Reservation Math: Navigating Love in Native America

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’ve heard the phrase, “full blooded,” you’re already familiar with the concept of blood quantum. But Native Americans are the only peoples in the United States whose identity is defined by it. Through the photography of Tailyr Irvine, displayed at the National Museum of the American Indian, we take a look at the colonial origin story of blood quantum: where it came from, why it endures, and how it continues to impact the most personal decisions many Native Americans make about love and family today.

Guests:

Tailyr Irvine, photojournalist; member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes; additional interviewer for this episode
Michael Irvine, member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Nizhóní Ajéí's father
Cecile Ganteaume, curator at the National Museum of the American Indian and author of Officially Indian: Symbols That Define the United States
Ruth Swaney, Tribal Budget Director for and member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes
Leah Nelson, member of the Navajo Nation and Nizhóní Ajéí's mother
Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, social demographer and assistant professor of Sociology and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and Chicana
David Wilkins, political scientist and professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond; member of the Lumbee Nation

Transcript

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0:00.0	November is Native American Heritage Month, a time to honor diverse stories, vibrant traditions, and important contributions of indigenous people, both historically and today.
0:10.3	And in honor of Native American Heritage Month, we are sharing a side door story from the vault about the colonial roots of a phenomenon that affects many Native and indigenous nations today.
0:20.6	I hope you'll listen and share.
0:32.1	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:36.7	I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:46.5	Taylor Irvine started hunting with her dad when she was just four or five years old.
0:50.8	And when she shot her first deer, she took a bite of the liver. And what does it taste like?
0:56.8	Metallic, what a bloody nose kind of tastes like in the back of your throat? And it's like, oh. And it's not like a huge bite. It's just a little nipple. And it's a symbolic thing. It's important in our culture.
0:51.0	It's what we've done and what we always do.
0:53.5	The woods and prairies where Taylor grew up hunting are in Montana,
0:56.9	on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Indigenous Homelands of the Kness, and what we always do. The woods and prairies where Taylor grew up hunting are in Montana,
1:11.5	on the Flathead Indian Reservation,
1:13.7	indigenous homelands of the Confederate Salish and Kootenie tribes.
1:17.3	So you say CSKT for short.
1:20.4	Yeah, because it's a mouthful.
1:22.6	Taylor is a member of CSKT,
1:24.9	and hunting was a big part of her family life growing up.
1:27.6	Me, my whole family, we'd go out hunting together, and I think it's less of, like, when I think of hunting, I don't think of the actual, like, shooting an animal part. It's more of the car rides and hanging out, and growing up, you know, we always had freezers full of meat, and it wasn't, like, Hunting is this extracurricular activity. It's just part of our family dynamic.
1:28.7	Taylor's father and grandfather had freezers full of meat, and it wasn't like hunting is this extracurricular activity.
1:45.0	It's just part of our family dynamic.
1:47.1	Taylor's father and grandfather, Sela, in the Salish language, made their living in the woods.
1:52.5	That's where Taylor and her brother learned the tribe's creation stories as they gathered medicinal roots and berries.
	...

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