Daughters Given Up for Adoption Seek Knowledge About Their Culture and Birth Mothers - ICTMN.com
This year, for the first time in a long time, Mother’s Day didn’t bring with it the painful unknowns for Jeanne Winslow and Rachel Banks Kupcho of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Jeanne and her daughter Kupcho met for the second time last October, more than 35 years after Winslow gave her newborn up for adoption. “The day I got the call was the day I knew my life had changed forever,” says Winslow. That call on a cool October day carried the news that her daughter had found her and wanted to meet.
Their reunion was not a made-for-TV event filled with balloons and flowers. Winslow recalls that seeing her daughter for the first time in such a long time was quietly powerful, a bit like the first time she heard the drum and knew deep in her body that she was American Indian. Like Kupcho, Winslow was put up for adoption as a newborn and raised by non-Indians. Their story puts a quintessential Indian twist on the standard Mother’s Day tale of maternal perfection, and shows the inexorable pull of blood and spirit that so many Native people describe when they speak of wanting to know their culture.
I first met Kupcho in Minneapolis back in 2008 while doing a story about the challenges faced by American Indian adoptees who want learn more about their cultures and their birth parents. At the time, she knew only that her birth mother was Ojibwe from Minnesota. Her adoptive family was supportive and understanding of her efforts. A bright, confident young woman, Kupcho is convinced that without the unconditional love of her adoptive parents she would not have been strong enough to pursue her passion and calling of working to support the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). While working with the National Indian Child Welfare Association, she met Sandy White Hawk, executive director of the First Nations Repatriation Institute in Minneapolis. White Hawk, an adoptee herself, founded the organization to advocate for Native adoptees in accordance with ICWA and to help unite adoptees with their birth families, cultures and tribes. In October, they informed me that they had found Kupcho’s birth mother, Winslow, a children’s counselor living in Iowa.
Winslow and Kupcho, along with Kupcho’s 18-month-old daughter Mika, quickly arranged a meeting. Kupcho recalls that Winslow seemed to be in quite a hurry to meet her. She soon found out why. Winslow’s birth mother (and Kupcho’s grandmother), Audrey Banks, who Winslow had met 20 years earlier, was dying. Winslow immediately rushed everyone to her mother’s bedside. “There were four generations in that room meeting for the first time,” Winslow recalls. “That was the first thing Kupcho and I did together. It was the greatest privilege and honor to be there with her. It was a very healing experience. This has all been about circles connecting. At first, it was just my circle but now I see that so many others are interconnected.”
Jeanne reading book to her granddaughter, Mika
Kupcho didn’t know it at the time, but she had previously connected with her grandmother—Audrey was well known and respected in the Minneapolis Native community for her work helping social service agencies maintain compliance with ICWA. Like Kupcho, she earned a master’s degree in social work in order to better serve Native children. “There has definitely been something bigger at work in my life; there has been a path I am meant to walk,” Kupcho says of this coincidence.
In many ways, Audrey’s experience as a young Ojibwe woman may have helped set the direction of that path. Born on the Leech Lake reservation, she was sent to the Pipestone Indian boarding school at age 9 and remained there for the remainder of her childhood. After moving to Minneapolis she gave birth to three boys and three girls. According to her daughters, social workers from Catholic Charities showed up at her bedside after each birth, pressuring the single mother to give the girls up for adoption. “She said that she felt coerced by the social workers that said that the girls would have better lives if they were raised by white people,” recalls Bernadine Harroun, Audrey’s second daughter. “I think that influenced her decision to go into social work and help keep Indian kids with Indian families.”
Bernadine and her younger sister, Winslow were adopted by the same family and raised together. Bernadine initiated the search for Audrey and Winslow and was responsible for their first meeting in 1989. They learned that Audrey, all of her children and Kupcho all lived and grew up within 20 miles of each other.
“Most of the stories of Native adoptees finding their families are like miracles,” White Hawk says. The distinguishing factor for Native adoptees, according to White Hawk is that the children were prayed for by generations of parents who knew hard times were coming. “Native people have that spiritual pull, like a spiritual umbilical cord that compels us to seek out our families,” she says.
Many Native adoptees report that hearing the traditional drum often activates that spiritual pull. Indeed Winslow recalls the first time she heard the drum. “I heard it and I knew I was Indian. The drum goes to some place so deep,” she recalls. (She didn’t know it at the time, but her uncle, well-known activist Dennis Banks was one of the people at that drum. He was giving a presentation at Winslow’s suburban high school about the happenings at Wounded Knee.)
