We are not “Native Americans”
We are not “American Indians”
We are not a “Tribe”
Discrimination based on race, ancestry, and national origin is unconstitutional, disrespectful, and has led to egregious poverty.
ABSTRACT
The problems of race, racism, ancestry, national origin, place-of-birth, etc. exemplify the predicament of Indigenous People as evidenced by the ACQTC pending legal situation. These factors need to be understood, acknowledged and studied before any solutions and corrections can be made.
The Trail of Heartaches forced upon the Quinnipiac and Wappinger-Mattebesec Confederacy (known today as ACQTC) occurred due to a “not-so-subtle form of ethnic cleansing” based on racial and religious intolerance. The ethnocentric stereotypes, appellative misnomers etc. left behind by the Puritan Theocracy which spawned such policies are still being perpetuated in our wejammoke (homeland) of Quinnehtukqut (Connecticut).
This paper separates the legal and political substance from the official subterfuge and sets the record straight on the position of ACQTC regarding our indigenous identity, existence, sovereignty, autonomy and self-determination. In essence WE DEMAND RESPECT and WE DEMAND EQUALITY.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Discrimination Based on Race, Ancestry, or National Origin — Legal Standards, Imperative and Persuasive Precedents
- Race or Ancestry? — An Evolving Standard Emerges
- Tribe or Tribalism, Criteria or Ideology?
- Indigenous Community Membership — Governmental Tactic vs. Indigenous Self-Determination
- The New Multicultural Ethos — Re-Defining Our Existence
- Endnotes
We are not “Native Americans”
We are not “American Indians”
We are not a “Tribe”
Introduction
The country known today as "America" and the term "American" is a foreign concept that is not indigenous to this land originally known as Torupe-Munhun (Turtle-Island). It is a concept invented by the Wonnux (Newcomers) which effectively redefined the existence of the Seven Aboriginal Nations of this land. It was invented by white-skinned outsiders who never fully understood our culture.
The Indigenous People of the aboriginal Long-Water Land could not possibly be "Americans". Terms of self-identity never included this word. The appellative misnomer "Native Americans" being conferred upon us was applicable after unilateral citizenship was conferred upon all so-called "tribes" en masse.
This appellative misnomer is substantively erroneous but is a CATCH 22 whereas the "tribes"; given any forms of governmental recognition accepted such a term. The origins of the Long-Water-Land People, like our sovereignty and autonomy, predated the republic.
Ballentine's Law Dictionary: Legal Assistants Edition states: “'Native American' is ineffective whereas most code books and reference manuals refer only to 'Indians' or 'American Indians'.” Yet, our ancestors were not from India, the West Indies or any place known as "America".
To make matters even more confusing — and to underline the apparent conflicts in such ethnocentric stereotypes — there is a "Bureau of Indian Affairs" as well as the "Administration for American Indians," both of which claim to provide identical services to indigenous peoples and groups and both are federal agencies.
The term "Indian" and "American Indian" are even more problematic. Although our ancestors were not from India or the West Indies, our ancestors were enslaved and sent to West India to do forced labor at the English sugar plantations, adding insult to injury.
The word "Indian" on page 720 of Oxford's Concise English Dictionary under "USAGE" states: "The term INDIAN and RED INDIAN are today regarded as old-fashioned". In my paper on Indigenous Identities I referred to indigenous scholars (e.g. Dr. Michael Yellow Bird, Dr. Jack Forbes, and Ward Churchill) who call for the abolition of such antiquated and ethnocentric misnomers.
In this paper we will delve even deeper, exploring new views of identity, new statistics on demographics, new case law, and the newest opinions expressed by legal scholars, etc. The term "tribe" is the most problematic. The Quinnipiac were not a "tribe" when the newcomers arrived and we are not a tribe now. Legal standards recognize "composite tribes" but in a one-size-fits-all application. This term transformed seven indigenous nations into 150 tribes.
"The [Natives] have often asked me why we call them 'Indians'." — Roger Williams, 1643
Discrimination Based on Race, Ancestry, or National Origin — Legal Standards, Imperative and Persuasive Precedents
The United States Constitution, Amendment XIV (1868) Section I says that: “No state shall make or enforce any law … that [denies] to any person within Its jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws.” Section 3 also states: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Title 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5 (The Civil Rights Act of 1964) and Title 42 U.S.C. § 1997d(7) (The Civil Rights Remedies Equalization Act) both protect equal rights. The latter forbids any state discrimination in any form when it receives any kind of federal financial assistance. Congress set a condition that upon acceptance of any federal funds that acceptance constitutes a waiver of sovereign immunity in the event of discrimination.
