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.”
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] Americans come in all different races and ethnic backgrounds, and most of us are simply taken at our word about it. 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. 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. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. It can be deeply affirming for people who identify with native nations to be listed on tribal rolls, and it can be devastating for those with deep ties to those nations who don’t meet the requirements for enrollment. Tribal sovereignty allows for each of the hundreds of federally recognized tribes in this country to establish their own standards for enrollment. 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. Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She spent seven years working in the Obama administration on issues of homelessness and Native policy. And her new book is called “The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America?” Carrie, welcome to Think.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:01:24] Thanks for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:01:25] 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. Like more than twice as many. Check that box on the census in 2020 as the year 2000.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:01:42] That’s right. So, you know, a few things have happened over the last several decades in terms of the way that we count. So in 2000, the census had an interesting change to the way that people could self-identify racially in that they could identify as more than one race. And that was new. That was different than than the previous censuses. So certainly there have been some ways that we’ve seen the numbers change with those changes in census patterns. But nothing, nothing can explain the astronomical rise of people self-identifying as native over the last 1020 years. The number in 2000 was 4.1 million, and by 2020 it was 9.7 million. So? So more than double.
Krys Boyd [00:02:34] So there hasn’t been any like notable increase in birth rates among folks the census called American Indian or Alaska native. Right. So what?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:02:41] No, No.
Krys Boyd [00:02:43] What might account for greater numbers of people identifying this way? I know there had been concerns for years about the census undercounting native folks living on reservations.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:02:54] Yeah, I mean, the sort of push to get out the count on reservations and other sort of native communities has certainly increased the numbers we see. But nothing certainly not an increase birth rate or an increased adoption rate. Nothing can explain that other than suddenly you have more and more people who feel compelled for some reason to self-identify that way.
Krys Boyd [00:03:21] So here’s where a disconnect happens. Nearly 10 million Americans now claim Native American identity on the census. But what percentage of those folks are claimed in return on various tribal roles?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:03:35] So, you know, it’s it’s sort of difficult to look across time. But what we do know is that fewer than 2 million people roughly are enrolled members of a particular tribe in the contiguous United States in the lower 48. So it’s a small percentage of folks who claim native identity on the census and then are also enrolled in a tribe.
Krys Boyd [00:04:01] There are hundreds of federally recognized American Indian and Alaska native tribes recognized by the federal government, still others that are recognized at the state level. You make a point in the book of reminding us that each one is a distinct identity with different rules and requirements for adding people to tribal roles. Just as an example, how did it work for you to be enrolled in the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:04:26] Yeah. So my story is somewhat unique in the sense that the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina is not fully federally recognized. We are federally recognized as being native, but because of a 1956 piece of legislation, we do not receive federal benefits in the same way that other federally recognized tribes do. Our process, though, is is pretty similar to most of the processes that I observed when I was conducting research for this book. So essentially, if someone wants to become enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe, they need to first prove their lineage. And so what that means is that you are taking whatever the tribe considers to be its base role. Now, for every tribe, it’s different. So as you said, you know, you have hundreds and hundreds of systems. But whatever the tribe is considering to be its base role. So for the Lumbee tribe, we use a very historical census from the early 1800s, and you must find a direct ancestor on that roll. And so a parent, a grandparent, a great grandparent, etc. it can’t be an aunt or a great aunt, you know. It has to be a direct ancestor. Once you’re able to do that and you fill out family trees and whatever else the tribe requires in terms of paperwork, then you must submit that documentation and you receive your card. And for the Lumbee tribe, we must also take a history and culture class before we become enrolled. For people over the age of 18, obviously. And so you take your class and then you go in to the tribal headquarters and you apply for the card. It’s it’s very similar to, say, applying for a driver’s license. I mean, it’s it’s somewhat of a bureaucratic process that requires paperwork. Right. And then at the end of the process, you receive, you know, kind of a driver’s license size card that proclaims you and enrolled member, in my case, of the Lumbee tribe.