Except for the strange longing awakened in her by the drum, Winslow says life in her adoptive suburban home was good. Ironically, because of this positive experience, she was able to make the difficult decision to relinquish her own daughter for adoption. Newly independent and sexually inexperienced, she found herself pregnant at age 19. “I knew that I couldn’t give my daughter the chance she deserved unless I did something drastic,” she recalls.
With the support of her adoptive family, Winslow put Kupcho up for adoption. “Leaving the hospital without her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. Over time, however, she was at peace with her decision although birthdays, Christmas and Mother’s Day were hard. “I never stopped wondering about her,” says Winslow.
There was always a lingering, fear, too that Kupcho would be angry with her if and when they reconnected. She says, however, that her meetings with Kupcho and Mika have been smooth and joyous. She compares it to dancing in the circle for the first time with Audrey. “Somehow my feet knew what to do,” Winslow recalls.
“I can’t imagine the pain Winslow went through in making the brave choice to give me up for adoption. I give her tons of credit,” says Kupcho, adding that Winslow needn’t have feared she would be angry. “If anything her love gave me the wonderful life I have now. The home I was adopted into has afforded me the ability to do the work that I do.”
Kupcho is starting a new job with a non-profit organization that licenses foster homes for Native children. Her main focus is creating permanent, supportive homes. Although her adoptive placement was loving and good, advocating for a child to be in a loving home is not specific enough. “Being with family is ideal,” she says. “Love is not always enough. Going to the occasional pow wow is not enough. We need to know about our traditions and culture. Even knowing you’re Indian is not enough. With the experience of meeting my birth family, I understand this more fully.
“As a mother and as an adoptee I have a better sense of myself. I have a stronger, more confident gait. This is the only thing my adoptive parents haven’t been able to give me.”
Finding her birth mother, however, was not the whole key to Kupcho’s search. “I needed to know where I came from and make that tribal connection. When visiting the reservation I am suddenly among family and I feel good,” she says.
Both Kupcho and Winslow report that they are going forward with their new relationship without expectations and going with that process as it unfolds. Their first Mother’s Day was one of quiet joy. “I’m a mother, now I have somebody,” explains Winslow. “Plus it’s great to be a grandma.”
“Mother’s Day is definitely more complicated now, but only in my mind. I’m taking it as it comes,” says Kupcho, laughing.
Sandy White Hawk’s message for Mother’s Day and every day thereafter: “We need to encourage our birth mothers to forgive themselves and remember we wouldn’t be here without them. We need to tell them that regardless of the kinds of lives we have had, we can have good lives from this day forward and for that we are grateful.”
NOTE: This is an update to a 2010 story that was published on DailyYonder.com.
By: Dana Lone HillThis past Friday on September 28, 2012 a hate crime was committed in the bathroom of a dormitory on the SDSU campus in Brookings, South Dakota. Although, no one was physically attacked, the crime was still felt by many and everyone was in shock. Graffiti was found on a stall in the bathroom that called out some Native American students a racial slur by their room numbers and ordered them to “Go back to the rez.” The rooms listed were members of tribes from South Dakota, who were called out for all in the dorm to see with a cowardly, anonymous act of racism.One young Lakota man, Ernest Weston, along with his uncle Wayne, were the ones to make the virtual world aware via social networks of the hate crime. Although he wasn’t a target of the graffiti. Ernest stated “When I seen what was written on the bathroom stall, I was completely shocked, and I still am. Even though It was not directed toward me, it still affects me because I am Lakota!”
He is right. It affects all of us. It affects the Native population of South Dakota because we wonder after all these years, hundreds of years, why South Dakotans still can’t get over the fact that we are not going anywhere. This was our home first. I am sure it affects non-Natives in the state too because it is not the opinion of the whole state. It does prove that race relations still have a long way to go in this state.
To merely sweep this under the rug, to brush this off as an incident that “happens all the time in South Dakota” is not acceptable. In order for change to happen, we have to look at this as a way to teach the world, this is not acceptable behavior. This is not right. Every person in America has a right to pursue an education and has a right to feel safe in doing so. READ THE REST HERE: http://www.lastrealindians.com/axCommentDetails.php?postId=2092
Gall (aka Goes In The Middle) - Hunkpapa - circa 1885
Short Story Contest for Native American Writers
Short Story Contest for Native American Writers
DEADLINE: Friday, September 14, 2012.