The state-recognized tribes of Connecticut are essentially wards of the state. They receive state and federal funds and they accept such funds while money and lands are held in trust. Subsequently their relationship is “in the nature of a guardian to a ward.”
Additionally, under the Constitution of the State of Connecticut Article 1, § 20 it unequivocally states: “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the law nor be subjected to … discrimination in the exercise or enjoyment of his civil or political rights because of religion, race, color, ancestry or national origin.”
The Connecticut General Statutes (CGS) includes a number of relevant "anti-discrimination" laws clearly defined and codified. A few examples are provided here.
CGS § 46a-58(a) prohibits deprivations of civil rights on the basis of religion, race, national origin, etc. CGS § 46a-59(a) also prohibits forms of discrimination by professional and occupational associations.
CGS § 46a-69 prohibits discriminatory practices by any state agency.
The United States Supreme Court has held in Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazrali, 481 U.S. 604, 613 (1987) that: “racial discrimination is that which singles out 'identifiable classes of persons' … solely because of their ancestry or ethnic characteristics.” Likewise, in Rice v. Cayentano, 528 U.S. 495 the U.S. Supreme Court held that “ancestry can be a proxy for race.” When a state enacts legislation and uses ancestry as a racial definition for racial purposes, that is unconstitutional.
CGS § 184a, 10-38 defines the race of "Native Americans" in Connecticut as being “any people who occupied Connecticut prior to European Settlement and their historical descendants.”
Again, the indigenous people of Quinnehtukqut (Connecticut) were not "Native American" and isolating the identity to this ethnocentric stereotype as the identity of Algonquian speaking people is discrimination based on ancestry and national origin. Whereas it deprives us of our right to be exist under terms of self-identity, "Native American" is therefore a proxy for our true identity. The following section will focus on issues of "race" and "ancestry".
Race or Ancestry? — An Evolving Standard Emerges
What is the fairest way of determining an individual(s) or group(s) identity that are/were indigenous to "Turtle Island", "The Dawnland" or "Long Water Land"? Should it be based on "race", on "ancestry" or other "all-inclusive" factors?
In Oxford's Concise English Dictionary, 10th Ed. (1999) the term "race" is defined as “each of the major divisions of humankind…” (supra, p. 1178). Under the highlighted section USAGE it also indicates: “In recent years, the associations of race with the ideologies and theories that grew out of the work of 19th century anthropologists has led to the use of the word race itself becoming problematic. Although still used in general contexts, it is now often replaced with other words that are less emotionally charged…”
Peter Farb writes “[p]ure races do not exist … in any … socially reproducing animal, including humankind.” Moreover, as Professor L. Scott Gould maintains in Volume 101, No. 4 (2001) of the Columbia Law Journal “Considerable doubt exists whether race can even be quantified scientifically. Prior to the science of genetics, social characteristics were believed to be inherited by blood, [footnote omitted] hence the preoccupation with blood quanta … References to Indians as 'full-bloods' and 'mixed bloods' … stem from this misconception. Racial divisions based on genes are also proving to be unreliable…”
Peter Farb goes one step further. “[T]he sociological phenomenon of racism,” he writes, “defines whole groups sociologically … on the basis of purely biological characteristics. Once groups of people are put into pigeonholes based on biological traits, those pigeonholes are then inevitably compared as sociologically superior or inferior, civilized or savage…” Sound familiar folks?
Today, indigenous people’s identity, as some anthropologists maintain, can and must be gauged by a variety of all-inclusive, multiple factors. Charles Hudson, for instance, shows us a model of indigenous identity that can be identified in at least three primary ways: l) genetically, by ancestry not race; 2) culturally, acceptance by the parent and sibling communities; and 3) socially, by the group or community itself. He maintains further that a person or individual can be identified as "indigenous" or "aboriginal" in any of these (and other) areas. Some individuals express more "standing" in each or all categories based on one’s interests, hereditary obligations and much more. This is true also and especially for communities. It is our position that ACQTC is in fact living proof of this model. Our aboriginal communities were all-inclusive whereas the criterion used by Connecticut and the Bureau of Indian Affairs is exclusive and tends to ostracize the true identities of aboriginal communities who refuse to be assimilated into the mainstream conceptualization of "tribes".
Under the old system of gauging identity based on the race of "Indians" or "Native Americans" which never existed in the first place, as used by Connecticut and the BIA it forces the aboriginal communities to conform to an alienization of our traditional heritages and re-defines our existence based on erroneous, racial, outlived, outdated nomenclature and criterion.