Krys Boyd [00:06:30] So once your ancestry has been approved, that’s not going to change. But for you that enrollment was not a one and done procedure, right? You received your first membership card as a child. You found out later that has to be periodically reviewed and renewed in order for you to remain on the rolls.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:06:46] Yeah, that was, somewhat of a surprise. You know, in retrospect, I suppose that makes sense if you’re thinking about people who are citizens of the United States. We must periodically renew, say, a passport. Right. And so if we think about native enrollment as a political identity or a citizen of a nation or a tribe, then it makes sense that every once in a while you have to renew that enrollment card. For me, it was a surprise and I sort of grappled with that for a long time in terms of, you know, what does this mean? What does it mean to hold this card even in my wallet, but then to also have to go renew? I think for a lot of tribes, that process becomes a process of ensuring that the people who are enrolled remain connected to the tribe. And so certainly in my case, that that was true. I had to travel back to North Carolina. I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time, and I had to really, you know, make an effort to continue my enrollment.
Krys Boyd [00:07:56] This book made me think about the ways we sometimes try to apply simple math to our identities, as if, like the percentage of ancestry we have among a certain people determines who we are. I mean, by that calculation, you are considered one quarter Lumbee and three quarters German, hence the shoot pelts. Does your Lumbee identity felt more or less central than your German identity to how you define yourself?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:08:22] You know, it’s interesting. And all along I knew that blood quantum, which is sort of what you’re referring to when you say one quarter in native in sort of Indian country, that’s called blood quantum. And so it’s this quote unquote, mathematical calculation of how much quote unquote, blood a person has from a particular tribe. And I think that that notion of a fraction of how much blood belongs to a tribe has really seeped its way, certainly into mine. And my tribe doesn’t even use blood carton, by the way. But, you know, it really does seep into your sort of whole person and identity thinking about, well, am I more or less? Am I native enough? And my Lumbee enough is one quarter enough. And so, unfortunately, I think a lot of people get stuck into this mathematical, you know, sort of circle of thinking they are not. I can tell you that I I’ve traveled to Germany as a tourist a couple of times, but it’s never been a particularly salient identity for me. My grandparents were first language German speakers, but they did not pass that language on to my father, who was born right immediately after World War Two. And so it’s not it wasn’t really the language and the culture and the tradition and the history weren’t necessarily things that were passed down. And so, no, I don’t particularly feel a sense of kinship to that identity and certainly not as much as I feel to my Lumbee identity where, you know, my my family is still there in Pembroke, North Carolina, where the Lumbee tribe is headquartered. I still travel back. You know, I still am learning and thinking and trying to experience the traditions and the history and the culture. And so I would definitely say that that that is a more salient identity for me.
Krys Boyd [00:10:26] I’ll confess the term blood quantum. I mean, it makes me uncomfortable. But we should stress that this didn’t originate almost certainly with the tribes that exist in the United States. Can you talk a little bit about about why anybody started talking in this way?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:10:47] You know, I think if we look at the history of this project called the United States of America, it wouldn’t be surprising to know that there were certain groups of people who were quantified in this way. Perhaps people are more familiar with this concept of the one drop rule, which was, you know, one drop of African blood made someone African-American or black. It’s a similar concept to think about blood quantum for Native people, although in slightly different ways. So the project for a long time, you know, including at the outset of slavery, was to make sure that as many people could be enslaved as possible in order to work right, in order to be free labor. Essentially, the project on the sort of Native American side for a long time has been let’s ensure there are as few Native people as possible. And that was because settlers and colonizers were interested in our land. They weren’t as interested in our bodies and sort of our free labor. And so the fewer and fewer native people there were, the less and less settlers and colonizers needed to worry about, we need to strike a deal to own that land. Right. And so for a long time, the federal project has been to quantify Native people with the goal of eliminating us all together. And so, you know, one example in history that we see of that was in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a piece of legislation known as the Dawes Act was passed. And that really allowed the federal government to break up native reservations or land that was community communally held by tribes of nations into individual plots. And so the federal government would say, we’re going to take this large piece of land. We’re going to carve it up into smaller plots and divvy up these plots to individual members of the tribe with the goal that we would like to incentivize pot farming. We would like native people to look and be and act more like white settlers. Right. Well, once a native person had less than one half Indian blood, quote unquote, they were deemed competent, given a competency certificate. And that land became theirs. They they own the land outright. And again, the goal was, let’s not only decrease the number of native people, but let’s try to incentivize full assimilation into Europeanized society so that Native people become fewer and fewer.