NATIVE(X), an online art gallery and accessories brand, will sponsor a short story contest in honor of Native American Heritage Month. Four winning stories will be chosen, and each week during the month of November a new story will be released in a campaign to promote Native American awareness. The goal of this campaign is to share the talent and diversity of Native people through unique personal narratives about the challenges and triumphs of trying to preserve Native culture and traditions in today’s society.
Author Requirements:
• Must be Native American
o Please provide Tribal Identification or Verification letter/CDIB Card with story submission
o Note: this contest is open to ALL State, Federal and First Nation Tribal citizens
• Stories must be submitted to singleredfemale@gmail.com by Friday, September 14, 2012
Story Mechanics:
• Submissions should be between 300 and 700 words
• Stories may be fictional creative writing or non-fiction personal narratives that express a theme of contemporary Native life.
• Topics may include but are not limited to: revitalization of language, art, or tradition; making culture into a career; and/or political or cultural tribulations and/or victories.
• Aim to submit interesting, eye-catching stories that people from any culture will want to read and share
Prizes:
• Winning stories will receive recognition in local and national media markets
• Winners will receive a gift basket of the newest line of NATIVE(X) brand accessories
• Winners will also receive a framed, commemorative copy of their story for being a noteworthy participant in NATIVE(X)’s 2012 Native American awareness campaign
Single Red Female and NATIVE(X) look forward to considering your story. We are excited about the opportunity to work with you on building awareness around Native American Heritage Month!
###
About Native(X):
NATIVE(X) is an online gallery that offers Native American artists a marketplace to make a living while preserving their culture. In addition to providing Native American artists with an online venue to showcase and sell their work, NATIVE(X) collaborates with select featured artists to design unique Native-inspired accessories under the NATIVE(X) brand. NATIVE(X) shares the profits with artists and donates a portion of its funds to support art classes for children on reservations. For more information visit www.nativex.com
About Single Red Female:
Single Red Female is a Native-owned Management, Marketing, and Promotions company. Its mission is to ensure that Native professionals are recognized as noteworthy contributors to today’s mainstream markets. Single Red Female is honored to collaborate with NATIVE(X) on this noble effort to promote the talent, diversity, and enduring strength of Native people.
(Trigger warning for rape) For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice
EMMONAK, Alaska — She was 19, a young Alaska Native woman in this icebound fishing village of 800 in the Yukon River delta, when an intruder broke into her home and raped her. The man left. Shaking, the woman called the tribal police, a force of three. It was late at night. No one answered. She left a message on the department’s voice mail system. Her call was never returned. She was left to recover on her own.
Multimedia
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
A sign at Emmonak’s shelter. One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. More Photos »
Steve Remich for The New York Times
Lisa Marie Iyotte said her rape had never been prosecuted. More Photos »
The Emmonak Women’s Shelter needs money to stay open. More Photos »
“I drank a lot,” she said this spring, three years later. “You get to a certain point, it hits a wall.”
One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. And no place, women’s advocates say, is more dangerous than Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service.
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
A Senate version, passed with broad bipartisan support, would grant new powers to tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians suspected of sexually assaulting their Indian spouses or domestic partners. But House Republicans, and some Senate Republicans, oppose the provision as a dangerous expansion of the tribal courts’ authority, and it was excluded from the version that the House passed last Wednesday. The House and Senate are seeking to negotiate a compromise.
Here in Emmonak, the overmatched police have failed to keep statistics related to rape. A national study mandated by Congress in 2004 to examine the extent of sexual violence on tribal lands remains unfinished because, the Justice Department says, the $2 million allocation is insufficient.
But according a survey by the Alaska Federation of Natives, the rate of sexual violence in rural villages like Emmonak is as much as 12 times the national rate. And interviews with Native American women here and across the nation’s tribal reservations suggest an even grimmer reality: They say few, if any, female relatives or close friends have escaped sexual violence.
“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
Women say the tribal police often discourage them from reporting sexual assaults, and Indian Health Service hospitals complain they lack cameras to document injuries.
Police and prosecutors, overwhelmed by the crime that buffets most reservations, acknowledge that they are often able to offer only tepid responses to what tribal leaders say has become a crisis.
