So originally, it's a scientific calculation of degree of percentage of an individual's either racial and/or national ancestry. Today we don't believe that so much, but it's part of the history of blood quantum. How is all of that measured out? How does culture fit in there historically? It was thought that that was part of the measurement that those kind of cultural affiliations and loyalties were literally in the blood. So it's literal, it's metaphoric, it's a measure of race, maybe politics, maybe nation, maybe Anishinaabe blood, maybe White Earth blood, maybe.so there's that slippery concept as well between Indian blood, Anishinaabe blood, or White Earth blood. We understand that blood can't literally be measured in that ancestral sense, but that it's a metaphor for affiliations that our ancestors had historically that then parcel themselves out through time and genealogy. Today we're sort of slipping into maybe a little bit more metaphoric understanding of blood quantum. Initially it was a literal concept at the turn of the 20th century where scientists thought that they could literally measure blood. Ultimately, blood quantum is this western concept. I always like to start out with, what is blood quantum because even though it's something that we're all familiar with and probably everybody here could sort of go around the room and tell us your blood quantum, what it is officially and then maybe what you think it is correctly, what the Bureau's gotten wrong. All of these systems have pros and cons and we have to think about what can we work with that works best for each individual tribal nation and that is your decision to make so we're just here to share some information. Ultimately what we know and I think what we'll come to talk about in our discussions is that there's no perfect system. My research is on citizenship and identity and I've been working on it for a number of years. We've heard some wonderful presentations so far today and today what I'm going to do is talk a little bit more about blood quantum, a little bit about the history of blood quantum and what's been kind of happening at White Earth the past few years. So that's part of my legal political identity, my personal identity as Anishinaabe transcends political boundaries I think in many ways. I'm what we call a first-degree descendant, which is that my mother is enrolled at White Earth and I am not enrolled due to the current blood quantum system. I'll just make a note that I'm not a White Earth citizen. As Sarah mentioned, I did grow up at White Earth, that's where I'm from. I'm really honored to be part of the program. Thank you so much to the Bush Foundation and also to Sarah and Collette for helping with the organizing today.
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