Another anthropologist, William Sturtevant, insists that “a restrictive definition of ‘Indian’ identity has caused much suffering … insisting that you can’t be an ‘Indian’ unless you are a member of a federally recognized tribe. Or [by] saying you can’t be an ‘Indian’ if you have black [or white] ancestry. Or [by] defining ‘Indianess’ by ‘some fairly high degree of blood quantum’.” This is exactly what the BIA and Connecticut laws maintain.
Finally, in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals it was held that: “[r]ace, if it was even understood by Indians in the Anglo-European context, was not a prerequisite for joining a tribe [citation omitted]. Rather, it was the federal government that introduced the concept of race as the essential criterion for membership.” That same federal government, however, took its cue from Connecticut, which is where the racist ethnocentric concept of mixed blood quanta began and spread to the thirteen original colonies. (See: "The Metis Nation" on this website.) U.S. District Judge Matsumoto of the 1st Circuit ultimately held in that case:
“The court finds that analyzing race based on how a particular … group was and is perceived within its own group and by the dominant culture acknowledges different and evolving definitions … in different contexts … and de-emphazing strict biology as a measure of [identity] the court may incorporate a tribe’s self-defined criteria into its consideration …”
Ancestry, on the other hand, has been defined by Oxford's Concise English Dictionary as “a person … from whom one is descended”. The legal definition is exactly the same for "ancestor".
In the Unkechauge case (supra) opinion, the finding was that the Unkechauge (historically related to the Wappinger-Mattabesec Confederacy) shared a “common ancestry” with their “pre-historic” group.
In that case, the court noted their “one drop” requirement for determining any ancestral relationship. In ACQTC we too have a one drop determination. It holds that: “If you have but one drop of indigenous blood in your veins, HONOR IT AND RESPECT IT, for one day it will cry out for expression.” Any links to ancestry from family names we have posted entitles an individual to be considered for Full Membership, and any links to family names we know from other genealogies within the parameters of our confederacy entitles an individual to be considered for Confederate Membership. Lastly, anyone who accepts the ACQTC WAMPUMS can be approved for Honorary Membership and learn our ways. We consider honorary members suggestions; but, they have no vote.
The Unkechauge were acknowledged as a "tribe" under common law despite the fact that they had inter-married with other tribes and races; yet in Mashpee Tribe V. Secretary of the Interior and its earlier case Mashpee Tribe V. Town of Mashpee the court held that with a similar background the Mashpee were not a tribe whereas they had abandoned their traditions. Yet they went on to receive federal recognition.
L. Scott Gould (supra) devotes a section in Part II of his study to the subjects related to "tribes" entitled “Intermarriage and Multiracialism.” Subsection 1 is captioned “Indians and the New Demography.” In that subsection he explains:
“What current census estimates and projections underscore is that a number of people who count themselves as Indians is increasing because of … intermarriage with non-Indians. Although estimates of exact rates vary widely, ranging from twenty percent [footnote omitted] to … seventy percent [footnote omitted] the tendency toward intermarriage has been pronounced for most of the past century. It promises to have an impact on tribes and Indians more profound than any other [issue] since Columbus …”
Ancestry and National Origin
Discrimination based on "national origin" means, “treating someone less favorably because he or she comes from a particular place [i.e. geographic location] [or] because of his or her ethnicity …, or, because it is believed that he or she has a particular ethnic background. National origin discrimination also means treating someone less favorably … because of marriage or other association with someone of a particular nationality …” This occurs in situations where indigenous people marry outside their ethnic background and it derives not from our traditions (which are all-inclusive) but from Wonnux conceptions of racial purity and breeding.
In the State of Connecticut, CGS (Connecticut General Statutes) and the Connecticut Constitution supposedly protect against discrimination based on "national origin". Article First, Section 20 of the Connecticut Constitution indicates: “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the law nor be subjected to … discrimination in the exercise or enjoyment of his civil or political rights because of religion, race, color, ancestry or national origin.”
CGS § 47-59a pertains to "Connecticut Indians" yet it discriminates against ACQTC and its members whereas the statute protects only “resident Indians of qualified Connecticut tribes” and thus DENIES ACQTC the equal protection of the law based on our ancestry and our national origin as we define it in aboriginal terms and conditions outside of the ethnocentric stereotyping of racial purity.
CGS § 46a-58(a) allegedly prohibits against deprivations of civil rights based on religion, color, race, sex, national origin and other areas.
