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The recent kerfuffle over politician Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test proving that she has Native American blood (a degree denoting a likely ancestor dating back from the early 19th Century) is a fine illustration of the continuity and persistence of the American fixation on race.
I will leave it to others to parse the implications of the unseemly politics of this matter. But it’s a fascinating cultural window and mirror, ain’t it?
There’s an element of magical thinking in the belief that our “blood” somehow defines us. While we certainly inherit certain characteristics genetically, cultural identity is not genetically determined, but, well… culturally determined. Having “the blood” is not enough in itself to impart cultural identity. Which the Cherokee Nation rather bluntly pointed out:
The Cherokee Nation described the DNA test as “useless,” adding that there are legal requirements for tribal citizenship.
“Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong,” Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin, Jr., said in a statement. “It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”
Columnist Nick Estes touched the matter with a needle:
“Indianness isn’t defined by DNA. It’s a legal, social, cultural, and historical construct, where Indigenous nations self-define the parameters of belonging. Put simply, it’s not about who you claim, it’s about who claims you.”
*
We’ve always been weird about blood. In the case of those of African descent, racial heritage — and its cultural baggage, both positive and negative — was for centuries determined by the “one drop of blood” rule. If you had one drop of “black blood,” you were black — no matter how “white” you looked. That single drop of blood was, in the eyes of white supremacist antebellum Southern society in particular, a stain. For plantation society, there was great anxiety about black blood tainting the family tree and a Negro “passing” as a white man or woman was a threat.
This anxiety over purity, of course, did not reflect reality on the ground, where miscegenation was rife, from planters and their randy sons having sex with their slaves to mixed-blood communities of lower castes where the blood of white, red and black mingled profligately.
Thomas Jefferson’s teenage concubine Sally Hemings was very likely three-quarters European in descent and the half-sister of Jefferson’s dead wife, Martha. She remained a slave.
Sally Hemings was very likely the half-sister of Thomas Jefferson’s dead wife, Martha.
This is only shocking if you don’t know — or won’t see — the nature of planter society in the antebellum South. The brilliant diarist Mary Chestnut, who was of that social strata, saw clearly:
Like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children–and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.
*
The question of identity has been a fraught one for the entire history of the Euro-American project. In recent years, I have grown deeply interested in the ever-shifting racial and cultural landscape of the borderlands. By the middle part of the 18th Century, there were a great many people of mixed blood and blended culture operating in the wilderness borderlands, men and women who were not just both white and Indian, but something distinctive (yet undefined) unto themselves. Many acted as mediators in trade and politics.
Andrew Montour was of mixed race and cultural heritage — which he proclaimed with a flamboyant mix of European and native dress.
Andrew Montour, French/Oneida Metis, is a classic example of the Man of the Middle Ground. He acted as an interpreter and mediator for agents of colonial Pennsylvania in dealings with the First Nations people of the Ohio Valley in the 1740s and ’50s. Though he was widely respected, he was also not white enough for the whites and not Indian enough for the Indians, not simply because of his blood but because he was truly a man of both cultures — and neither. His efforts to nail down a place in the world for his kind did not serve the powerful interests of either the Iroquois League nor colonial Pennsylvania.
He ended up an alcoholic, murdered by a Seneca drinking buddy.
In his magisterial book The First Frontier, Scott Weidensaul notes:
“In ways that would haunt him all his life, Andrew Montour was the living embodiment of the patchwork human frontier, a shadow of the physical borderlands. And when he tried to create a place where he could find peace — a place for all the other in-betweens and castoffs, half-bloods and immigrants, refugees and wanderers — both of Montour’s worlds, the Indian and the European, conspired to crush his dream. No wonder he drank a lot.”
His son, John Montour, was equally culturally ambiguous. He was a badass Frontier Partisan fighter, but he switched sides repeatedly during the frontier conflict that accompanied the American Revolution. It wasn’t because he was fickle or opportunistic — he just didn’t know where to be. He made a whole bunch of enemies and was ultimately murdered in 1788 by Delaware hunters.
*
We may never resolve the tangled relationships between heritage, ethnicity, culture; our sense of belonging to a group or tribe and our individual standing as citizens before the Law. The American ideal is, of course, Liberty and Justice For All — and while we have struggled from the very first to live up to that ideal, we have moved in fits and starts toward its fulfillment. Identity politics, where race and culture is given primacy over our individual relationship with the promise of the nation, can be nothing but an impediment to a movement toward a day when each of us is judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of our character.
It’s probably best to understand the most recent fixation on “one drop of blood” as just another episode in the ongoing reality TV farce our politics has become. It sure doesn’t feel like progress.
John W Dutcher says
great reflection and a history lesson
Thanks Dutcher.
Rick Schwertfeger says
I know a fellow whose dad is Scottish (really from Scotland) and his mom is Blackfoot (really from the rez). He grew up much of the time on the rez, but isn’t really accepted by non-family guys there because of the obvious. When he visits his family in Scotland, it’s awkward because, well, he has some native american features, talks American, and isn’t from Scotland. This stuff goes on and on.
This was one of your best pieces.
Thanks Rick. That Scottish/Blackfoot heritage is a strong frontier heritage. The remarkable frontiersman Jerry Potts (Bear Child), whom I MUST write about, was of Blood/Scots heritage. The Scots in the Canadian fur Trade in particular often married Piegan or Blood women.
