The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz
Oct 2024 · Flatiron Books
4.0star
68 reviewsreport
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304
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About this ebook
A groundbreaking and deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment, and what it means to be Native American in the United States
“A genre-bending work of reportage, memoir, and history” —The New Yorker
“Candid, unflinching . . . Her thorough excavation of the painful history that gave rise to rigid enrollment policies is a courageous gift to our understanding of contemporary Native life.” —The Whiting Foundation Jury
Who is Indian enough?
To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded—increasing 85 percent in just ten years—the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe.
In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity—the story of her enrollment and the enrollment of her children—she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today’s Tribal identity policing. With this intimate perspective of the ongoing fight for Native sovereignty, The Indian Card sheds light on what it looks like to find a deeper sense of belonging.
“A genre-bending work of reportage, memoir, and history” —The New Yorker
“Candid, unflinching . . . Her thorough excavation of the painful history that gave rise to rigid enrollment policies is a courageous gift to our understanding of contemporary Native life.” —The Whiting Foundation Jury
Who is Indian enough?
To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded—increasing 85 percent in just ten years—the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe.
In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity—the story of her enrollment and the enrollment of her children—she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today’s Tribal identity policing. With this intimate perspective of the ongoing fight for Native sovereignty, The Indian Card sheds light on what it looks like to find a deeper sense of belonging.
Ratings and reviews
4.0
68 reviews
deunte galloway
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November 5, 2024
When someone use that term NATIVE AMERICAN, they are foreigners posing as American Indians. The so called Blacks are American Indians, we have been misclassified as African American or black. These people you see now are Mongolian descent. $5 dollar Indians, because they bought and sighed under the Dawes rolls for 5$ to be us. All dark skinned people are not Africans.
Sherry Demery
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November 14, 2024
seems likely she'd rather not be a part of her native blood,at least not with her children. Otherwise it was interesting
Dawn Millsap
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November 15, 2024
Seems. Like. It. B. A. Great. Read. I. Like. To. Learn. More. About. Indians. They. Don't. Pretend. To. B. Indians. Some. Indians. R. Foreigners.
About the author
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She spent seven years working in the Obama Administration on issues of homelessness and Native policy. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The Indian Card is her first book.
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