MARLEY TANNER
Twenty-six-year-old Marley Tanner is ¼ Sal- ish and Kootenai, ½ Northern Arapaho and ¼ Finnish. He is enrolled in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and grew up on their Flathead Indian Reservation. He now lives in Missoula, Montana. Tanner chooses not to date other American Indians despite pressure from his family to have Native chil- dren. “I’ve never dated any Natives in my tribe because you don’t know who is your cousin. I don’t want to ask my parents if I’m related to so-and-so because then they would know my business.” Besides, says Tanner, “blood quan- tum isn’t how I identify. I don’t tell people ‘I’m a quarter Native.’ I’m Native. I know my heri- tage, and I don’t base it off of blood quantum.”
ZACHARY WAGNER Zachary Wagner, 26, is 27
⁄64 Northern Chey-
enne, but he is also Blackfeet and grew up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana. He now lives in Missoula. He says, “I consider myself culturally Blackfeet, but I don’t get a say in my tribe because I’m en- rolled Cheyenne.” While Wagner didn’t think about blood
quantum when he was younger, he says he is probably going to marry a Blackfeet tribal member “so I can have my kids enrolled there and so they can have a say,” he says. “That’s me playing into the system.” Yet finding a Black- feet partner will be challenging. He says, “My Blackfeet family is huge. To find a single, en- rolled Blackfeet woman who is not my cousin and my age is really unlikely.”
30 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER 2020
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