Reasons for the high rate of sexual assaults among American Indians are poorly understood, but explanations include a breakdown in the family structure, a lack of discussion about sexual violence and alcohol abuse.
Rape, according to Indian women, has been distressingly common for generations, and they say tribal officials and the federal and state authorities have done little to help halt it, leading to its being significantly underreported.
In the Navajo Nation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, 329 rape cases were reported in 2007 among a population of about 180,000. Five years later, there have been only 17 arrests. Women’s advocates on the reservation say only about 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported.
The young woman who was raped in Emmonak, now 22, asked that her name not be used because she fears retaliation from her attacker, whom she still sees in the village. She said she knew of five other women he had raped, though she is the only one who reported the crime.
Nationwide, an arrest is made in just 13 percent of the sexual assaults reported by American Indian women, according to the Justice Department, compared with 35 percent for black women and 32 percent for whites.
In South Dakota, Indians make up 10 percent of the population, but account for 40 percent of the victims of sexual assault. Alaska Natives are 15 percent of that state’s population, but constitute 61 percent of its victims of sexual assault.
The Justice Department did not prosecute 65 percent of the rape cases on Indian reservations in 2011. And though the department said it had mandated extra training for prosecutors and directed each field office to develop its own plan to help reduce violence against women, some advocates for Native American women said they no longer pressed victims to report rapes.
“I feel bad saying that,” said Sarah Deer, a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota and an authority on violent crime on reservations. “But it compounds the trauma if you are willing to stand up and testify and they can’t help you.”
Despite the low rates of arrests and prosecutions, convicted sexual offenders are abundant on tribal lands. The Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, with about 25,000 people, is home to 99 Class 3 sex offenders, those deemed most likely to commit sex crimes after their release from prison. The Tohono O’odham tribe’s reservation in Arizona, where about 15,000 people live, has 184, according to the Justice Department.
By comparison, Boston, with a population of 618,000, has 252 Class 3 offenders. Minneapolis, with a population of 383,000, has 101, according to the local police.
The agencies responsible for aiding the victims of sexual assault among American Indians are often ill prepared.
The Indian Health Service, for instance, provides exams for rape victims at only 27 of the 45 hospitals it finances and, according to a federal report in 2011, did not keep adequate track of the number of sexual assault victims its facilities treat and lacked an overall policy for treating rape victims. Additionally, the health service has just 73 trained sexual assault examiners.
The Justice Department, which has increased the number of F.B.I. agents and United States attorneys on Indian reservations and is seeking to help the Indian Health Service train more nurses, said combating sexual violence was a priority.
“There’s no quick fix. There’s no one thing that will fix the system,” said Virginia Davis, deputy director for policy development in the department’s Office on Violence Against Women. “We’re taking a systematic approach to this — thinking about different ways to solve the problem.”
In the meantime, the problem persists. Lisa Marie Iyotte, 43, who was raped on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, said prosecutors had never told her why they did not charge the man arrested in that crime. He was later convicted of another rape, and when he was released from prison in 2008 and moved back to the reservation, no one told her, she said. She has not seen him yet.
“When I think about it, I say, ‘What am I going to do?’ ” she said. “I don’t know.”
Nine hundred miles away, in the Navajo Nation, Caroline Antone, 50, an advocate for the reservation’s victims of sexual violence who has herself been raped, said sexual assault was virtually routine in her community.
“I know only a couple of people who have not been raped,” she said. “Out of hundreds.”
any vote for the GOP, is a vote for rape
Senate Republicans Reject ‘Genocide’ to Describe Treatment of American Indians - ICTMN.com
It was 1:30 p.m. April 19 when I received a frantic phone call from Colorado State Senator Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, who said she had less than 24 hours to resurrect the Recognition of the American Indian Genocide resolution of 2008.
By noon the next day, the original draft of the new 2012 American Indian Genocide resolution, SJR12-046, was dead on the senate floor, and what was left was a watered-down euphemism that still reeks of sugarcoating and naiveté.
What was contentious to the republican state senators was the use of the word “genocide.” The bevy of right-leaning Reagan fans had nothing but acrimonious things to say about American Indians, including myself, who assert that genocide was inflicted upon the first peoples of this continent.
And the most boisterous polemic of the bunch that day was republican State Senator Ellen Roberts of District 6.
