Posted by Kaapuikinaea on September 18, 2009 at 8:42am
I was going through the Squaxin Island Tribe website. Last month I attended a Squaxin wedding since my niece (Oiwi) married a Squaxin. The site has a monthly newsletter & I was just familiarizing myself with the people I met there. Like it is for us, it's a small group of people, everyone is related to everyone else & they know each other.They had a section on Blood Quantum in the newsletter & it focused on 2 people, one was a Dakota, the other was Sioux/Assiniboine.They say basically the same thing I've seen with Hawaiians & other NDNs I've met who talked about this issue. Division among the people. More so, for these tribes where they have tribal enrollment (which I saw in the Squaxin newsletter announcing when they had open enrollment), to a point where a NDN scholar @ UC Berkeley said didn't want to see a cultural police along with a bq police. She was referring to a tribe that considered enrollment based on certain cultural practices like the ability to speak the language or knowledge of it, residence on the reservation, participation in ceremonial activities, all as criteria for enrollment.Reminds me of DHHL, or other things all related to Hawaiians. When some speak Hawaiian, others may criticize. When some dance hula, others may criticize. If you are too active politically, you get criticized. If you show no subservient type of attitude, you're criticized for not being Hawaiian or showing "aloha" which some feel, although somewhat made up, a qualification for being Hawaiian.
Comments