Indigenous Identity and the So-Called Gatekeepers

Have you ever wondered why so many people are gatekeeping indigenous identities and history?

"A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something, for example via a city gate or bouncer, or more abstractly, controls who is granted access to a category or status. Gatekeepers assess who is "in or out", in the classic words of management scholar Kurt Lewin." Wikipedia

More plainly speaking, in Indigenous America, the gatekeeper determines who can identify as indigenous and can be recognized as such. Groups employ the Gatekeeper Strategy, defined as:

"The Gatekeeper Strategy involves a deliberate and strategic effort to identify and build relationships with gatekeepers who have the power to control access to important resources. These gatekeepers can be individuals such as industry influencers, decision-makers, or trusted advisors, as well as entities like regulatory bodies, trade associations, or key suppliers." What is Gatekeeper Strategy? (Explained With Examples)

As we discuss issues of tribal enrollment and indigenous identity now, and in future blogs, please keep in mind who is the gatekeeper, why are they gatekeeping, and what strategies are being used by individuals and tribes to negotiate an indigenous identity and to entice the gatekeepers to recognize this identity both socially and legally.

Gatekeeping is used by those in power to ensure that resources go to well-defined acceptable groups and individuals and denied to unacceptable groups. From the time the Europeans came to the New World, gatekeeping was employed to rob Natives of their land and labor. Later, it was used to rob them of their very identity, the repercussions of which we still see today.

Early Virginia moved quickly to define white (deserving), and non-white (un-deserving). The type of non-white mattered not to them, with Malay, Native Americans, African mixtures and all non-Europeans were lumped in the non-white category. More specifically, Natives in Virginia were legally defined as 'mulattos'. This would cause problems years later when tribes sought to negotiate their indigenous identities. It also caused another problem in modern times.... the ability of non-Native, non-whites to take advantage of the ambiguity of the categorization of who was Native, and who was not. Europeans, anxious to extinguish any Aboriginal title to the lands they now claimed, were very quick to make a Native American into a generalized 'colored'. Make no mistake about it, those Natives they claimed 'died off' probably met a more sinister fate like slavery, murder, and denial of their identities by the gatekeepers. It is just their history was erased, intentionally. They did this later with African slaves.

Virginia's Nanzatico Tribe's adults were 'deported' in shackles by the Europeans to Antigua in 1704/5. Their children were divvied up among Virginia 'gentlemen' for indentured servitude. They allegedly disappeared from the record after this time. What happened to them, were they sold as slaves? If so, it would not have been the first time. Did they enter freedom as 'mulattos'? Did they enter freedom at all? Why don't the gatekeepers care to find out? Native American slavery occurring prior to the founding of Jamestown is a known fact, with the hapless victims kidnapped from the Virginia, Carolinas, and other coastal Atlantic states and transported to the Caribbean or back to Europe. Never heard about this did you? There is a reason for this. As Native Americans disappear 'legally' and in the past, physically, groups of newcomers often assume their identities, via the gatekeepers. Gatekeepers can be academic, governmental and your average citizen, with a consensus from the others. Gatekeepers can also be tribal members themselves, who use it to their advantage when necessary.

Governmental

Governmental gatekeeping occurs when legislative bodies legally define who is 'Native', usually for the benefit of denying them access to their own land and other resources and granting the same to whites. Europeans almost immediately began to define who was non-white, and who was white, practically as the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery were still sitting in the Chesapeake Bay. This strategy was so successful that future governmental actions, like the Dawes Roll, employed similar schemes. We later see them used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in determining who, and what, defines a legitimate tribe. We often forget that the BIA was not in the business of 'finding' Indians but erasing 'Indians' for the benefit of the US Government. States and the Federal government, as gatekeepers, confer tribal recognition on groups. Nationally, blood quantum ideology was born, and this was not for the benefit of tribal survival. The intention was that eventually all Natives would drop below the qualifying blood quantum, and indigenous identities would administratively go away. Tribes claimed to vigorously enforce this idea, under the guise of 'tribal sovereignty'. As a result of governmental gatekeeping in Virginia, individuals had to be members of these tribal entities in order to identify as a 'legitimate' Native. This opened members up to the negative effects of the intra-tribal politicking needed to maintain their enrolled status. In Virginia, historically being dropped from a government 'sanctioned' tribal roll immediately redefined the individual as racially 'colored' aka 'black', as per the 'one-drop' rule. This was especially damaging in the Jim Crow years and was avoided at all costs.

Academia

Early researchers from the Smithsonian relied on local officials and persons of good standing to identify indigenous persons and their descendants who lived within their communities. In the late 1880's they sent a circular out with questions for these upstanding citizens. Persons who were identified as Native by the recipients were compiled and some were visited later by the researchers. Later scholarship regarding these groups built upon this early research and resultant publications. The subsequent publications legitimized Native groups in Virginia and formed the framework from which groups ended up receiving State, and later Federal recognition, as Indigenous entities via the BIA. Now considering who they contacted, and the time period, this is very problematic. Imagine, a white, middle class, educated, male Virginian in 1888 or 1890 being asked to identify mixed Indians in the community. Some people answered there were 'no Indians' in places with a fairly large Native presence, because, racially speaking, they did not consider them to be 'Indians'. Other communities were identified but never visited and therefore lost the opportunity for the academic gatekeepers to legitimize their identities. Those are some of the people whose descendants are constantly questioned, and ridiculed, for their claims to indigeneity. The gatekeepers did not legitimize them, so therefore they must not be indigenous. It is not lost on this author that anti-black racism probably played a big part of which groups were legitimized, and which ones were not. This gatekeeping is all the more troublesome when you consider the reply to circular sent to Eastville, Virginia. Eastville was home to the Accomack, later called Gingaskin, Indian Reservation. This reservation was allotted in the 1830's and most of the children of the allottees still lived around the old reservation....