Her argument, which she repeatedly reiterated at the podium, was that she didn’t feel the death of millions of American Indians since Columbus qualified as genocide because American Indians are not extinct.
“When I look up the word ‘exterminate’ it is to destroy totally,” she argued. “And my problem with this resolution is I thank God that we have not destroyed totally the Native American people. And one of my challenges … is (the) wording; that is as if they are extinct, because they are not.”
It is curious then that the day prior Roberts added her name as cosponsor to Senate Joint Resolution 32 – concerning the declaration of April 16 through 22, 2012, as Holocaust Awareness Week.
Today, Germany is home to more than 200,000 Jewish people.
Jews are not extinct.
Then, on the same day Sen. Roberts voted down the American Indian Genocide Resolution, she signed on as cosponsor to Senate Joint Resolution 33 – Concerning the Colorado Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide.
Today, the Armenian population in Armenia is more than 3 million.
Eo ipso, Armenians also are not extinct.
So, naturally, I’m prompted to wonder: How could Sen. Roberts, based on her logic, support two resolutions that recognize the genocide of both the Armenians and Jews when neither group has been expunged completely?
Indeed.
State Senator Ted Harvey of District 30 was the second loudest to object to the use of the word “genocide.” He asserted that it was a disservice to those “who have actually died at the hand of governments” and to those that were lined up “at mass grave sites,” and were shot and murdered.
Sen. Harvey either hasn’t heard of (or possibly rejects) the reality of the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 when more than 150 Lakota men, women and children were brutally murdered by the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment and dumped into a mass grave near the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Which is it, Sen. Harvey?
Soon after Sen. Harvey ended his pejorative diatribe, Sen. Roberts introduced an amendment that changed the language of the resolution from “genocide” to “atrocity.”
The new resolution passed 24 to 9 with the replaced phrasing, “Concerning the Remembrance of the American Indian Atrocity.”
“It’s contradictory that (Sen. Roberts) supported the other resolutions but jumped all over ours,” said Tessa McLean, of the Ojibwe Nation and senior at the University of Colorado Denver who attended the floor hearing. “She was denying the genocide against our people. I felt very angry and upset.”
Amanda Williams, 18, of the San Carlos Apache and Navajo nations and a University of Denver student, later cried in the office of Sen. Williams and said she felt personally offended by the arrogance of the senate republicans and their inability to recognize the systematic murder of American Indian peoples.
“I felt that it was a slap in the face and a further attempt at erasing the truth of the history of the native peoples (of the Americas),” she said.
The only conclusion I can come to is that our senate republicans suffer from blind patriotism. You can’t be the greatest nation in the world if you admit to genocide, right? Apparently not.
Simon Moya-Smith is a journalist and blogger from Edgewater and a registered member of the Oglala Lakota Nation.
(Source: rematiration)
“Native American DNA” Tests: What are the Risks to Tribes?
[Previously published in The Native Voice (Dec. 3-17, 2004), D2]
Kim TallBear
Ph.D. Candidate, UC Santa Cruz (History of Consciousness), Member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate
Deborah A. Bolnick
Ph.D. Candidate, UC Davis (Biological Anthropology), Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin
Does DNA make an Indian?
In Red Earth, White Lies (Scribner, 1995), Vine Deloria Jr. muses about the dramatic rise in people self-identifying as Native American since the political upheavals of the 1960s. Deloria asks: “can whites really become Indians? A good many people seriously want to know.”
Deloria did not refer to “Native American DNA”, but the question he poses is one that many people are hoping DNA can answer. In this age of genetic determinism, when many Americans believe that identity, kinship, and race are determined by one’s genes, more and more people are turning to DNA testing to validate their claims of Native American ancestry. At least fourteen companies now sell Native American DNA tests ($80-600, depending on the type of test ordered). After rubbing a sterile cotton swab on the inside of the cheek and sending it in a vial to the DNA testing company, the test taker will be told if he or she possesses particular genetic markers that are commonly found in individuals with Native American ancestry. Test takers also receive a frameable document certifying their genetic ancestral affiliation.
Since 30 million Americans have set up websites tracing their family histories and 80% of those surveyed by the genealogy portal RootsWeb.com say that it would be important to use DNA to determine their ancestry, these DNA tests have the potential to influence many people. Unfortunately, this may mean trouble for tribes. Will Native American DNA tests be used to challenge tribal rights and governance authority?
