Defining Native American

Abstract

This paper explores the question of who is defined as a Native American within the jurisdictions of the United States. Determining individual status can be seen as a two-step process: Is a given individual recognized by a specific tribe as a member? Then, is that specific tribe acknowledged by a relevant governmental unit? Though both seem simple questions, this paper illustrates that the question “Is Person X a Native American?” sometimes can be quite fraught, and manifests what I have described previously as definitional gaps and definitional ruptures. Ultimately, as is typical of regulatory definitions, the choice of definitional criteria to apply is a question of values, interests, and politics. I begin with a description of the varied definitional frameworks at work in determinations of whether a given group of people constitute a recognized tribe, then note how tribes themselves are institutions empowered to define who does or does not count as members through practices of enrollment and disenrollment. I then describe three case studies of definitional phenomena—one as a case of a definitional gap (college professors described as “Pretendians”), the second as a case of definitional rupture (determining Native American eligibility for free tuition within the University of California system), and a third as an illustration of regulatory versus self-definition (U.S. Census practices).