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What Makes Someone Native American?: Ep 4 of Crash Course Native American History

YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UxmD-Lone7A
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Duration:12:13
Uploaded:2025-06-03
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MLA Full: "What Makes Someone Native American?: Ep 4 of Crash Course Native American History." YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 3 June 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxmD-Lone7A.
MLA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
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Chicago Full: CrashCourse, "What Makes Someone Native American?: Ep 4 of Crash Course Native American History.", June 3, 2025, YouTube, 12:13,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=UxmD-Lone7A.
What makes a Native American? Is it the way a person looks, their family history, or something else? In this episode of Crash Course Native American history, we dive into the ways people define and reclaim tribal identity, from blood quantums and federal recognition to language and more.









Introduction: "Looking" Native 00:00




The History of Native Identity 0:45




Language & Identity 3:31




The Dawes Rolls 6:20




Blood Quantum 7:17




Federal Recognition 9:43




Review & Credits 10:52














Sources:




https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g1BpQk_2qXtFeQBffoAT-rrogcKRaA2eNjeRCpmCrJ8/edit?usp=sharing









Want to know more about how this series was made? Learn more here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17yp3u28s40TdjyrJniIf4U9YA8wPtvQ1g1B-HSHQ2Q4/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.6vtzps565m2









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 (00:00) to (02:00)


Che Jim: What makes someone Native American?

There's a misconception that be truly Native, you have to have darker skin and long hair, dress only in traditional clothing, and be actively riding a horse.

But Native Americans are also modern people. We wear suits and jingle dresses, write code and teach traditional languages, rock buzzcuts and braids. We could have an Ojiway mom and a British dad who passed on his blond hair, pale skin, or love of beans on toast. 

Basically, you can't tell if someone's Native just by looking. So, today I'm going to give you the scoop on what it really means to be native. 

Hi, I'm Che Jim, and welcome to Crash Course: Native American History. 

[Theme music]

So, first of all, there's no single native identity, and no single native culture.

Before the land that we call the United States was a twinkle in Thomas Jefferson's eye, some native nations knew this land as Turtle Island, and it was and is a land of hundreds of tribes. 

Each tribe had its own cultural practices and unique identities with different spiritual beliefs, languages, customs, landscapes, rituals, food, dress and traditions.

You wouldn't get a Kwakiutl potluck confused with a Muscogean green corn ceremony. That would be like showing up to Cinco de Mayo in lederhosen. People look at you funny. Trust me. I know. 

Colonial Carl: We'll begin in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue —

Che: Woah. No. No. We won't. Plus, the Vikings made it here way before that dweeb, anyway. 

Yes. To make an extremely long story short, European settlers colonised North America, interrupting native life.

Something we'll talk more about in episode 10. And as we'll see over and over throughout the series, native people are still dealing with the consequences of colonisation, including when it comes to identity. 

Take spirituality. Before colonisation, the hundreds of tribes scattered throughout what is now the US had diverse spiritual practices,

 (02:00) to (04:00)


and many communities shared the notion that all living things are related, a part of a family rather than resources to be used up. What we native folks call Mitákuye Otás'iŋ, a Lakota phrase meaning all my relations. 

But when the colonists imported Christianity — and those weird hats — to North America, they tended to see Native Americans as souls in need of saving. Spiritual practices that had stretched back for generations were suddenly disrupted. 

For instance, the Puritan John Elliot of the Massachusetts Bay Colony — nice Ascot — tried to convert American Indians to Christianity. He even learned the Algangquin language to do so, and it worked. 

One quarter of native people in New England converted to Christianity. Elliot isolated those who converted into praying towns, forcing them to cut their hair, dress like Puritans, and give up their families and cultural practices  

This created tribal and cultural tensions between those who converted and those who didn’t, even within families. 

When your community faces a crisis of faith, what does that do to your cultural identity?

Fast forward to the 21st century and two thirds of Native Americans today identify as Christian, but plenty of Native people still follow their traditional beliefs and some mix the two. 

My own grandma wore her traditional dress every day. She spoke fluent Navajo and went the Catholic mass every week.

Or like at Minnesota's All Saints Episcopal Indian Mission, where the pastor burns sweet grass instead of incense. The organ is swapped for the traditional drum, and the congregation holds annual buffalo roast. 

And when it comes to cultural identity, language is one of the most powerful ways to share and preserve it. But hundreds of languages have been lost since European contact, in part thanks to American Indian boarding schools. 

Starting in the 1870s, thousands of Native children were forced to attend these government schools, and among many other deeply horrifying things, were forbidden from using their given names and speaking their languages. 

We'll talk a lot more about these boarding schools later on in this series.

 (04:00) to (06:00)


But let's jump forward to the here and now. 

If you can’t speak your ancestral language, how might that affect your connection to your culture? These are complicated questions, and the answers can be different for every native person and tribe.

But some languages are being revived in some pretty unexpected ways.

Come here, tell your story. 

In the 1990s, Jessie Little Doe Baird, a member of the Mashpee tribe of Wampanoag Nation, started having dreams. In them, familiar-looking people spoke to her in a language that she didn't understand.

Then one day, when driving in Massachusetts, she noticed similarities in the street signs that she was passing. And it hit her. The people in her dream were speaking Wôpanâak, the traditional language of her people. 

See, there is this prophecy from back when her tribe had first met the Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation. It predicted that the Wôpanâak language would disappear and eventually return and the children of the people who played a role in its loss would help resurrect it. 

True to the prophecy, Wôpanâak hadn't been spoken since the late 1800s.

Baird took her dreams as a sign.