Krys Boyd [00:13:56] Alright, Carrie. This whole question of official enrollment is in part a product of this long and relentless campaign of the U.S. government to claim native land, exercise control over Native people, if not eliminate them entirely. We should talk about the history of the government’s different postures toward Native Americans over time, starting with something that has now been called coexistence, which sounds a little more benign perhaps than it was.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:14:26] I think anyone who has read about the history of native nations throughout the the time that the United States has existed would probably not call those first several years coexistence. We know that a lot of words were fought. A lot of people died, a lot of native people were murdered. But that indeed has become sort of the the title, the overarching title of that first period of federal relations with native tribes. But what we see is as we go through these sort of eras, these periods, we see that different large historical policies and policymaking were happening that were guiding that sort of era. And so during that coexistence period, treaties were being signed between members of the federal government and native nations and tribes. Almost always, these treaties were taking land away from native people. Sometimes they were given either an annuity payment. So in other words, money every year. Sometimes they were given goods, you know, food and and clothing and things like that. But in general, that was largely what was happening from a policy standpoint.
Krys Boyd [00:15:50] It’s interesting because identity issues and issues of belonging are not questions that can be easily answered with data. Of course, the Federal government loves some data, but it is not in the Federal Government’s interest to dig too deeply when it comes to native issues, because the facts that come to light almost certainly will show broken promises and toxic policies.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:16:13] Sure. I mean, if we’re going back to that coexistence period and we’re talking about treaties, you know, there were laws that were put into place, federal laws that created a floor, if you will, for the payment of land. Right. And so, for example, in the early 1800s, that floor was $2 an acre. So it was illegal to sell or purchase land for under that amount. But when we go back to treaties that were being signed at that time, the amount of money that the federal government was paying for this land was significantly less than $2 an acre. And we’re we’re talking pennies, pennies per acre. And so, indeed, I think that one of the things certainly I have noticed and others have, too, is that we don’t have a lot of data or sort of synthesized information about these treaties or about these periods of time. And in part, I imagine you’re right that it’s not in the federal government’s best interest to quantify these things, because what would emerge is the fact that they were incredibly inequitable and not just in any sense of the word.
Krys Boyd [00:17:30] So after the highly euphemized coexistence period was the era of removal and reservations, we have a general idea, I think most of us do, of what that looked like. But what do we need to know about it as we move forward in this conversation?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:17:45] You know, removal was sort of one of the first periods of time when this idea of of membership became important. So for anyone who remembers studying things like the Trail of Tears in school, when we think about Andrew Jackson and this policy of moving tribes from their historical homelands to other parts of the country, particularly west of the Mississippi River, we can think about this idea of record keeping. As far as who was being moved, Right. And so it was in the federal government’s best interest to get everybody moved, to take an entire tribe and make sure that there was no one left behind. And so this is a period where we can really start to see written lists of, quote unquote, members of a tribe. Now, that’s not how they would have probably thought about themselves. I mean, to them, it was kinship networks and family ties. But through the historical record, we we really start to see an uptick in list making. You know.