CGS § 46a-71 allegedly prohibits any discrimination of any type in “services provided by state agencies on the basis of race, color, religious creed, sex, marital status, age, disabilities, ancestry or national origin.” CGS § 46a-76(a) includes the allocation of state benefits (such as GRANTS) for similar categories.
For ACQTC "national origin" means our indigenous wejammoke (homeland) which had a dual significance. Our Sachemauwunk (Sachemdom) which, prior to European colonization and their epidemics around 1500 AD, encompassed most of Connecticut. Then our Confederacy included eastern NY, northern NJ, and most of Long Island. This was known as the Wampano-Quiripi R-Dialect region and the Wappinger-Mattabesec Confederacy Kitchi Sachemauwunk (Grand Sachemdom) that merged many Sub-Tribal Bands and Clans together. The State recognizes they have a state capitol and 194 municipalities. They also recognize that the United States has 50 states and numerous acquired territories yet they DENY ACQTC the same RIGHT as indigenous people to EXIST as a separate Aboriginal entity beyond their limited concepts of the term "tribe".
The Wonnux re-named our sub-tribal groups and communities from their indigenous status to full fledged "tribes" and in this pattern of "divide and conquer" political tactic literally subjugated an entire nationality of people. Our original nationality was not "AMERICAN". Like the concept of "tribes" invented by the federal government (as noted by the court in Unkechauge, supra) the attendant conceptualization of "America" and "American" is alien to our aboriginal existence. Our true nationality is Turtle Islanders, not Americans. Our true regional identity is as Dawnlanders (northeastern woodlands) and our true local identity is Quinnipiac as "People of the Long Water Land". We are not Indians, we are Eansketambawg, “people of the land that walk upright on the earth”.
Accordingly, and most appropriately, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “Distinctions between [people] solely because of their ancestry [or place of ancestral origin] are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded on the doctrine of equality.”
Our legal position is quite simple. ACQTC has the RIGHT to be acknowledged under our traditions, not federal policy. In the Unkechauge case the court noted that the sovereignty of our ancestors in the Dawnland “predates federal recognition … indeed, it predates the birth of the Republic.”
An Evolving Standard Emerges
Any nation or state cannot remain attached to prior forms of discrimination. The evolving standards of a maturing society are the benchmark of a free nation. They are earned through strife, turmoil, conflict and suffering. The history of the USA as well as the history of the Quinnipiac are riddled with conflict and culture clashes.
Should the criterion for determining one's existence as aboriginal community of people be gauged by "race" or by "ancestry"? In the past century an evolving standard has emerged from the suffering of debates, protests, and international public opinion.
L. Scott Gould is a retired attorney and professor of Law at the University of Maine. He has studied extensively the problems of race, ancestry and how it affects the criteria of tribes for many years. He asks several pertinent questions.
- “[C]ould an unrecognized tribe, one struggling for federal acknowledgment, find a more meaningful way to express its heritage?” Yes, ACQTC is living proof that it can be done.
- “Must tribes [Recognized or Non-Recognized] be exclusive or inclusive to survive?” No two tribal groups are alike. ACQTC is all-inclusive without interference from non-aboriginal requirements. Under the blood quanta established by the BIA policy no true Indians or tribes will exist once their degree of blood goes under a certain percentage. So even the tribes that now have federal recognition will one day cease to exist because of intermarriages in order to survive and then they will be in a similar position to ACQTC.
- “Who should be an 'Indian'?” Only those people born in India or the West Indies, NOT the aboriginal people of the Dawnland who predated the Republic.
- “Might not acceptance of multi-origin Indians be easier for tribes?” Yes, but ONLY if the words and terms "Indians" and "Tribes" are changed.
Let’s take a look at some of professor Gould’s work and compare it to the work of ACQTC.
How could an unrecognized tribal community express its heritage in terms not in use now? In 2007 ACQTC filed its Petition for Federal Acknowledgment. In that petition we focused on how ACQTC is actually under the vaguely defined status of a composite tribal entity. We also sent Congress and the CT Commission on Indian Affairs our Proposal to redefine these antiquated terms based on stereotypes and asked both federal and state governments to make changes. ACQTC has also filed a comprehensive COMPLAINT with the CT Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and specifically asked that such terms be revised.
In 1978 a Massachusetts jury found that the Mashpee Band of Wampanoag had voluntarily abandoned their tribal rights and status. That trial lasted 40 days.
Federal law is clear on this point. In general, “we have continued to recognize tribal existence unless the tribe has voluntarily sought, and achieved assimilation into [a] non-Indian culture.”