DNA companies profit while tribes may lose out
In the September 22, 2004 Indian Country Today, an advertisement by the company Genelex asked readers, “Do you need to confirm that you are of Native American descent?” Genelex claims that its Ancestry DNA Test reveals genetic markers that are “unique to Native Americans”, making it “the only scientifically rigorous method available” for “validating … eligibility for government entitlements such as Native American Rights”.Two features of this ad epitomize the problems with Native American DNA testing and the way it is hyped by DNA testing companies. First, the claim that these tests identify uniquely Native American markers is not completely accurate: some of the genetic markers used in these tests are found only in Native Americans, but many are not. This claim therefore exaggerates what DNA can tell us about ancestry and ethnic identity, and implies a greater correspondence between genetic markers and ethnic groups than really exists. We further explain such problems with the science behind these tests later in this article. Second, although Genelex describes its test as validating rather than determining eligibility for Native American rights, careful use of verbs does not diminish the central message that DNA testing proves Native American identity in a scientifically objective manner. The implication is that successful DNA test takers should have the right to access Native American “government entitlements” whether or not they belong to federally-recognized tribes. Other DNA testing companies suggest that test results can also be used to qualify for ethnicity-specific scholarships and race-based college admissions.
However, eligibility for Native American rights is ultimately a political and cultural issue that will never be satisfactorily answered by genetics.
Native American tribes need to ask themselves, “since when does a genetic test rather than government get to decide who is Native American and therefore eligible for Native American rights?” For 150 years, Native American rights have been determined by legal criteria that support the idea of tribal sovereignty. Are tribes willing to give up authority to the scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors who run DNA testing companies and who seem less familiar with Native American politics and history?
Tribal sovereignty and legal rights are contentious in American politics today. States, industry, and others wage expensive legal battles to challenge tribes’ rights to govern their lands and citizenries or to exist at all. There are also many American citizens who may not realize that tribes are political entities and not simply quaint ethnic groups. Some of these romanticize Native America and search with heavy emotional investment for a Native American ancestor that is sometimes real and sometimes imagined.
Given the current political and cultural environment, many Americans might sooner look to DNA than to tribal and federal law to determine who is Native American and who can access Native American rights.
Because tribal and federal law focus on tribal group relations, cultural continuity, and a tribal land-base, many individuals with Native American biological ancestors are nonetheless ineligible for federally-recognized tribal status or tribal enrollment. When law fails to recognize them as Native American, these individuals may turn to DNA testing. For example, after failing to meet federal recognition standards, a group calling themselves the “Western Mohegan Tribe and Nation” attempted to use DNA analysis to prove their Native American identity in order to get into the gaming business. Although their efforts were unsuccessful, hopes of gaming profits may motivate others to seek recognition in this manner, and tribal sovereignty could be undermined as a result.
Indeed, some early signs suggest that DNA testing could become a legal requirement for proving Native American affiliation even if opposed by tribes. After the 9,000 year old remains known as “Kennewick Man” were unearthed in 1996, DNA analysis was authorized to help determine his “cultural affiliation” despite opposition from the tribes claiming the remains under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. DNA testing proved unsuccessful because too little DNA was preserved in the bones for analysis, but a precedent has been set. Legislation has also been proposed in at least one state (Vermont) that would require DNA testing to prove the Native American affiliation of both human remains and individuals seeking state recognition.
Can DNA be useful to federally-recognized tribes?
A few federally-recognized tribes, such as the Mashantucket Pequot of Connecticut, have considered using Native American DNA tests for enrollment purposes. For the Pequot, as for other wealthy casino tribes, the financial stakes of enrollment are high: the Pequot disburse monthly payments to each member totaling thousands of dollars. If DNA could exclude those who cannot legitimately claim Pequot ancestry, the financial benefits for the remaining tribal members would be great.
However, these Native American DNA tests rarely (if ever) identify genetic markers for particular tribes. Because no tribe has been completely isolated from other human groups throughout history, very few genetic markers are present only in the members of one tribe. In all likelihood, genetic markers found in the Pequot also exist in many other tribes. Consequently, adoption of a DNA-based enrollment policy might actually expand the number of individuals qualifying for tribal enrollment because individuals without Pequot ancestry could claim membership based on the shared genetic markers.