Krys Boyd [00:18:57] You make the point in the book and it’s important to stress that native peoples for centuries have done a great deal with the very limited resources they were required to subsist with based on federal policy. However, I think all the time about people who, you know, for many, many generations their ancestors had lived in a particular topography and they had traditions and cultures around what you could find to eat there and you know how the land worked for you to then be moved across the country to a place that was nothing like where your people came from. I mean, that’s another hardship that I think is not always accentuated when we think about removals.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:19:38] Absolutely. I mean, even if you were to think today about someone coming and telling you that you needed to move to somewhere significantly different than the place that you currently live, everything changes. The way that you make money, changes the way that you subsist, changes your entire community structure changes for tribes that had been used to maybe herding or grazing and all of a sudden were moved to really chilly climates that weren’t going to allow them to do that same sort of thing. I mean, that’s that really creates a lot of trauma and an inability to continue and carry out your tribal traditions. I think also about the fact that the moving process itself was extremely traumatic. If we look across the records of when Native people were removed during this period, what we see is that they were often taken from their homes with very little notice. They didn’t have time to collect their belongings, including, you know, either collecting or they may not have had warm clothing, for example. They may not have been able to collect or had warm shoes. And so a lot of people died on these forced marches. They weren’t clothed properly. Disease was rampant. But interestingly, in all the records that I looked through and all the research that I did, I could not find a single instance of one of the soldiers that were conducting the removal process. I could not find a single instance of one of them die. And I really think that that shows us, you know, it’s not that that they couldn’t have been prepared. Right. It’s that they weren’t they weren’t given any of the tools to be prepared during this heinous period, you know, these forced marches and removal. And so I think that added to the fact that, yes, they were moving to a very different place that may not have supported their historical culture and traditions. They also would have ended up in that place with far fewer people in their community. And so you have families that were just decimated. And that causes an obvious amount of trauma to when all of a sudden nobody in your family has survived.
Krys Boyd [00:22:03] What were the goals of the federal government when it moved to this stance known as reorganization?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:22:10] Reorganization. So, you know, there was this there was this next thing called assimilation, which happened after removal, which was really, again, goes back to this idea of giving native people plots of land and forcing them to plot farm.
Krys Boyd [00:22:26] And excuse me for interupting, I’m so sorry, but it was it was really instrumental that that land was given to individual people rather than collective groups rather than to the whole tribe, right?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:22:38] That’s right. Yeah. I mean, the goal was, again, to assimilate native people. The goal was to wipe them off the map and get them to take on the customs. Quote unquote, of the more Europeanized society. And so that included farming. It included wearing different types of clothing, cutting their hair, I mean, all sorts of things. And so that period, you know, from roughly 1887 to 1932 became known as the period of assimilation, because that was the federal project at that time. That was also, incidentally, the period when the Dawes Act was signed. And so this again, was the act that carved up land that was previously held by tribes communally into individual plots. And if we’re thinking about identity and enrollment and membership, this was really. The spark that lit the flame. This was when the federal government had to come in and say, we must adjudicate each individual person’s membership in a tribe because we need to give them these plots of land. And so if we’re taking, for example, all Choctaw land and we’re carving it up into pieces and we have all of these people coming in to get their piece of land, we the federal government, must now determine who is and is not Choctaw. And that really was the most pivotal turning point. If we think about this idea of enrollment and membership.
Krys Boyd [00:24:12] So reorganization, what were the goals there?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:24:16] Reorganization was sort of an acknowledgment that the assimilation period had been an abject failure. Right. The Dawes Act is considered one of the most abject failures of federal Indian policy. And so reorganization was really an attempt to provide tribes with additional resources so that they could get on more solid footing after this period of carving up land and giving slots to individual people. What we saw in the immediate aftermath of the Dawes Act was an incredible increase in poverty. And it makes sense, right? If you have individual native people who have never farmed, not one day in their life, and now all of a sudden the only way to succeed and the only way to feed their family is to figure out farming. It makes sense that a lot of them didn’t. And partly that’s because the land itself was not going to be suitable for that purpose. It wasn’t large enough. It wasn’t in appropriate topography. And so, you know, not surprisingly, what happened and this was written about quite widely in what was known as the Meriam report, not surprisingly, what happened was we saw an increase in poverty, disease and other just sort of terrible patterns that were happening. The reorganization period was sort of an attempt by the federal government to right that wrong.