In our ACQTC CAVEAT and in Quinnipiac V. Connecticut, et. al. one of our primary contentions is that the Pequot Bands and its sibling offshoot the Mohegan Band all gained state and/or federal recognition by fraud and deceit. Moreover, since they willingly abandoned the traditional ways and sought and achieved assimilation they ceased to exist as a tribal culture. They have existed as a state-created "tribe" under non-Algonquian criterion that discriminates against our aboriginal ancestry.
Professor Gould cites Jamake Highwater who says that the pattern of western industrialized obsession with obsessive exclusivity. He calls for new “tribal social structures to be ‘bold and large enough to affirm rather than deny, to accept rather than to reject’,” based on the ancient aboriginal ideologies that held “[w]e are all related.”
Ward Churchill, AIM Activist, measures indigenous people from other ethnic groups as people having stood against racial purity. He uses evidence of tribal "purity police" as reactionary divide-and-conquer tactics used by the newcomers to separate the new wave of Indians who embrace all the white man’s consumerist products and ideas.
Jack Campisi measures indigenous people from other ethnic groups as having traditions and heritage traceable to aboriginal ancestors who also strongly connect to the land and sacred landmarks.
ACQTC adheres solely to ancestral traditions as opposed to state or federal criterion. ACQTC is also the only tribal community who serves in the ancestral role of Gechannawitank, aboriginal land-stewards and guardians of sacred sites. The Casino Indians are not active in protecting sacred landmarks because they abandoned their tribal heritage, accepted and embraced assimilation and Christianity and forfeited their rights as a tribe.
What matters today is what mattered centuries ago to our ancestors. Blood quantum is not a requisite for tribal membership, period. What matters today, according to James Clifford is a bounded, though permeable, "social group" and confirmation of such group by self and outsiders as well as a degree of "political autonomy".
ACQTC has a structured social community confirmed by our members, by other tribal communities, by regional officials, by the media and the public as well. ACQTC has exercised a good degree of political autonomy free of state and federal approval. That is the test of true existence as an aboriginal community.
We have survived all manner of strife and conflict; yet, WE STILL EXIST.
We exist not as "American Indians" or "Native Americans", nor do we exist as a "tribe" and after 12,000 years in the Quinnehtukqut Valley … WE ARE STILL HERE. We exist as "Long-Water-Land-People" and we are the acknowledged descendants of the Quinnipiac who made the first Treaties with the English, who were provided the first reservation in our homeland, the first to be provided with hunting, fishing and trapping rights even on ceded lands.
William C. Sturtevant and Samuel Stanley acknowledged in 1968 that “the plight of Eastern tribal groups who lacking federal acknowledgment, exist in a 'culture of poverty'.”
ACQTC is a non-recognized tribal community who exists in extreme poverty even with our 501(c)(3) tax exemption and 509(a)(20) tribal corporation status. We obtained incorporation in 1989, five years before the Pequot and Mohegans followed our lead. Yet ACQTC remains poor. Why? Because the Pequot and Mohegans accepted assimilation and we continue to resist conformity to non-Algonquian ways. So we are being punished, shunned and ostracized because we remain true to our ancestry. Sturtevant elaborates how:
“[I]t would be dangerous and unfair to use biological Indianness as a main criterion for eligibility for … assistance, since the problems involved in the special situation of these groups are cultural and social [not racial] and should be recognized as such.
“It would be most unfortunate to strengthen the popular American definition of social caste membership as based on biological criteria; what should be attempted is to increase recognition that such [racial] criteria are ‘either harmful and anti-democratic’.”
Sturtevant also maintains that armed with a broader definition of Indigenous Identity based on ancestral traditions, customs and beliefs many of the tribal communities like ACQTC who have valid historical and cultural grievances could establish and enlist the assistance of the larger mainstream community in assisting them. A thorough look at ACQTC.ORG will show that ACQTC has led the cause of inviting public opinion and assisting us with the revitalization of our traditions free of intimidation and oppression by the mainstream governments.
Sturtevant and Stanley agree in their study that: “[i]n the 20 oldest states [in the USA] there still survive some 70 [indigenous] communities, with populations ranging from less than 10 … [and] who [still possess indigenous identity] and yet remain outcasts from society.”
Professor Gould believed that people today discard race factors and hold on to our ancestral connections favoring multiethnic communities.
The jurors in the Mashpee case (supra) found that if the Mashpee Community had opted to focus on their aboriginal ancestry rather than accepting enculturation that alone could satisfy the racial element criterion (when determining if a "tribe" existed).
