ISBN10: 0190619465, ISBN13: 9780190619466, [publisher: Oxford University Press Inc, New York] Hardcover Hardcover. Who can lay claim to a legally-recognized Indian identity? Who decides whether or not an individual qualifies? The right to determine tribal citizenship is fundamental to tribal sovereignty, but deciding who belongs has a complicated history, especially in the South.Indians who remained in the South following removal became a marginalized and anomalous people in an emerging biracial world. Despite the economic hardships and assimilationistpressures they faced, they insisted on their political identity as citizens of tribal nations and rejected Euro-American efforts to reduce them to another racial minority, especially in the face of JimCrow segregation. Drawing upon their cultural traditions, kinship patterns, and evolving needs to protect their land, resources, and identity from outsiders, southern Indians constructed tribally-specific citizenship criteria, in part by manipulating racial categories - like blood quantum - that were not traditional elements of indigenous cultures. Mikaela M. Adams investigates how six southern tribes-the Pamunkey Indian Tribe of Virginia, the Catawba Indian Nation of South Carolina, theMississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida-decided who belonged. By focusingon the rights and resources at ...
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