Yep. I've got a buddy who is brown, but not black or native, he put down he was native to get into med school lol. The only schools that gave interviews were the ones where he put he was native.

To clarify, the Ojibwe people surround the Great Lakes- some are in Canada and some are in the US. In the case of my friend, her Canadian Ojibwe heritage is not recognized by any Ojibwe tribe in the US.

Indigenous ancestry that has no basis within the US (in your example, Maya from Guatemala) not only has no tribes inside the US to recognize/not recognize you, you won't be recognized by the US federally.

Elizabeth Warren Effect

Identifying as Native American makes it easier to get into a good college and makes it easier to get a job. Makes sense that more people are doing it.

My tribe has a casino and we get about $800 a month with a couple $500 easter and Xmas bonuses. It's not enough to live on but it's very very nice.

Our casino was mismanaged by our board and only paid interest on the casino loan of a couple hundred million. That was for 20 years. In the last 10 years things got better and the debt will be paid off in like 2 years.

The college thing is really great. I believe some schools in New Hampshire or Vermont allows tribal members to go for free. The same with the Colorado College of Mines and now all UCs in California. We have a scholarship program and have sent maybe 100 kids through, myself included. The tribes goal is to make each generation better and I think it's working.

I identify as native American... I was born in America

A wonderful question! You wouldn't be recognized in the United States as being Native American. US law surrounding indigenous people is based upon "federally-recognized" tribes. As you can imagine, there ARE people within the US whose tribe is not federally recognized- and as a result are barred from any programs, as well as culturally significant legalities, such as being able to handle/possess eagle parts.

I have a friend with tribal heritage from Canada, who was born as a US citizen. As a result, no tribe in the US recognizes her blood quantum, and Canada won't let her enroll because she's not a Canadian citizen.

When I was a kid we were convinced Dad was at least a quarter Choctaw. Grew up in Oklahoma, right next to the reservation, he has all the racial profiling features, high cheekbones etc. nope. Welsh/Irish.

Bunch of Elizabeth Warrens? 😂

My family tree has branches overlapping. Luckily it's a couple generations in the past.

My great great grandma was married and had a child with a man. He then had a child with my great grandma. I also know of at least 2 sets of first cousins, not from my family, who are married with kids.

Do they have tribal cards?

>It's weird because I have friends who are clearly of native American decent, who's kids are clearly of native American decent and they can't gain membership to their associated tribes but my family all has their membership through an ex cheif from the 1800s of one of our tribes here and we're what I can only describe as Caucasian.

The reason for this is that blood quanta is not how most tribes historically determine membership. Various tribes used either matrilineal of patrilineal descent where if either your mother or father but not the other was part of the tribe then you had a place in their matrineal or patrilineal clan systems, which is to say part of the tribe because the clans were the basis of the tribe.

Tribal membership rooted out of clan membership, if you had no clan you were basically an outcast to the tribe because you had no place, as your clan is what made your place. The political systems revolved entirely around this, in a matrilineal tribe like the Iroquois you would have clan mothers who were like your mother's mother and anyone descended from them was part of that clan and the various clan mothers made a tribe as each clan mother ruled over a longhouse and multiple longhouses made up the village. If you had no clan mother you had no longhouse so you were not part of the village etc. Now the men would still rule usual, but they did so by way of their maternal descent and it was a big taboo to go against your clan mother even if you were the high chief or whatever.

Of course what I am saying is not universally applicable as it is only applicable to the group I am basing it off of, as obviously patrilineal tribes also existed who would be more like Arabs where if your father is an Arab you are an Arab regardless of who your mother was and this extends backwards indefinitely such that you have berbers in north africa who claim to be arab despite being not remotely arab simply as a result of (likely forged) genealogies. In such an analogy various arab "tribes" are more like clans, as several tribes made up the arabs as a whole but you get the idea. The specific name and level of the word used to describe what I'm talking about is irrelevant.

European "dynasties" were obviously a thing and worked similarly but they didn't really make it across the Atlantic so a new system basically rose up where male and female ancestry was weighted equally called blood quanta where you were "half" regardless of if your parent was male or female. I think this was influenced by the fact that they had to deal with confusion arising from having some groups being patrilineal while others were matrilineal so they just created one system to cover both as an attempt to understand why it sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, because otherwise you would have to track every native group individually based on their own rules.

Realistically it should be a lot lower threshold. Even at 10% that's enough with enough mixing in the community to restore a group over several generations.

By government cheese, I assume they're referring to how you gain access (as an enrolled member of a tribe) to tuition waivers for college (some are limited to certain tribes in a state, some are available to any tribe) and being able to go to Indian Health Services for healthcare (which is so unreliable in some parts of the US you might as well have no healthcare)

As for reparations I assume they are referring to tribes who have treaty money disbursed (an example is the 1854 Treaty Authority) in some interval (yearly, quarterly, etc).

Which yeah, is speaking in generalities. I've had people assume we all get "casino money" while my tribe's casino is so poorly managed all it does is lose money, and the only money you're getting from it is working minimum wage as a gift shop cashier

Because unless your relatives want to be incestuous, there's no way to keep the current blood quantum requirements.

I'm curious why they would want more people. The less people, the more the money goes around.

Would people of Latin American descent who also have indigenous heritage (let’s say Maya from Guatemala) be considered Native American?

The tribes where I live get bricks of government cheese. For a short period of time the US Federal government gave out roughly $450-$550 to every tribal member, a one time "reperation" for stolen lands (2012-2013)

Certain tribes here even give you land when you gain membership.

By the tribes as you stated.

I was specifically talking about Ojibwe when I wrote this, I know of a few other tribes as well but the one in most familiar with is Ojibwe because that's part of my lineage.

For us we tried to grow our numbers in 2010-2014. The tribe then voted against that and overturned family lineage once again in favor of blood quantum.

We do have casinos also but not big name or big money casinos. The Ojibwe tribes with major casinos make it next to impossible to claim membership through law.

What are you talking about? Government cheese? I've never heard of any natives getting reparations. I am in a revenue generating tribe and work for them. You sound like you are talking in generalities.

Overturned by who? Tribes can define membership based on how they want to. The bia typically stays out of inter tribal matters

In my tribe you have to be born into the tribe. You then have 1 year to apply. No exceptions. That means some people are left out. We have a casino so we want the least amount in our tribe. Before the casino, we had really lax rules on membership.

Seriousness of the issue aside, those people are cowards. Admit your heritage, come out as an attack helicopter. With machine guns and rockets!

there's certainly some of that, but also how the US census has collected racial and ethnic data has changed drastically and most gains come from people identifying as multi racial - people who couldn't before

Some might say there is an insensitive to marking it down.

Most tribes require a specific percentage of Native “blood,” called blood quantum, in addition to being able to document which tribal member you descend from. Some tribes require as much as 25% Native heritage, and most require at least 1/16th Native heritage, which is one great-great grandparent. Dec 18, 2012

https://dna-explained.com/2012/12/18/proving-native-american-ancestry-using-dna/#:~:text=Most%20tribes%20require%20a%20specific,is%20one%20great%2Dgreat%20grandparent.