Professor Gould asked one more significant question. He asked: “What if not blood quanta but ancestry were … an essential criterion, and [tribal communities] adopted at least some members because of cultural affinity?”
ACQTC has a very unique way of resolving this issue quite adequately and it is based on ancestral traditions since “time immemorial”. We have a Confederate Membership that anyone within the parameters of our DAWNLAND regional domains can apply for which is based on purely cultural and political affinity. Honorary Membership is based on a social affinity and breaks down all barriers of race.
In the excellent book by Jeff Benedict entitled Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods, the World’s Largest Casino [Harper-Collins, 2000, ISBN-0-06-019367] it is shown that the Pequot never existed as a tribe until the 1980s and they readily accepted members of other races who were not Pequot. So, if the State of Connecticut and BIA allowed them to exist as a tribe they cannot tell us who can and can’t become members of ACQTC. On page 346 of his book Benedict wrote: “There are Indian tribes that say the Pequots are a reconstructed tribe” … “And it is a major phenomenon.” Also, on page 327 Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is quoted as affirming that the Pequots did not exist as a tribe in June 1934 when the Indian Reorganization Act applied.
Professor Gould also asks “Who Should be An Indian?” This differs from community to community. Tribal communities who exist in the heartland of the USA did not come into contact with the Wonnux until the 1800s, two centuries after the Dawnlanders did so. Our Quinnipiac Trail of Heartaches began in 1750 and continued until 1900.
Tribal communities on the east coast made Treaties with nations before the USA was founded, and the tribes of the heartland made Treaties with the USA. In one major OPINION (that began in 1835 but was resolved much later) in Mitchel V. United States, 34 U.S. 711, (9 Pet), 9 L. Ed. 283 (1835), the U.S. Supreme Court held that Tribal communities that made Treaties with the Crown were sanctioned by England protecting their ABORIGINAL TITLE TO LAND interests including fishing, hunting and trapping. The Quinnipiac were the first to make Treaties with the English to establish such rights. These Treaties predated
the Republic and unless specifically abrogated by Congress must be honored.
Our ancestral confederacy included the practice of inter-marriages between bands and clans. This enables our community to grow into a sub-regional confederacy (one of seven in the Dawnland). Thus we have inter-marriages outside the Algonquian ancestry (such as with the Iroquoian People or Haudenosaunee "People of the Longhouse".
The custom of "Tribute Wars" led to capturing thousands of non-Indigenous people into our seven confederacies and raising them as our own. This is acknowledged by all the major historians.
In specific terminology this is known as "exogamy". This custom predated European colonization. Our Honorary Membership is based on this principle. Yet, unlike the so-called "recognized tribes" who exist on elections, and other purely democratic principles, ACQTC keeps these memberships separate, each having varied rights and responsibilities and this too is traditional.
Professor Gould comments how “The profound irony reveal[s] that tribes [indigenous communities] are already what this nation is becoming” that being an integrated inter-cultural inter-racial nation of people from nationalities all over the world. How can the USA stand there and say we can do this but you cannot? That is patently a denial of equality under the law.
Professor Gould also asks if social acceptance of multi-ethnic, multi-indigenous, inter-racial ideology would make it easier for us to exist.
The answer is YES because it already exists with ACQTC. The Public in our local communities of Greater New Haven accept us for who we are. They socialize with us, they interact on our website and they have returned to us ancestral remains, cultural artifacts etc. The local government, land-trust managers etc. all honor us and work with us as a sign of social acceptance.
The second part of professor Gould’s study provides Tables that rely on tracking data concerning census statistics and tribal data regarding Native populations. The overall indigenous populations are expected to increase by eighty percent before 2050, and that is nearly double the population as a whole. He states that “American Indians may even now be present in greater numbers than they were at Columbus’s landfall.”
So, the ultimate paradox of this new data proves that the entire blood quantum, enculturation plans to water down indigenous identity had exactly the opposite effect … it has served to strengthen the resolve of Turtle Island’s indigenous people to survive and to endure.
Gould maintains that as a matter of survival other indigenous communities who were not exogamous prior to Wonnux colonization have now switched to exogamous idealogies. Recent acceptance of a "multiracial culture" in the USA by the public shows a major shift of social conformity to our ways and not vice versa.
Our ancestral world-trade networks predating the Wonnux newcomers are evidence of our advanced system of trading as a way of life not based on conquest but on social and cultural affinity. This was a sophisticated advanced culture prior to Wonnux disruption.
Tribe or Tribalism, Criteria or Ideology?