Krys Boyd [00:25:48] What should we know about the period known as termination, which is not quite as harsh as it might sound, but tell us what happened then.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:25:59] Yeah, Termination is actually a pretty bone chilling word for what happened next. Termination was essentially the federal government saying, you know what, We would like to spend fewer resources on native nations and in Indian country. And so the federal government, in another attempt to quantify something that can’t be quantified. Basically arranged and organized tribes in order of who was most assimilated, which tribe had taken on more of this Europeanized society. And one by one, the federal government terminated them from federal recognition. About 100 tribes were terminated during this period of time. And so, in other words, the federal government said we’re no longer going to provide you with financial supports and other types of supports. It’s up to you now to support your people. Well, they weren’t on great footing. Right. Because we can think about the previous 150 years as being periods of poverty and disease and forced movement to geographies that they weren’t accustomed to. And now all of a sudden, to be asked to create successful structures and support people in ways that hadn’t been done before. That was that was not going to be a recipe for success. And that’s kind of what happened. A lot of tribes suffered greatly during this period of time. But the other thing that happened on a more individual basis was the federal government was attempting to get people to leave their reservations, leave their native communities and go other places that were far away and would promote assimilation. And so during this period, we had what was what became known as the Indian Relocation Act, which was the federal government offered incentives, at least on paper, to individual native people to move to, say, Los Angeles or Chicago or Cleveland, and they would help them get a job, help them, you know, establish housing and other things in order for that native person or that native family to become connected to that place instead. This was an attempt essentially to break down the power and the structure of tribes. If you have people moving away from these native communities and making home other places, you’re going to see a dramatic decrease in the population of people living on reservations and living in community together. And you know, what’s interesting is in some ways, a lot of these policies feel really far removed. They feel very antiquated and historical. There are people still today who are who were relocated as part of the Indian Relocation Act and are still living in these urban centers that they were removed to begin with so long ago.
Krys Boyd [00:28:58] Finally, government policy reached this stage called Self-determination for Native Nations. What did that mean for tribal sovereignty?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:29:07] I think that initially the goal was that the federal government really wanted to continue this idea of how can we get native tribes and native nations to be sort of self-sustaining entities. It’s not a bad goal, but you need to invest the resources required in order to make that goal successful. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen is is not a lot of that. But what we did see during this period of time was that the federal government was reinz in stating sort of these tribes that had been terminated. And so nearly 100 tribes were terminated from federal recognition during the termination period. Almost all of them have regained that recognition as of today. So it’s interesting for my tribe, the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina, is that during this period of termination, the Lumbee Act of 1956 had been written and signed. And what that act essentially did was it said the Lumbee tribe is native, but we will not we, the federal government, will not invest resources into your tribe. Given the context of what was happening in that period. It’s not really surprising. They were terminating a lot of tribes during this period of time. They’re trying to shrink their budget. As far as how many resources went into these places. But what has happened through this period of self-determination is that the Lumbee tribe has never gotten that full recognition. So as we see other tribes regaining the recognition that they lost or in termination, the Lumbee tribe is one of those few outstanding tribes that has not yet received.
Krys Boyd [00:30:48] Carrie, tribes that determine eligibility for enrollment by either ancestry or blood quantum. You know, ask people to meet a certain threshold, the blood quantum tribes, that threshold has to be met within a particular tribe, right? So it’s possible to have like overwhelmingly indigenous North American ancestry, but not have sufficient ties to any particular native nation to qualify for enrollment.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:31:18] Yeah. So the way Blood Quantum works for all but maybe just a handful of federally recognized tribes is that a person needs to demonstrate that blood quantum from one single tribe. And so it’s not the case that you can go enroll in a particular tribe and say, well, I am three quarters native, and it’s that you need to be able to say I am X fraction of this particular tribe. Most tribes use one quarter as their cutoff for blood quantum with the next sort of largest tranche being one eighth. But there are a couple of tribes in this country who use one half. But again, that has to be from that particular tribe. Where this becomes really complicated. I mean, in addition to people whose parents have a variety of sort of tribal affiliations, But this becomes particularly complicated in geographies that have a number of tribes. And so, for instance, in the case of northern Minnesota, where you have several different tribes and bands and you also have people who have moved within that geography and partnered together and had children with people from different tribes and bands. This happens all the time, and not just in Minnesota. It happens all over the country. And so what you see is you’ll have people who aren’t quite at the threshold, the blood quantum thresholds for any one particular tribe.
