The complexities of Native identity in America
Think from KERA
KERA
4.7 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The process to be officially considered Native American, can be complicated – and heartbreaking for those who identify but don’t qualify. Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina who spent seven years working in the Obama Administration on issues of homelessness and Native policy. She joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why tribal membership is so difficult to achieve, why thousands of acknowledged tribes each have their own enrollment criteria, and what it means to win that recognition. Her book is called “The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Americans come in all different races and ethnic backgrounds, and most of us are simply taken at our word about it. |
| 0:16.4 | If your people originally came here from China or Ireland or Nigeria and you feel a connection to those places, you probably haven't been challenged on that identity. |
| 0:25.6 | So it's ironic that folks with indigenous identities, people whose people are native to this land we all inhabit now, they are often required to present evidence of that ancestry in order to have it officially acknowledged. |
| 0:38.4 | From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. |
| 0:42.5 | It can be deeply affirming for people who identify with Native nations to be listed on tribal |
| 0:47.8 | roles, and it can be devastating for those with deep ties to those nations who don't meet |
| 0:52.6 | the requirements for enrollment. |
| 1:01.4 | Tribal sovereignty allows for each of the hundreds of federally recognized tribes in this country to establish their own standards for enrollment. |
| 1:12.1 | But ideas about official membership and the reasons it matters, those have been shaped and warped by centuries of policy from a government that long engaged in open campaigns to steal native lands and eliminate tribal cultures through every means available. |
| 1:17.8 | Carrie Lowry-Shootpelts is an enrolled member of the Lumby tribe of North Carolina. |
| 1:22.8 | She spent seven years working in the Obama administration on issues of homelessness and native policy. |
| 1:28.3 | And her new book is called The Indian Card. Who gets to be native in America? |
| 1:32.8 | Carrie, welcome to think. |
| 1:34.8 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:35.6 | So you started thinking about this in response to census data, which in recent years reveals an extraordinary rise in the number of Americans who self-identify as native. |
| 1:46.7 | Like more than twice as many check that box on the census in 2020 as the year 2000? |
| 1:52.5 | That's right. So, you know, a few things have happened over the last several decades in terms of the way that we count. |
| 2:00.5 | So in 2000, the census had an |
| 2:05.3 | interesting change to the way that people could self-identify racially in that they could |
| 2:11.2 | identify as more than one race. And that was new. That was different than the previous |
| 2:16.1 | censuses. So certainly there have been some |
| 2:18.3 | ways that we've seen the numbers change with those changes in census patterns, but nothing. |
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