The legal, political and socio-cultural position of ACQTC through my office as Legal Sovereign has been clearly defined throughout the second half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. We are not now, nor have we even been a "tribe". There is(are) no indigenous word(s) in our language that denotes such a notion.
Professor Gould sheds some light on some of the problems, “Being Indian is far less a matter of genetics,” he explains “than of genealogy. At the dawn of this new century, Indians are the most ethnically diverse group in the nation. [footnote omitted] In 2000, nearly eight in ten Americans who could identify themselves as Indians because of ancestry could also claim ancestry in other groups [footnote omitted]. By 2100, nine in ten will be able to claim a multiracial background. [footnote omitted] It is this mixture of bodies and beliefs that helps supply [a rationale] for redefining tribes.”
It is also this mixture of bodies and beliefs that the Connecticut Puritan Theocracy fought so hard to resist having invented the mullato laws and blood quantum system that was at the core of the ethnic cleansing of the Quinnipiac.
ACQTC has existed for the past few centuries as a classic "composite tribal community". This is a fancy re-definition for "confederation" and is not much different than the democratic idealogy of a "Republic" of American States. In Chapter 4 of We the People Called Quinnipiac "Political Anatomy of our Sachemdoms" I quoted heavily from Kathleen J, Brangon (Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary) from her book Native Peoples of Southern New England, 1500-1650. She provides reasons why the term "tribe" is non-applicable to the true indigenous people of our wejammoke (homeland) such as ACQTC.
“The anthropological and historical literature on southern New England has also been obscured by the use of various sociopolitical labels, most notably the term tribe, to characterize the nature of governance and sociopolitical organization in that region…”
Neil Salisbury goes a step further and declares that the entire concept of a "tribe" as it was invented by the newcomers was “not to be found in Southern New England.” Our aboriginal polity was known as a Sachemauwunk (Sachemdom) where each Sachemship consisted of a “hereditary leader … known as a sachem” and where “[m]embership within [each] sachemship was either inherited, along with concomitant land rights, or achieved through marriage, or consent of the Sachem and his or her council.”
Bragdon also confirms our ancestral tradition of exogamy: The Sachemship was made up of those who “defended it … whether kin or followers of the sachem. Loyalty went beyond that given to the present sachem, and rested with the sachemship as an ongoing social grouping to whom one’s ancestors had belonged.”
Today, ACQTC is being denied our right to cultural and socio-political forms of self-identity based on our ancestral idealogies of a Sachemdom. This is discrimination based on ancestry.
In We the People Called Quinnipiac I clearly outlined the entire structure of our aboriginal existence sociopolitically as passed down to us through generations of Long-Water-Land Culture-Bearers who resisted assimilation.
The literary definition of the word "tribe" as shown on page 530 of Oxford’s Concise English Dictionary in the section marked USAGE states: “In historical contexts, the word tribe is unexceptionable … However, in contemporary contexts, used to refer to traditional societies today use of the word can be problematic, as it is, with past attitudes of white colonists towards so-called primitive or uncivilized peoples. For this reason, it is generally preferable to use alternative terms…”
The legal definition shown in Ballentine’s Law Dictionary: Legal Assistant Edition on page 252 shows "tribe" under "Indian tribe" in purely legal terms as “a body of Native Americans united in a community under one leadership or government and inhabiting a particular territory.”
Black’s Law Dictionary provides the following legal jurisprudence on the law of "Indian tribes".
“Indian tribe: A group, band, nation, or other organized group of indigenous … people.”
This shows how vague and ambiguous the word/term "tribe" can be as it is synonymous with "band", "nation" etc. which are entirely different. Yet no one can say with any degree of certainty exactly what a tribal nation is.
Additionally, “The Indian Tribe is the fundamental unit of Indian law … Yet, there is no all-purpose definition of an Indian Tribe. A group of Indians may qualify as a tribe for the purpose of one statute but fail to qualify for others. Definitions must accordingly be used with extreme caution.”
In a recent federal case the OPINION of the court has also ruled that the legal definition and status of a "tribe" is evolving. It involves the status of the Unkechauge People which is a small tribal band from Long Island on the Poospatuck River (and who once were a part of the Wappinger-Mattabeseck Confederacy).
The Unkechauge never received state or federal formal recognition, although, like ACQTC various governmental, educational and historical agencies agree they are recognized as a historical group.
In Montoya V. United States, 180 U.S. 266 the U.S. Supreme Court established criteria for judicial recognition of tribes under federal common law. The Court in Unkechauge found they did exist as a tribe, despite the fact they had intermarried with other races.
