?
Because that's quite different than Native Americans actually increasing as demographic groups...
It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to admit to being part Native.
My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood quantum -- and a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum, but that's probably more than people here want to know -- and I grew up in a house in the 'burbs bought the summer I turned three with his military mortgage benefits.
In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
He never said much about his Native heritage. I think he did so to be white-passing in a world where lynchings still happened.
I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically.
Dismissing the interest in their heritage of people like me is just more erasure of Natives and Native culture. It actively reinforces racism in subtle ways. The subtlety helps make it insidious and hard to combat, unfortunately.
> Does this mean those are random "1/16th native american" WASPs and such, that claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc) with native americans?
In the theory under which “race” is meaningful, it is biological and distinct from (and orthogonal to) social “ethnic” categories, so claiming race on that basis is exactly as valid as the idea of race itself.
Now, if we admit that “race” is just a dishonest label assigned to certain ethnic categories...
I’m 90% sure future historians will look back on this race to four significant digits trend the way we look at Victorian numerology. Correlated to real phenomena. But self obsessed to the point of irrelevance.
People begin inquisitiveness and empathy after realizing they are part of a uniquely North American diaspora. Its really not about being a poser or trying to get an obscure scholarship. The inquisitiveness leads to finding relatives and members of a tribe thought disbanded or eradicated, reconnecting by fractional blood can lead to being eligible for recognition, land and some degrees of sovereignty.
I’d be interested to see the data. Black people are vastly more likely to have Native American DNA than WASPs because it was common until about 1750 for slave owners to buy/trade for female slaves with the Native American tribes.
Yes, quite likely. Also in order to be accurate DNA services need to have enough samples (of the group and the geographic region) to be accurate otherwise they can be misleading.
I can only speak from my observation of the tribes local to me.
In the 80s and early 90s the reservation was very poor on average (entire area is/was rural so it wasn't just on the res but it was significantly worse there). If you have ever watched the movie "Smoke signals" it has scenes shot which depict life on the local reservation (Coeur d'Alene tribe). Since the mid 90s or so things changed very rapidly for the tribe. The people are healthier, the infrastructure is better and the population seems to be growing and overall happier (again...observations).
What changed? Casinos.
Our local tribe went from being very poor with seemingly little voice in local politics to "very important" to the local community. They have not only improved their own lives but also invest heavily in improving the region and have a focus on things like the lake and natural preservation. Again...from my general observations...
Economically, casinos are a mixed bag for tribes. The ones that have been successful are super successful, but many other tribes operating casinos find themselves spending money on gaming that doesn’t pay off.
It makes a certain intuitive sense; a lot of reservation land was, unfortunately, poor land in the middle of nowhere. Building a casino in the middle of nowhere won’t do you any good, so the tribes that profit are the ones with proximity to major population centers (see: Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in CT; Winstar and Chocktaw in OK). It ends up coming down to luck and location more than anything else.
I also can only speak to the tribes near me, but casinos only help if the reservation is near people. The poorest US counties are mostly either places with a prison or a reservation, the lowest median household income is Buffalo County in South Dakota with a casino of it's own.
Without the casino opening in 1993 would they have been able to afford to gain traction on that suit?
The whole lake should be a superfund site...but that would have ruined tourism. The Silver valley has been well known and from what I know is the only area really being actively "cleaned".
Cd'a, Spokane, Kalispel and Chewelah all opened tribal casinos and a few of them did fairly well.
As others have stated...proximity to a fairly large metropolitan area helps bring in traffic. Not to mention the area is on/near the junction of 2 major highways (I-90 and US95), airport, tourism...etc.
I'm in favor of removing the race question from the census. It proliferates collectivist thinking (my people/kin vs others, based on bloodlines or appearance) over individualism. It is also used as a justification for implementing discriminatory policies, ironically in the name of fighting discrimination.
The census exists to inform policy. If there is discrimination based on race, then we're better off measuring it so we can address it than burying our heads in the sand.