"I know of but one, whose grandmother on their father's side, now living here who is said, either truly or otherwise to have some Indian blood in his veins from her, he has a brother and a nephew. I doubt however whether they know their own pedigree. The individual referred to is named Edmund Press. His PO is Eastville, Va."

Now how is that for gatekeeping? Edmund Press, according to that author, doesn't seem to know his own pedigree and doesn't even realize his own paternal grandmother was Native. However, this white man did. Additionally, Mr. Press's paternal grandfather was Native as well, but this author doesn't identify him as such. Nor did he identify the numerous other members of the Press family, Collins family, or any of the other multitude of people living in the local area who were allotted reservation land and 'convinced' to sell it. We guess, for obvious reasons, he just didn't consider them to be indigenous. This is the information on which tribes and Natives, were identified, and later, legitimized by academics, up until the current period.

White Gatekeepers

Some white people want to gatekeep who is indigenous, and who is not because they want control access to resources, and benefit from them. Natives are romantically idealized in places where there are few and vilified in places where they are numerous. The 'All the Indians went Away and Died of a Broken Heart' treatise works for them. Even better is to silence them in the historical record. All too often, we see 'native' groups return from the dead, with no paperwork or documentation to back their claims, just a myth about a colonial ancestor. Typically, the members of these groups previously identified as 'white'. Often, governmental and academic gatekeepers assist these groups staking an indigenous claim and do not, at least publicly, disavow their claims. These groups attempt to network within the 'authentic' (aka gatekeeper approved) indigenous communities, and their previous 'whiteness' lends them credibility. Ironically, these are also the groups that virulently, and very publicly, attack any person who they perceive to be 'black' from claiming legitimate Native identities. They ignore or, alter during transcription, persons IDENTIFIED AS NATIVE in the historical record because, well, they are the gatekeepers. We speculate that this is part of a larger desire to supplant Native narratives, and to stake a 'legitimate' claim to America as the aboriginal victims, and not as descendants of the colonizers, and all that it implies.

Black Gatekeepers

This gatekeeping is more complicated because, in spite of the white gatekeeping narrative, most black people tend to be biracial. In the mid-Atlantic states, they are more likely to be tri-racial (black, white and indigenous). The long and complicated history of the 'one-drop' rule, racial reclassification, and Jim Crow forced Afro descended people into one category thanks to the other gatekeepers. This shared oppression led to some power in numbers, after all, they were being persecuted for being the descendants of American slaves who only received their freedom through war. Due to the fact that other black people may be of indigenous ancestry as well, they consider identifying as anything other than black to be treason of the highest order, potentially damaging the combined political power of the group as a whole. Many feel, "so what you are of Native descent, but so am I. Now toe the line". Because American racism was/is so pervasive and violent, this group identity is accepted as a given (they didn't have a say). However, not only are afro-indigenous people gatekept by black gatekeepers, so are Islanders, Africans, and South Americans of Afro descent, who do not identify as 'black'. These other people understand that 'black' is a color, not a culture, and is not even a real race.

Indigenous Gatekeepers

We saved the best for last...indigenous gatekeepers. It is easier to get into the DAR than get enrolled in some mid-Atlantic tribes. We have heard some tribes referred to as the ultimate 'blue vein' societies. With the tacit approval of governmental, academic, and white gatekeepers, they police their indigenous boundaries like hungry pit bulls. Marry black...disenrolled.... marry the wrong 'type' of native...disenrolled, ask about money...disenrolled.... family too numerous...disenrolled....and finally (drum roll please) ...disagree with leadership...disenrolled. Who is in power among tribal members is determined by the above-named gatekeepers, and these tribes know it. In the mid-Atlantic, being Native is defined by what it is not. It is not 'white' (the gatekeepers acted early to make sure of that), and the tribes will let you know it most DEFINITELY is not black. They use the threat of disenrollment as a 'deterrent', so to speak, to keep tribal members in line. They control tribal enrollment, to ensure the 'wrong' types of people are not allowed on the rolls. They threaten outsiders into silence by making calls to their jobs, making veiled accusations questioning the authenticity of their enemy's Native identity, or threatening lawsuits. Those on the receiving end cannot get relief from the state or Federal government because it would threaten.... gasp.... TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY! Sometimes the leadership of different tribes act in concert to shut down opposition (We think they call this 'conspiring'), or to keep unflattering information from coming out. There are no appointed unbiased third-party trustees to hash out differences because they are hand selected by tribal leadership from their friends and close business allies. It is no secret that many tribes are very anti-black (and not just in the mid-Atlantic), allowing white descended people on their tribal rolls, but denying black descended people with stronger tribal connections (and proof). This isn't a secret...never has been. The gatekeepers actually reward them for this behavior, because it ensures that the tribes will gleefully continue to undercut their potential power base. Other East coast tribes figured this out long ago.... We guess that here they are just plain slow. Or they just care that them and their families are allowed to sit at the 'cool kids' table (sarcasm). The most unfortunate fact is that these people are only recognized if the gatekeepers allow it, and the gatekeepers allow it only if they derive benefits from it. What happens when those benefits stop.......?