Interesting that your acquaintance seems to have trouble finding someone to “choose him.” Again, a circumstance with a long frontier history tail behind it…
RLT says
I could not believe Warren took the bait. Truly, it seems nobody’s listening to their handlers anymore. Oh well; I’ve got local and state elections to worry about. And really, I find that the political junkie in me is dying off anyway.
On the flip side, reading my Native friends’ Facebook posts on Warren has been hilarious.
I bet.
lane batot says
The Native Americans(back in the day) were one of the most racially blind peoples in the history of our planet–with their regularly taking captives of all tribes and races, and after various means of trial-and-error, accepting them(well, SOME of them.…) completely as full citizens of the tribe if they adapted properly. And even had ceremonies to “wash the white blood” from their white captives, for instance. Intermarriage was seen as something that STRENGTHENED the tribe(in most tribes, that is)–a lesson modern folks really oughta emulate(ESPECIALLY in mongrel America!). Though other societies often spout platitudes of accepting other races, they often–in actuality–are quite hypocritical in reality. The Old Indian ways FULLY accepted adopted captives–though no doubt prejudiced individuals could make a captive’s life difficult. The Cherokee, in particular, intermarried a LOT with white settlers–so much so, that eye witnesses on the tragic Cherokee removal often stated that many of the exiles looked more Scottish or Irish than Indian! There is a great saying about Cherokee blood, though: “Cherokee blood is STRONG; it takes very little to make a Cherokee!” As a product of classic Scotch-Irish-Cherokee from Southern Appalachia on me maw’s side, I can well relate to THAT! But I am being facetious when I blurt about being 1/64th Comanche on me paw’s side–as I find this nit-picking about genetics to be a silly waste of time(though it certainly IS interesting, at the least). WHO you are is who you relate best to, and being able to CHOOSE is what America’s SUPPOSED to be all about, right? But of course human politics and political correctedness has to rear it’s multiple ugly heads(that change direction every time the wind does) and squelch such lofty ideals. I gave up on worrying what offended other “races” a long time ago, and decided I AND MY DOGS make up our own tribe, and the rest of the world can lump it!
lane batot says
.…and there is a funny photo going around on Facebook of a mosquito on somebody’s(?) hand, bloated with blood from it’s recent meal, and stating below “and just like that, Elizabeth Warrens Indian blood was gone”. Of course if it WAS Cherokee blood, it was the strongest part of her!.…..And all this brue-haw over genetics, past and present, cannot help but make me point out to the “pure” white supremists especially, that thanks to DNA research, it has been PROVEN, once-and-for-all, that if you have ANY Northern European bloodlines in your ancestry, you ARE a certain percentage NEANDERTHAL–not only a different race, but a different SPECIES of hominid! And that Africans with no European genetics, are REALLY the “purest” of the human races–that is so hilariously(if tragically.…) ironic that I laugh every time I think about it! But let me do say that I personally am NOT ashamed of my own Neanderthal genetics–I revel in them! And regularly indulge myself in practicing my Neanderthal heritage!
Apparently there is no perceived political benefit to claiming Neanderthal DNA. I’m with you on this, however. I embrace the rainbow.
Matthew says
Somewhere online I once commented if we were really concerned with whose land was whose we’d be arguing between Cro-Magnon’s and Neanderthals rights. Apparently, it is even more complicated than that.
Winfred Blevins in his great Mountain Man book “Give Your Heart To The Hawks” noted that “When different races of men meet for the first time, they fight and then they fornicate.” As I first read this at an impressionable age when it seemed to me that those two activities were the most compelling ones in which a person could possibly engage, I have adopted it as a sociological rule of thumb — which has yet to prove false. Maybe the order changes on occasion…
Saddle Tramp says
Breakfast at Nick’s Cafe in old Chinatown then made it to The Autry especially to see the Rick Bartow THINGS YOU KNOW BUT CANNOT EXPLAIN exhibit. He has much to say about “Indian”. A truly wonderful exhibit.
Most of the time I’m just working… Something will work it’s way up, and I’ll say “ Oh, there’s a coyote.”
— Rick Bartow
A Bartow piece was featured at the “My Own Two Hands” fundraiser for Sisters Folk Festival, and he played here. Glad you got to see that.
Saddle Tramp says
What a privilege that was as he left us not long after that. Sisters is a fortuitous location to be in. In the Barstow exhibit they have two video screens where he discusses eight of his works. A very moving testimony from such a humble and wise man. As it were LARAZA another powerful temporary photography exhibit is showing at the same time and both have blood as part of the theme coursing through them. Those two exhibits alone are worth the visit but then you get all the rest that THE AUTRY offers. I went on kind of a museum binge also catching KING TUT at the California Science Museum before it ends. Mind boggling considering the age of the artifacts and artistic quality and all the rest. Ironically it was an Egyptian water boy in the employ of Carter who inadvertently stumbled onto and discovered the entrance to the tomb. Two floors of displays for this exhibit. I relished every step through it.
I’ve missed that exhibit every time I’ve had an opportunity, starting when I was 13. I got in trouble at school and was punished by being kept off the field trip… Bastards.
Harry Pollard says
Great write, Jim. Particularly appropot for thanksgiving. A time when we should reflect not only upon our worldly blessings, but also for the sacrifices millions made in order that we enjoy the blessings of freedom.
Thx Harry.