Of course, this may lead to targeted policies, just as insulin is applied to people with a diabetes diagnosis, and not to the general population.
The comparison to diabetes has one major flaw. You either have or don't have diabetes and the fact that you are tested for it does not change your diabetes status. You can only measure it, but your measurement won't alter the situation.
But by constantly reminding people of their racial category, a feedback loop is created. The more are people defined by their race, the more important will they consider their racial category. They will also start viewing more interactions through the race angle, especially the negative ones. Not "the policeman was rude because he is an asshole", but "the policeman was rude because I am of a different race from him".
I cannot imagine a scenario where constant race consciousness leads to people being less concerned about anything that can be construed as racially charged.
But even Native American tribes mostly care about people who are culturally present in their tribes as members versus being of Native American race.
For example those whose ancestors didn't partake in the Dawes Roles are generally excluded from tribal membership even if they are genetically similar; the reasoning being they haven't been present as citizens in generations.
And really, what should we care about most? A particular hue of skin, or our values, principles, traditions, and history?
Race is a social construct. The census strengthens that construct. OP’s argument is that race should be a weaker construct, which is a legitimate if debatable argument.
No. Especially for the Native American population. It's important for us to have statistics on those with Native blood, especially since the government was entitled to legally kidnap children from family regardless of home stability as recently as 1978.
True. And, the question is now meaningless, too, because people can select multiple answers, and can base their choice(s) on self perception rather than actual lineage.
Trying to eliminate the concept of race for those that aren’t racist only further empowers the racists. You can’t jump the gun. In your personal life I think it’s good to end any acknowledgement of race, but you still need to keep the social dynamics in mind. Like an atheist in church, don’t go around yelling God’s not real. Sit down and think about how these people collectively keep this idea alive.
This should come as a surprise to no one. Many white people like to identify as some amount of some racial or cultural group that isn’t white. Whether that’s talking about a grandmother that was “full blooded” $tribe/nation or leaning into Irish/German/Italian/etc ancestry.
As white culture has become more and more generic due to mass media and little regional variation, many people are going to try to find something unique or “exotic” about themselves to make them stand out. It’s peacocking, both inwardly and outwardly focused. You see this especially strong in social and mating contexts (read: bars).
There’s a lot of problems with this, but primary is that it puts the Native American experience as one that exists only in the past. Not the reality of the lives lives by people belong to the various tribes and nations today.
> As white culture has become more and more generic due to mass media and little regional variation, many people are going to try to find something unique or “exotic” about themselves to make them stand out. It’s peacocking, both inwardly and outwardly focused. You see this especially strong in social and mating contexts (read: bars).
That is not the reason some white people try very hard to find some non-white person in their family tree and are willing to go so far as to make one up if they can't find one. Some do it in an attempt to be able to claim to be 'not one of those white folks' when confronted with anti-white narratives. Others - Elisabeth Warren [1], Rachel Dolezal [2], Tracy Castro-Gill [3] and many, many more - do it to try to get a piece of the positive discrimination/positive action/affirmative action pie which is set aside for members of specific identity groups. Others do it to have a way out when confronted with the all too common claims of "white supremacy" or "white privilege" or similar racialised slurs.
That white people voluntarily take upon them claims of non-whiteness should give lie to claims of oppression of the minorities they claim to be part of unless all those who take up (often faked) minority identities happen to be masochists.
It’s because being straight, white and not trans means you’re an evil oppressor to a lot of younger people these days. They at least have to claim bisexuality when they aren’t, or loudly proclaim their brown ethnicity when they’re in fact over 7/8 European and could claim a noble title and European citizenship.
It’s almost like people are judging everyone by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character.
Be aware that census data is contextual to it's location. During the 2020 census we struggled heavily to census reservations and the rural country in general. Sometimes receiving threats of violence. We were asked many times to census various areas and simply could not do so for our safety because the number of anti government types has made it dangerous.
