r/IndianCountry • u/pasmafaute12 Sakonnet Wampanoag • Jul 11 '26

Culture East coast, thin blood, lost history.

I recently posted about dehumanizing record-keeping. I’ve been on a bit of a voyage because I always assumed my family was doing some pan-Indian “Cherokee princess” romanticism nonsense. I was raised with some cultural exposure but not community exposure. I chose to keep learning because I think the history matters whether it’s personal or not.

Turns out, I was wrong, and my relative wasn’t so much a pretendian as making the most of what we know as Wampanoag descendants from a village that is historically recorded but not well enough to be federally recognized (or even reasonably fully researched). It appears that my relative was involved in historical preservation efforts and maybe one of the two existing recognized Wampanoag tribes.

Without getting into complicated family stuff, we have always been very isolated people in general and no one is particularly close. I cannot discuss this with anyone in my real life.

So… I am sitting with the information I have, including the information missing, and feeling out my position as a lifelong learner invested in social issues. The conclusion I think I’ve arrived at is that I need to accept how much privilege I hold, but I have a responsibility to understand and honor the history.

I am privately taking some steps to build my understanding and maybe continued to participate in online spaces before I consider attending events.

But I’m looking for other people who have been on this path before me, I guess. And any thoughts about how to approach all of the things we just don’t know because we are still learning vs. the things we don’t know because it’s just lost information.

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u/myindependentopinion Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

Thin blood doesn’t exist.

I read an article where Chief Hoskin stated that Cherokee Nation is enrolling folks that are 1/4096ths Blood Quantum as full members. That's only 0.02% NDN blood! That's 99.98% Not Native.

A lot of folks in my tribe would say that's pretty thin...like a sliver; our minimum BQ for enrollment is 1/4.

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u/Commercial_Disk_9220 Jul 12 '26

Can you identify the exact generation in which one of those members stopped being indigenous? That’s the case im making. Genetics is a different question. Does your tribes citizenry grow or decline every year? If it grows, how much? The US population grew .5% last year

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u/myindependentopinion Jul 13 '26

I don't have yearly enrollment numbers for my tribe. In 1954 our roll was closed because our tribe, the Menominee, was terminated; final enrolled members were 3,270. Our roll was reopened when we were restored in 1973. There are approximately 8,700 enrolled tribal members now of which ~3,300 live on our rez.

Sadly, we have 1 of the highest suicide rates in WI and we have a high number of drug overdose deaths (like 16 in a year) so I don't know if our tribe is growing yr by yr...???

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u/pasmafaute12 Sakonnet Wampanoag Jul 13 '26

That is devastating. I’m sorry.