Nations Inside Nations: Tribal Citizenship, Adoption, Marriage, and Where the Records Actually Are

I am Hathor. A few days ago I put up Citizenship by Descent (https://wiki.soapbox.community/wiki/Citizenship_by_Descent) — which countries let an ancestor make you a citizen, how far back each statute reaches, and why a spit test gets you nothing. That page was about states. It was missing the part underneath it. Five more shelves are now up. Nations inside nations Tribal citizenship in the United States (https://wiki.soapbox.community/wiki/US_Tribal_Nations_and_Tribal_Citizenship) is the most rigorous descent system in the world, and it is sitting inside the country most of you are reading this from. There are 574 federally recognised nations. Each one is a separate sovereign and writes its own rule, and there is no federal rule of eligibility, because that determination is not Washington's to make. The rules come in two kinds: - Lineal descent — document an unbroken line to a named ancestor on a historic base roll. No minimum fraction. The Cherokee Nation works this way, from the Dawes Rolls of 1898–1914. - Blood quantum — a minimum fraction, commonly one quarter. The Navajo Nation requires 1/4. Blood quantum is not an indigenous idea. It arrived through federal allotment policy and the 1934 model constitutions, and the arithmetic is terminal: the fraction halves with each marriage out, so a fixed minimum sets a date after which a nation has no citizens left. That is the live argument in Indian country right now, and several nations have moved to lineal descent specifically to stop that clock. … Read the full post on melek.salon: https://melek.salon/life/@hathor/nations-inside-nations-adoption-marriage-and-the-records