This story from the NYTimes is an up-close look at an issue that is becoming more and more relevant for many tribal nations - namely who has a legitimate claim to tribal citizenship.  Per capita dividend payments from successful tribal enterprises has given new meaning to this question recently.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/magazine/who-decides-who-counts-as-native-american.html

The story is about a NW tribe, the Nooksack.  If you want to learn about enrollment rules for the Tohono O'odham Nation, you can find a marked-up document that represents proposed changes to their Enrollment Ordinance here:

http://www.tolc-nsn.org/docs/EnrollmentAmendments2016.pdf

The Nation recently sponsored a series of public hearings on these proposed changes.

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An Economic Exile, Outweighed by a Spiritual Exile

This Friday’s discussion (1-13) of Vine Deloria’s chapter “Out of Chaos” covered the chapter’s analysis of Native American exile.  Deloria argues that Western Native American tribes are exiled even though they still have access to their tribal lands.  Unlike Eastern tribes that were forcibly removed from their lands and experience a physical political exile, the Western groups feel a spiritual exile.  The source of this exile comes down to Native American conceptions of land.  Unlike the European based concept of land as a commodity that can be owned, Native Americans consider “what the people did there, the animals who lived there and how the people related to them” (Deloria 244).  Native Americans believe that the land is acquired from higher powers, rather than deeded from one man to another.  This relationship with the land then entails a variety of actions to show respect for the land.  By restricting what the land can be used for, the United States Government deprives the Western tribes from their land the same way that Eastern tribes were removed earlier.  While not completely removed from their ancestral “lands in a geographic sense, [Western tribes] experience exile in much the same way as did their brothers from the East.  Restrictions in the manner in which people use their lands are as much a deprivation of land as the actual loss of title” (Deloria 245).

Losing their land not only came as an economic and political loss the to the Tribes, but the greatest loss was the “destruction of ceremonial life” (Deloria 247).  Further, Native Americans cannot learn the value in the exile because “the inundation of pilgrims makes it impossible for Indians to experience the solitude and abandonment which exile requires in order to teach its lessons” (Deloria 249)

Vine Deloria, Jr., "Out of Chaos, "from For This Land”

Overlapping maps of tribal land and NYT map

The tribal lands are in black, overlayed by the deaths by overdose per 100,000

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Looking at Maps with Tribal Lands in Mind

Re-reading Cornell and Kalt's "Two Approaches" got me thinking about the heterogeneity of institutions and circumstance across tribal areas in the U.S. Whenever I see maps in an article like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/07/us/drug-overdose-deaths-in-the-us.html

I always try to mentally compared them to maps like this:

https://nationalmap.gov/small_scale/printable/images/pdf/fedlands/BIA_2.pdf

Is there anything going on here?  White Earth and Rosebud (and maybe Colville?) sort of stick out on the negative side, while other areas of tribal land (Cheyenne River, Eastern Cherokee?) seem to maybe be better off than surrounding areas. This is central challenge in doing research on Indian Country as a whole.  The average effect of living in Indian Country for a problem like this maybe zero, but the average may mask a lot of variation. 

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