She worked with the Mashpee and Aquina tribes to launch a language reclamation project. And while getting her masters in linguistics from MIT, she was advised by an expert in indigenous languages who just so happened to be a direct descendant of the white founder of Rhode Island, much like the prophecy foretold.

To bring the language back to life, she cross-referenced a Bible that John Elliot — ascot guy — had translated into a language similar to Wômpanâak, plus the dozens of other archival documents from languages in the same family. 

From those scraps, Baird constructed a 10,000 word Wômpanâak dictionary, began teaching Wômpanâak classes, and even raised her daughter to speak the language, making her the first native speaker in seven generations. 

And that is the story of Jessie Little Doe Baird.

 (06:00) to (08:00)


As diverse as native identity can be, varying from person to person and tribe to tribe, what's shared is a common experience of splintered connections to places, practices, languages, and more. 

In fact, colonisation changed how lots of Native people determined what's known as tribal membership.

Like, I'm an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. But not all Native Americans are enrolled tribal members. 

Before colonisation, tribes often used descent to figure out membership. If you were descended from someone in the tribe or were adopted or married in, you were welcomed. We kept it chill. 

But thanks to standards imposed by the U.S. government over the years, things have shifted for many tribes.

Today, each tribe determines their own enrolment criteria. 

For instance, the Cherokee rely on something called the Dawes Rolls, lists prepared by the U.S. government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to document who was a member of five specific tribes, including the Cherokee.

But they weren’t perfect. Many people from those tribes didn't sign up out of fear of persecution. Also, the Dawes Rolls limited enrolment to one tribe, even though many native people claimed multiple tribal identities. 

Regardless, today the only way to become an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation is if at least one of your direct ancestors signed up for that list. 

Elsewhere, the most widely used way to figure out enrolment eligibility is to require a particular blood quantum, or fraction of tribal blood. 

Quantum blood fractions? Man, this sounds like a sci-fi thriller. 

But the amount required varies between tribes. 

For example, someone looking to enrol in the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa only needs one needs one quarter Indian blood, regardless of tribe. But a person seeking to enrol in the Navajo Nation needs to have at least one quarter Navajo blood to be accepted. 

Thanks, Dad. 

About 70% of federally recognised tribes today require a blood quantum, but it's a controversial way of determining tribal enrolment. It's a practice born out of those early Dawes Rolls days, back when the US government was also sorting Native Americans into mixed or full-blood, aka those with European ancestry and those without.

 (08:00) to (10:00)


The hope in measuring Indianness was that eventually, after generations of intermarriage, there wouldn't be many people who qualified as native anymore and the U.S. would not be held to the treaties that they signed.

That's one messed up loophole. 

Many natives argue should leave blood quantum in the past, reasoning that it’s a colonial invention that treats native identity like a math problem, considering younger generations not native enough. 

If a child of two enrolled parents doesn't meet blood quantum, they miss out on the benefits of tribal citizenship, like access to scholarships, religious protections, and healthcare, not to mention a sense of belonging and cool ID card. 

And as fewer people qualify as members, what that will mean for the tribe's continued existence?

But on the other side, some native people think blood quantum requirements are their best shot at proving a lineage and preserving already close-knit communities.

So, it's up to each tribe as a sovereign nation to decide how they want to handle membership.

And some tribes are taking action, returning to enrolment based on descendency. 

In other words, if your parent is in the tribe, you can be in it, too. 

Like the St. Croix Chippewa tribe, which voted in 2023 to eliminate blood quantum requirements. 

And in case you were wondering, "can a DNA test prove tribal membership?" No.

At most, a DNA test might show someone is related to a tribal member, but there's no tribe specific genetic marker that says, "Congratulations! You're Navajo!" 

And although there are some DNA markers more likely to be found in people with native ancestry, not all Native Americans have them. 

So, next time your white neighbour tells you they're Mohawk because 23andMe said so, kindly direct them to this video. 

So, Native American identity can involve being an enrolled tribal member, but not always.

Also, to make things even more nuanced, not all tribes are federally recognised. The U.S. government chooses which tribes get federal benefits. Currently, 574 of them, though there are some occasional updates.

 (10:00) to (12:00)


Most benefits and many laws relating to American Indian identity only apply to members of those federally recognised tribes. 

Additionally, the government issues certificates of degree of Indian or Alaskan Native American blood, or CDIB cards—so many cards—which entitle holders to those benefits like access to Indian health services. 

All this has a huge impact on the cultural identity of a tribe and its people. If a tribe isn't federally recognised, some people don't see it as legitimate. Even if that tribe has been around since time immemorial.

And without recognition, tribes like the Winnemem Wintu face an even steeper climb in preserving their cultural traditions, because they lack legal protections for their religious practices, or the clout to stop development on their sacred sites. 

As for how the federal government decides who gets recognition, that's complicated. And we'll get there in a later episode. 

When it comes to culture, native identity might involve speaking traditional languages and dressing in traditional clothing, or it might not.

When it comes to legal status, identity might mean being an enrolled member of a federally recognised tribe, or an unrecognised one, or not an enrolled member at all.

Really, it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of deal.

But if there's one word I could use to describe native identity, it's this:

Perseverance. 

Ever since the first colonisers set foot on the shores of North America, they've been working to dilute, restrain, and destroy native culture. From creating categories to define us, to separating us from our beliefs, lands, and languages.

But through it all, natives have persevered. And in that perseverance, we begun to reclaim what's been taken from us. 

In our next episode, we'll look at some of the many ways Native Americans are connected to the land and to each other. And I will see you then. 

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course: Native American History, which was filmed at our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to keep Crash Course free for everyone forever,

 (12:00) to (12:13)


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