D’SHANE BARNETT AND JASON BEGAY
D’Shane Barnett and Jason Begay, both 43 and living in Missoula, began dating in 2018. Bar- nett is a 7
⁄32 member of the Mandan, Hidatsa
and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, and Begay is a full-blooded member of the Navajo Na- tion. Both men agree that how a child is raised and what experiences the child has defines his or her Native identity—not blood quantum. Barnett works in the Indian health care
field and says he has seen the flaws with the blood quantum system. “I had a friend whose daughter was ¾ Native but ¹⁄8 of six different tribes, and none of those tribes would let her be enrolled,” he says. “She would not qualify for the same health services that I do. That’s ridiculous.” Both Barnett and Begay describe blood
quantum as a tool the federal government uses to complete the genocide of Native peo- ple. Begay says, “The math can be sinister.”
SALISH AND KOOTENAI TRIBAL COUNCIL MEMBER ELLIE BUNDY-MCLEOD
Ellie Bundy-McLeod, 47, serves on the Tribal Council for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. She expects blood quantum to be an issue that council members will have to address before her first term ends in 2024. Bundy-McLeod says that one’s lineage makes one Native, not one’s blood quantum and adds that before colonization of what is now the United States, if an Indian fathered or gave birth to a child, then that child was an Indian. Bundy-McLeod says that the U.S. government-imposed system of “blood quantum is designed to get rid of the tribes.” She says, “We can’t keep marrying within the tribe. People need to marry outside, but that weakens bloodlines. Under this system when that happens, we’ll be gone, and that opens up all our resources. … We risk losing everything we fought so hard to keep.”
See the entire “Reservation Mathematics” exhibition online at
AmericanIndian.si.edu/developingstories beginning July 14. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 31
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