Krys Boyd [00:32:50] Tribes, of course, have every right to establish whatever thresholds they choose. But how has government policy created incentives for some tribes to strictly limit enrollments over time?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:33:04] You know, it’s interesting. If today you were to go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs website, which is the federal entity that kind of governs these policies in their templates for things like tribal constitutions, they actually lay out one quarter blood quantum. So it’s suggested in federal documents that that’s what tribes would use. But even more so when native nations and tribes were establishing constitutions back in the 1930s, in particular, the federal government would offer them templates and incentivize them by saying, if you use blood quantum, if you use this threshold, we will provide you a funding, right? And so that became a huge carrot and stick for tribes to incorporate blood quantum into their constitutions.
Krys Boyd [00:33:57] So if that’s the case, there’s not a guarantee necessarily that if a parent is an enrolled member of a particular tribe, that their children will also qualify for their for the same designation. Right. Like if the child’s other parent comes from some other background, they may be out of luck.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:34:13] That’s right. So if a person has one parent who is enrolled in a tribe and just just meets the blood quantum, say it’s one quarter and the person’s other parent is not native or from a different tribe, that person will not be able to enroll in that tribe. They would be less than one quarter of that tribe.
Krys Boyd [00:34:38] And this could be exceptionally painful for people who have strong cultural and familial ties to a particular tribe, but are nonetheless shut out of belonging officially.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:34:51] Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting for some people, I think they really have internalized this idea of I am native, I am part of this tribe, regardless of whether I have a card, regardless of whether I’ve been labeled. And for other people who I’ve met, it really is something that they that they need. They need to have that card, they need to be enrolled. But because of whatever barrier, whether it be insufficient blood quantum, insufficient paperwork or otherwise, they can’t achieve that card. I should also mention that tribal enrollment comes with more than just a piece of paper. It comes with benefits that are often the difference between someone being able to, you know, live a comfortable life and not. And so some tribes. Limit who can own land on their reservation based on enrollment. Some offer scholarships for secondary education. They offer veterans benefits, housing benefits, etc.. And if you are not enrolled in that tribe, you can’t receive those benefits.
Krys Boyd [00:36:04] We should note only a small fraction of tribes that operate businesses like casinos actually see a whole lot of revenue from them. That then filters back to their members.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:36:16] That’s right. For every tribe that has a big, thriving casino. There are about eight tribes that that have a casino that is not big and thriving. A lot of it has to do with geography. And so native nations that are located in really strategically good locations for for commerce and and travel, they tend to do better. Right? If you’re on a major highway or interstate near a very large city, it’s likely that your casino is going to do better. And often what those tribes will do is they will divvy up casino revenues to their members via what’s called a per cap, per capita system. And not every tribe does this. There are certainly plenty of tribes of casinos and other revenue generating operations that do not divvy up revenue. But but many do. And so that also becomes one of those things that people who are enrolled can get the benefit and people who are not enrolled do not get the benefit.
Krys Boyd [00:37:19] You realized as you were conducting your research for this book that asking direct questions about whether or not an individual is enrolled. Those can be highly fraught for people. Yeah.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:37:31] I mean, honestly, I don’t tend to ask that question ever. And even before writing this book, I don’t know that I tended to ask that question. It feels really, really personal and sensitive. And now that I’ve written the book, now that I’ve conducted all these interviews and met people with all kinds of stories about identity and belonging and enrollment, it has become clear to me that the idea can be very fraught for people who are on one side of this issue or another. And so I try to avoid the question, if at all possible.