Imo the main statistic, number of people, is the most accurate. All the rest are optional inputs and may not accurately reflect the true data due to the nature of collection.
Threats of violence occur because in the last ten years, many reservations have suffered a silent invasion by Mexican drug cartels.
This has occurred in reservations all through the US, along Northern and Southern borders, creating large areas of lawlessness, at horrific human cost. It's not anti-government types so much as Mexican cartels and their types.
If they talk to any outsiders, it can mean death and torture.
Tribal police are strong in some places, but they're laughably insufficient in most cases, and there's an intersection of tribal pride, corruption, distrust of feds, and being overwhelmed that have given cartels a large number of virtually untouchable strongholds.
There are places law enforcement cannot and will not go inside the borders of the US under the control of drug cartel strongmen. Human trafficking, murder, disappearances, drug trade, murder for hire, money laundering, and so on are being hidden under the veil of tribal sovereignty.
The number of girls and young women that go missing is an atrocity, but the ones that go unreported are worse. These people are owed more.
I'm not sure what the solution is that preserves native sovereignty and roots out the cartels, but the US is headed for a dramatic escalation of violence inside the borders. I am as against the war on drugs as anyone, and support blanket legalization as a necessary tool in neutering cartels and their influence. The trouble now is that cartels with militarized presence and sophisticated logistics will need US military intervention within our borders, and on tribal lands, and that's a politically untenable proposition.
So it festers. People disappear. Outsiders see a superficial veneer of anti-government sentiment but the problems are much deeper and more destructive for native cultures. The longer it goes on, the higher the eventual cost will be.
It's shocking that this isn't better known, but maybe Americans don't want introspection of truly scary things.
That's not as applicable to this region, but yes that is part of it. However this was not simply tribals, a good number of threats and acts came from old rural white men. They think the "government" is coming after them and therefore anyone with a clipboard and a name tag is a secret agent to them. I am dead serious.
Back when I was doing grants, I had the US Census for a reservation for 1970, 1980, and 1990. I remember that the total population had not gone up by much (maybe 8,000 to 8,200), but on each census 50% of the population was under 18. That scared me deeply.
Native American adults are likelier to have served in the military than the overall population.
The American military has its good points. Being more fair/less unfair about racial issues seems to be one of them.
My career-Army ex-husband once said to me "We are all part of the Green Race." In other words, we are blood brothers because of the uniform and because of civilians excluding active duty military families.
When I was a military spouse, the general unemployment rate was around 5 or 6 percent and the unemployment rate for military spouses was around 30 percent. I think this is in part because locals don't want to hire someone knowing they will likely move again in two or three years and in part because the military has good benefits, so it is still possible -- or was when I was a military spouse -- to support a family on one income, which seems to generally not be true for most Americans these days.
The military tends to have a somewhat high percentage of people of color generally. I honestly think it's in part because promotions are less racially biased than they seem to be in the civilian world.
Yeah. I was having trouble justifying the cost of college and was trying to go for ROTC but couldn't because of medical issues. My dad essentially used the air force as a means to extract himself from generational poverty. We're white, so money was really the only motivation though I think he overall enjoyed his time there (non-combat role).
>I honestly think it's in part because promotions are less racially biased than they seem to be in the civilian world.
But the top brass is definitely not racial diverse. So its actually the other way around. More people of color serve because poorer people are more likely to serve, but even when people of color are over represented in the military they are still underrepresented in the leadership. Making the military even more biased than rest of society.
A drill sergeant yelling equally at everyone does not mean that the system is equal.
Readit News
We are pre-Constitutional sovereigns, recognized by our treaties with the U.S. and Canada. States like Michigan might force our teachers get "foreign language certificates," despite the fact that Michigan is a word from our language[0], but my children speak their language and our culture are pillars of strength and stability in our family. Blood quanta, problems of race in America, what to call us -- that's not our focus.
