This conversation began here
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=261.0Quoting myself from the last thread
BQ generally says something about the culture that was carried by our parents, garandparents or greatgrandparents, but it doesn't show which community these people lived in or what culture their children were mainly exposed to. Which is why I try and talk about BQ along with how many generations it's been since someones family lived in a native community.
I would add to this that the other reason i use BQ is because it's the only way I know to express the reality that as people become more and more of non native descent, and they are exposed more and more to only non native culture, this tends to have more and more influence on who they are and the Native part of their heritage has less and less influence.
Unless we are talking about a political identity, as in having membership in a Nation like America, or the CNO , the idea that people are either NDN or they aren't seems unrealistic, because it seems obvious that when it comes to individuals there is a full spectrum of Native descent and influence.
So based on this , I would say it seems realistic when a person who is unenrolled but 1/2 or more of Native descent, claims an NDN identity, as this is reasonably close to being the largest part of their ancestry.
If a person is unenrolled and they are between 1/2 and 1/8, I would say this person is being realistic and is on solid ground when they identify themeselves as mixed blood. Their NDN relatives and community may call them NDN , but from what i have seen , if they do, some people in their community may get annoyed with them. So from what I have seen , the mixed blood people i know usually let others make the claim they are NDN and don't do this themselves. People who exhalt themselves set themselves up to be knocked down.
People who are less than 1/8, OR more than 2 generations removed from an ancestor who was formally recognized as a member of a recognized Native community, seem like they would be kind of exaggerating things if they even claim to be mixed blood. I mean, by the same logic would anyone see an enrolled NDN as having a substantial identity as a mixed blood if they had a gr gr grandfather who was European ?
So i think after the parental contribution of Native influence gets watered down to 1/8, or a couple generations outside a historically recognized ,culturally strong Native community, the descendents are most realistically described as PODIAs or people of distant Indian ancestry.
PODIAs is just an abreviation, and i'm not suggesting anyone needs to call themself a PODIA. It sounds like something that got dropped out of a UFO.
I'm also not against PODIAs who feel a connection with this part of their heritage, and my own position on this was described in detail in the thread below.
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1111.0It seems realistic for PODIAs to occaisionaly refer to themselves as having a bit of Native blood back there. Or way way back there... As the case may be.
When people try to claim an NDN identity that overstates their actual hetitage, is sort of seems like an older woman trying to use a lot of makeup and low cut blouses, to seem younger, when she could be aging with grace and dignity.
In the other thread I mentioned that in my own defintions and how i use these words, a PODIA is a person who does have some Native descent, and a person who can't prove this is a wannabe not a PODIA, however, this isn't necessarily true as by the same logic that points out some people with substantial Native blood haven't got the right paper work to get enrolled , some people actually have a bit of Native blood, but can't prove it on paper.
This is one of the reasons it is so impractical to imagine PODIAs should have the right to a full NDN identity, but that wannbes who can't prove it deserve nothing but ridicule. It is possible to be both a PODIA and a wannabe who can't prove it, at the same time.
Once people track back to gr gr gr grandparents, the records are often spotty enough that the structure of family trees is often based in a lot of guess work and assupmtions.
For example, if someone has a marriage record showing their gr gr gr grandfather married a Native woman named Mary, but no detailed birth or death records exist for her kids, without Mary's death record, showing she survived long enough to have been the mother of all of these children , it's impossible to be sure that it wasn't a second marriage to someone else, that produced some of the children.
Once people go past the time censuses began listing all family members by name and age, mistaken assumptions about who someones mother is are very common and can go on for generations until someone stumbles on a previously undiscovered death record or the record of a seconfd marriage, and people realize 1/2 the kids in a family had a different mother.
People frequently make an issue about NDN people who were wrongly recorded as White or Mullato, but I recall hearing a tribal genealogist expalin that these cases of misidentification go both ways and house guests, adopted children, or non native relatives were also often frequently wrongly recorded as being Indian when other records prove they were not.
Once people get back past gr grandparents, or into the time period that happened prior to the mid to late 1800's, mistakes , guesswork and complete unknowns in genealogies are really common. There is also problems with unrecorded marriages, adoptions, illigitimacy, infidelity, ect ect ect .
This only becomes a serious problem if people want to define their whole identity on the basis of one gr gr gr grandmother who was recorded as Native.
People who are more than 1/8 or who have ancestors living in a time and area where there is lots of surviving records, are on much more solid ground when they claim an NDN identity , as they will usually be able to track back several generations past the most recent ancestor recorded as Indian, and will be able to find many records about many ancestors and their relatives showing Native heritage. Even if one of these lines is a mistake, it isn't likely they all will be.
But someone is basing their entire identity on one record of one distant Native ancestor, they are putting themselves in a very unstable and tenuous position.
In the big picture, it seems very important that indigenous peoples retain and regain the right to control, protect , and benifit from their own resources.
Their ability to do this hinges on actual indigenous communities being recognized and supported as the rightful owners of these resources.....
In the vast majority of cases wannabes and PODIAs who claim these rights for themselve, or who encourage others to make these claims, confuse public perception of the issues and undermine public support of the rights of actual indigenous communities, which are struggling to survive with insucfient resources.
So for both political, cultural and personal reasosns, it seems to me it is best to stay on solid ground and off the thin ice, when it comes to any claim of NDN identity.
This is just my own opinion based on my own personal experience and various people of NDN , mixed blood or PODIA ancestry I have known. Ultimently it is up to Native communities to define this, but for me, my own way of seeing this seems to make sense, and I have given it a lot of thought over the years.
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Rattlebone
You also keep adding the "Resources" hook into the equation and I was not even touching on that whatsoever.
Rattlebone, you just made 9 posts in the thread linked to at the begining of this post , which was discussing people who may not be NDN by some definitions marketing their products as American Indian productions.
8 of your posts appeared to be defending the right of people of distant ancestry to do this, or personally attacking people who pointed out to you where you were saying this. Now you tell us your defense of PODIAs claiming an NDN identity isn't about resources... This is so unrealistic and contradictory , that at least for the moment, I can't be bothered arguing with you and your endless forgetful hairsplitting. It's exhasting and goes nowhere.
If people want to read what was actually said and not the discussion that is going on in your own head, they can read the thread.
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edited to add;
I hope some other people will contribute thier own opinions to this thread besides me and rattlebone. I feel like I have blabbed on more than my fair share on this topic over the years and I don't mean to drown out anyone elses voice...