Krys Boyd [00:38:09] How did your mother try to keep you connected to your heritage despite the fact that you mostly live very far away from other Lumbee people?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:38:20] Yeah. You know, our family was small in terms of my grandfather having relocated to the Midwest as a result of being in the military. And and, you know, it was sort of just us. We weren’t surrounded by lots of aunts and uncles and and grandparents and all that that were part of the Lumbee community. And so I think for my mom, it was really important that she teach me about where we came from, especially since it wasn’t something that I was observing around me. You know, there wasn’t really anyone who looked like me. There wasn’t any other person who claimed Lumbee identity near where I was. So, you know, we we read books and I have this distinct memory of her playing a VHS tape for my elementary school class one day about the Lumbee. I think for her, it was also in an effort to convey the message that Native people can look different. You know, I think that there is the stereotypical notion of what a native person should look like or should dress like or how their hair should be. And I think that often the Lumbee tribe kind of flies in the face of that. And and so I think for her, it was important that people around us knew that you can be native and not look like what society’s stereotype of that is.
Krys Boyd [00:39:47] You share in the book here that you have sort of gone back and forth or used to at least about your own physical appearance and whether you sort of looked the way people would have expected you to. You share that your grandfather. Many people looked at him and assumed his only heritage was being of African descent. Talk a little bit about how you have learned to kind of manage what everybody else thinks a person with native heritage ought to look like and what it means to not look exactly like that.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:40:20] Yeah. I mean, I think that recently it’s become a little bit easier to conceive of the fact that not all Native people look the same. There’s been a huge sort of renaissance of Native movies and television and actors and, you know, people in the public eye. And I think that that’s really helpful. But at the time that I was growing up, that really didn’t exist. And so the only portrayals of Native America that I saw were these various stereotypical images or sort of historical movies about things like that. It was really only as I traveled more and more to North Carolina, where my my own family lives, where the Lumbee tribe is headquartered. It was really only in doing that travel and meeting a lot of people from not just my tribe, but also other tribes and realizing that, you know, we all kind of work different. And there isn’t one standard look of a native person. And so I think that that was really powerful sometimes that it it is important what you see around you. Right? It’s also through the writing, this book, you know, I was fortunate enough to meet and interview women from all over the country, from from different tribes. And so that was another really powerful reminder to me that not even just the look, but also the experience. Our stories are all so different. And just as there are 574 federally recognized tribes in the US, there are, you know, just as many if not more experiences and histories and patterns of both what we live and what we, you know, sort of who we are.
Krys Boyd [00:42:15] I heard the point you made earlier that it can be invasive to ask whether people are officially enrolled or not. Your choice is to sort of take them at their word about their experience and their ties. On the other hand, you know, in recent years, we’ve heard of a lot of people claiming really deep ties to native ancestry who who seem to have none at all. What is that about?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:42:38] You know, this has become something that I think is more and more visible. I’ve seen I’ve started to sort of see an uptick in the number of people who have claimed native identity and are shown to not have it right. And although I will say that the only adjudicator of this is a tribe or nation themselves, it’s hard to miss, you know, in pop culture. One of the things that as I’ve done my research for the book and read and talked to other folks, one of the things that. I think is is somewhat unanimous is the sense of if you are profiting off of your native identity, you should actually have a native identity. Right? If you’re using that identity to get a job or make money in some important way, then it’s really imperative that that identity not just be salient to you, but that it be shared certainly by your tribe. If nothing else, what often we see and this kind of goes back to this idea of why are so many more people self-identifying as native on the census? But often we see as people who have heard family lore, people who have been told. I, you know, parents or grandparents or so on that they are native and they take that on as their own identity. Now, for private citizens, you know, you you can say whatever you want about who you are and what your identity is. But I do think we have to have a real conversation once it gets to the point where someone is profiting off of it. I hear a lot of people, especially, you know, now that I’ve written this book, I have a lot of people come to me and say, I was told that my great, great, great grandparent was negative and I would love to better understand that and trace the genealogy. And I think that’s great. I’m all in favor of genealogical research and figuring out where the where the ancestry is and who your people are. But I think that that is a very different conversation than becoming formally enrolled in a tribe.
Krys Boyd [00:45:07] Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She spent seven years in the Obama administration working on issues of homelessness and native policy. And her new book is called “The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America?” Carrie, this has been really interesting. Thank you for the conversation.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz [00:45:25] Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:45:27] Think is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and listen to our podcast wherever you like to get podcasts. To find it, just search for KERA Think. Our website is think.kera.org. When you go there, sign up for our free weekly newsletter. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