[0]https://www.interlochenpublicradio.org/michigan-education/20...
“We find that people who have taken a [mail in ancestry test] are not only more likely to self-identify as multiracial, they are particularly likely to select three or more races,” Johfre said. These differences were most pronounced for middle-age adults, which means the U.S. multiracial population would be growing because of more than just new births, the researchers noted.
https://news.stanford.edu/2021/05/17/ancestry-tests-affect-r...
Because that's quite different than Native Americans actually increasing as demographic groups...
My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood quantum -- and a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum, but that's probably more than people here want to know -- and I grew up in a house in the 'burbs bought the summer I turned three with his military mortgage benefits.
In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
He never said much about his Native heritage. I think he did so to be white-passing in a world where lynchings still happened.
I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically.
Dismissing the interest in their heritage of people like me is just more erasure of Natives and Native culture. It actively reinforces racism in subtle ways. The subtlety helps make it insidious and hard to combat, unfortunately.
In the theory under which “race” is meaningful, it is biological and distinct from (and orthogonal to) social “ethnic” categories, so claiming race on that basis is exactly as valid as the idea of race itself.
Now, if we admit that “race” is just a dishonest label assigned to certain ethnic categories...
People begin inquisitiveness and empathy after realizing they are part of a uniquely North American diaspora. Its really not about being a poser or trying to get an obscure scholarship. The inquisitiveness leads to finding relatives and members of a tribe thought disbanded or eradicated, reconnecting by fractional blood can lead to being eligible for recognition, land and some degrees of sovereignty.
My family has moved to a new country every hundred-ish years so it’s hard to pin down a specific race anyways.
In the 80s and early 90s the reservation was very poor on average (entire area is/was rural so it wasn't just on the res but it was significantly worse there). If you have ever watched the movie "Smoke signals" it has scenes shot which depict life on the local reservation (Coeur d'Alene tribe). Since the mid 90s or so things changed very rapidly for the tribe. The people are healthier, the infrastructure is better and the population seems to be growing and overall happier (again...observations).
What changed? Casinos.
Our local tribe went from being very poor with seemingly little voice in local politics to "very important" to the local community. They have not only improved their own lives but also invest heavily in improving the region and have a focus on things like the lake and natural preservation. Again...from my general observations...
It makes a certain intuitive sense; a lot of reservation land was, unfortunately, poor land in the middle of nowhere. Building a casino in the middle of nowhere won’t do you any good, so the tribes that profit are the ones with proximity to major population centers (see: Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in CT; Winstar and Chocktaw in OK). It ends up coming down to luck and location more than anything else.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeur_d%27Alene_people#Environ...
Cd'a, Spokane, Kalispel and Chewelah all opened tribal casinos and a few of them did fairly well.
As others have stated...proximity to a fairly large metropolitan area helps bring in traffic. Not to mention the area is on/near the junction of 2 major highways (I-90 and US95), airport, tourism...etc.
Of course, this may lead to targeted policies, just as insulin is applied to people with a diabetes diagnosis, and not to the general population.
But by constantly reminding people of their racial category, a feedback loop is created. The more are people defined by their race, the more important will they consider their racial category. They will also start viewing more interactions through the race angle, especially the negative ones. Not "the policeman was rude because he is an asshole", but "the policeman was rude because I am of a different race from him".
I cannot imagine a scenario where constant race consciousness leads to people being less concerned about anything that can be construed as racially charged.
For example those whose ancestors didn't partake in the Dawes Roles are generally excluded from tribal membership even if they are genetically similar; the reasoning being they haven't been present as citizens in generations.
And really, what should we care about most? A particular hue of skin, or our values, principles, traditions, and history?
Race is a social construct. The census strengthens that construct. OP’s argument is that race should be a weaker construct, which is a legitimate if debatable argument.
