Welcome to Lipon Apokulix. Episode 14, The Mergence. I'm Brandon Seal.

Contrary to popular usage, the word apocalypse doesn't actually mean an ending. In Greek, it means an unveiling, an uncovering, a revelation.

And yet, have we unveiled, uncovered, or revealed the Lepan Apaches

at all this season? Where are they now? We've seen how self-serving most claims of

Lipon extinction have been in the historical record and how inaccurate they turned out to be.

And to repeat that false claim today would actually be to give in to a particularly pernicious

aspect of U.S. policy toward Native Americans.

To be enrolled as a Native American in this country, you need a certificate of degree of Indian

blood, which requires you to prove your direct assent from an indigenous ancestor

as determined by their appearance on a U.S. government role,

typically taken on a reservation in the first decades or so of the 20th century.

Well, what if your people never came on to the reservation?

What if your people aren't federally recognized?

Basically, in this country, if you can't prove that you're descended from a reduced or

subjugated Indian to misapply the old Spanish terms, then you're not an Indian. Which is absurd

on its face, but it's even more absurd when you compare how hard it is to get Native American lineage acknowledged

versus how easily the descendants of enslaved persons were classified as black under the infamous one-drop rules.

Recall in many states, including Texas, a single drop of black blood was enough to classify a person as black, which is almost

the polar opposite of the standard for Native Americans who apparently carry the burden of proving

that their blood comes from the people that it comes from.

Ironically, both the one-drop rule and the so-called blood quantum rules, as applied to Native

Americans, were adopted in order to deny equal treatment to the respective groups under U.S. law, but in the case of Native Americans, the goal was to reduce their numbers and hence reduce the number of people to whom compensation or access to government programs might be owed.

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