This example should serve as a red flag to tribes: enrollment policies based on DNA alone could backfire. Furthermore, because individual identity is shaped by more than genetic ancestry, other enrollment criteria might be better able to meet the needs of land-based tribal nations. Reservation residence or tribal community involvement, for example, can help ensure that tribal members are also culturally connected to the tribe and committed to its future.
Some companies may encourage the notion that genetic ancestry alone makes an Indian, though, because there is a potentially lucrative market in such over-simplification. For example, the DNA testing company DNAToday has teamed up with DCI America (a for-profit tribal management consulting firm) to sell “genetic identification systems” to tribes. Their $320- per-person photo ID cards sport computer chips and list specific DNA markers. DNAToday advocates tribal-wide DNA testing, and claims that their product is “100% reliable in terms of creating accurate answers” to questions of tribal enrollment. But one must ask, “which questions do they answer?”
DNAToday’s test is simply a paternity test that confirms an individual’s biological parentage. While this could help demonstrate an enrollment applicant’s relationship to an ancestor on the tribe’s base roll, that relationship can usually be documented through other less expensive means (such as birth certificates and the enrollment documents of parents and grandparents). When it can’t, many tribes already use paternity tests. Thus, in many cases, DNAToday’s
products are redundant and cost exorbitant. The cost would range from tens of thousands of dollars for small tribes to tens of millions for the largest tribes, and few tribes would gain much new or useful information.
The science of Native American DNA testing
DNA testing for Native American identity and enrollment is clearly problematic on a social, cultural, and political front. But what about the science behind such tests? There are problems there too. The tests can fail to detect Native American ancestry in individuals with Native American ancestors, and incorrectly identify it in others who do not have such ancestors.
First, Native American DNA tests examine only a small proportion of the test taker’s DNA. Most tests fall into one of two categories: mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) tests and Y- chromosome tests. MtDNA tests examine DNA that is inherited only from one’s mother (and her mother, and her mother before her…). Y-chromosome tests examine DNA that is passed down from grandfather to father to son (and so on). These tests examine less than 1% of the test taker’s DNA, and shed light on only one maternal or paternal ancestor. Thus, even if all of your grandparents were Native American except for your mother’s mother, a mtDNA test would still fail to detect Native American ancestry.
Second, DNA tests may certify some individuals as having Native American ancestry when in fact they do not. These tests use the following logic: if a genetic marker is common in Native Americans, and you have the marker, you are probably Native American. The problem is that ‘common’ is not the same as ‘only found in’ Native Americans. Given the high level of genetic variation within all human populations, relatively few markers are restricted to a single group in this way. In fact, not all “Native American” markers used in the DNA tests are actually found only in Native Americans. Some of the markers are most common in Native American populations, so any individual with those markers most likely has Native American ancestry. But because such markers can still be found in non-Native American populations, just at lower frequencies, Native American DNA tests may falsely identify some individuals as having Native American ancestry.
Such “false positives” may be responsible for the more perplexing results of these tests. Several come from DNAPrint’s AncestrybyDNA test, which examines 175 markers found throughout the genome to estimate the test taker’s “ancestral proportions” (% Native American, % European, % East Asian, and % African). Based on their test results, DNAPrint claims that most Mediterranean Europeans, Middle Easterners, Jews, and South Asian Indians have Native American ancestry. If, however, some of the markers they consider diagnostic of Native American ancestry are really not, then such results are not accurate and the reliability of this test is cast into doubt.
Thus, Native American DNA tests do not provide foolproof answers to questions of Native American ancestry. In many cases, their results are accurate and informative. But in others, they fail to detect such ancestry in individuals with Native American ancestors, and they incorrectly identify it in others. The appropriate use of such imperfect tests must be considered carefully.
Conclusion: Can DNA tell us anything about Native American identity?
Ultimately, the answer to this question depends on how we define “Native American”. Up until now, the definition has incorporated ideas of tribal citizenship and sovereignty, acculturation as a Native American, and biological ancestry.
But now that genetics carries such cultural power, we face several pressing questions: Will Native American identities and rights that have been reckoned through a combination of kinship ideas, law, and policy now be reckoned increasingly through DNA? Will DNA tests be required in law and policy? Will prevailing cultural notions of kin, race, and genetic ancestry undermine tribal notions of kin that emphasize a close cultural connection to the tribe? How will the focus on DNA affect ongoing U.S. negotiations with tribal nations? Tribes need to consider these possibilities carefully.