As white culture has become more and more generic due to mass media and little regional variation, many people are going to try to find something unique or “exotic” about themselves to make them stand out. It’s peacocking, both inwardly and outwardly focused. You see this especially strong in social and mating contexts (read: bars).
There’s a lot of problems with this, but primary is that it puts the Native American experience as one that exists only in the past. Not the reality of the lives lives by people belong to the various tribes and nations today.
That is not the reason some white people try very hard to find some non-white person in their family tree and are willing to go so far as to make one up if they can't find one. Some do it in an attempt to be able to claim to be 'not one of those white folks' when confronted with anti-white narratives. Others - Elisabeth Warren [1], Rachel Dolezal [2], Tracy Castro-Gill [3] and many, many more - do it to try to get a piece of the positive discrimination/positive action/affirmative action pie which is set aside for members of specific identity groups. Others do it to have a way out when confronted with the all too common claims of "white supremacy" or "white privilege" or similar racialised slurs.
That white people voluntarily take upon them claims of non-whiteness should give lie to claims of oppression of the minorities they claim to be part of unless all those who take up (often faked) minority identities happen to be masochists.
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-elizabeth-warren-nati...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44256760
[4] https://www.dailywire.com/news/meet-the-seattle-schools-woke...
It’s almost like people are judging everyone by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character.
Imo the main statistic, number of people, is the most accurate. All the rest are optional inputs and may not accurately reflect the true data due to the nature of collection.
This has occurred in reservations all through the US, along Northern and Southern borders, creating large areas of lawlessness, at horrific human cost. It's not anti-government types so much as Mexican cartels and their types.
If they talk to any outsiders, it can mean death and torture.
Tribal police are strong in some places, but they're laughably insufficient in most cases, and there's an intersection of tribal pride, corruption, distrust of feds, and being overwhelmed that have given cartels a large number of virtually untouchable strongholds.
There are places law enforcement cannot and will not go inside the borders of the US under the control of drug cartel strongmen. Human trafficking, murder, disappearances, drug trade, murder for hire, money laundering, and so on are being hidden under the veil of tribal sovereignty.
The number of girls and young women that go missing is an atrocity, but the ones that go unreported are worse. These people are owed more.
I'm not sure what the solution is that preserves native sovereignty and roots out the cartels, but the US is headed for a dramatic escalation of violence inside the borders. I am as against the war on drugs as anyone, and support blanket legalization as a necessary tool in neutering cartels and their influence. The trouble now is that cartels with militarized presence and sophisticated logistics will need US military intervention within our borders, and on tribal lands, and that's a politically untenable proposition.
So it festers. People disappear. Outsiders see a superficial veneer of anti-government sentiment but the problems are much deeper and more destructive for native cultures. The longer it goes on, the higher the eventual cost will be.
It's shocking that this isn't better known, but maybe Americans don't want introspection of truly scary things.
Doubling would have been happier.
The American military has its good points. Being more fair/less unfair about racial issues seems to be one of them.
My career-Army ex-husband once said to me "We are all part of the Green Race." In other words, we are blood brothers because of the uniform and because of civilians excluding active duty military families.
When I was a military spouse, the general unemployment rate was around 5 or 6 percent and the unemployment rate for military spouses was around 30 percent. I think this is in part because locals don't want to hire someone knowing they will likely move again in two or three years and in part because the military has good benefits, so it is still possible -- or was when I was a military spouse -- to support a family on one income, which seems to generally not be true for most Americans these days.
The military tends to have a somewhat high percentage of people of color generally. I honestly think it's in part because promotions are less racially biased than they seem to be in the civilian world.
Isn't this due to the U.S. Military being more attractive to poorer people, which are statistically more likely to be of color?
Deleted Comment
But the top brass is definitely not racial diverse. So its actually the other way around. More people of color serve because poorer people are more likely to serve, but even when people of color are over represented in the military they are still underrepresented in the leadership. Making the military even more biased than rest of society.
A drill sergeant yelling equally at everyone does not mean that the system is equal.