When ACQTC filed its own Federal Petition for Acknowledgment we focused heavily on changing the criterion because our existence goes over the standard non-indigenous definitions.
Subsequently, for all the reasons stated above in this sub-section the evolving issues related to the state and federal criterion that applies to the concept of "tribe" has been rendered passé as well as moot, whereas the issues relevant to such determinations have been settled in ways that fundamentally alter the legal definitions and standards under common law.
As Professor Gould astutely argues: First, “Justice Stephens wrote that Mancari extended to indigenous persons, and not simply tribes.” Second, “Part II suggests that tribes self-defined by these [recent] attributes, can be someday overcome the predicament [of tribes] exemplified in Mancari. It concludes that tribes have within their means a way to regain a measure of their sovereignty and assure the preservation of their cultures …”
Subsequently, the term "tribe" being so vague and ambiguous is best used in the sole context of "tribalism". It is an indigenous philosophy, ideology and way of life that follows the law of the herd, the pack and the flock rather than of man-made laws. Tribalism is the way of life that emulates the patterns of a changing earth through its four seasons. Indigenous peoples have their own place names, personal names and landmarks that define relationships with the land.
Indigenous Community Membership — Governmental Tactic vs. Indigenous Self-Determination
Anthropologists and archaeologists have invented dozens of Newcomer appellatives and misnomers because they failed to understand our aboriginal forms of sociopolitical existence and our language patterns. The so-called evolution of Paleo-Indians and Archaic Indians to the Woodland Period were viewed as separate levels and different peoples. Our own ancestral teachings, however, maintain that these were merely our own ancestry evolving through various stages of development.
The evolving patterns of our existence has forced the courts and the Bureau of Census alike to adopt the racial one-drop rule. The past references of blood quantum in terms of "full-blood" and "mixed blood" which led to the mullato/metis/mestizo laws began with European colonization. In 1890, the year when Indians were first counted, the mullato/mestizo/metis were further sub-divided into quadroons and octoroons. These sub-categories continued until 1920. A quadroon is a person with one-quarter non-Caucasian blood and an octoroon is a person with one-eighth non-Caucasian blood.
The quadroon mullato law is what the BIA used as a benchmark for their one-quarter degree of blood quantum. The Unkechauge case noted that band had a "one-drop" requirement for tribal membership. This criterion as being directly related to the principles of slavery and involuntary servitude shows that the ACQTC position that all Connecticut recognized and federal recognized "tribes" are in essence slaves of the state.
In Montoya V. United States, 180 U.S. 261, 266 (1901) the U.S. Supreme Court set up conditions for recognizing tribal status by application of a set of judicial standards. Also in County Of Oneida V. Oneida Nation (I & II) 470 U.S. 226 (1985) and 434 F. Supp. 527 (1977) the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that there was a common law right of action for Indian possessory rights in the northeastern USA. In Montoya the court defined a tribal community as “a group of people living within a concentrated area that provides their own means of self-identity.”
This is of special interest to ACQTC whereas we have a local, regional identity as well as a nation-ality identity. Our local identity is Ouinnipiac/Quiripey or "People of the Long Water Land". The concentrated area in question here differs depending on the specific time-frame, i.e. pre-history, Woodland Period and post colonization. Our regional identity is as the Wappinger-Mattabesec Confederacy. Our Nation/ality Identity is as Dawnlanders (which includes both Algonquian and Iroquoian Peoples of the Northeastern Woodland region).
In the Unkechauge opinion the court held that the band’s sovereignty included the essential right of a sovereign entity to determine the bounds of its own citizenship. This upholds the decision in Venetie which affirms the premise that an indigenous people “must demonstrate that their people are joined together as a unit through beliefs, way of life, or the like, which go beyond just ethnicity and place of residence.”
ACQTC is governed exclusively by our ancestral traditions, beliefs religion etc. We openly challenge the eastern tribes of Connecticut who abandoned their ancestral ways and still do not adhere to such patterns. A tribe based on a BIA sanctioned constitution fails to fit this judicial requirement.
This too is further evidence that tribalism is a way of life that far exceeds blood quantum. In Venetie the court also held that “in order to achieve federal [or state] recognition, a group of Ind[igenous] people need not inhabit a formal ‘Indian country’ inhabitation of a ‘specified area’ or a ‘community viewed as American Indian’ is sufficient.” The Venetie Court also held that “tribal sovereignty is manifested primarily over the trib[al] members … [and membership].”
This is further hinged on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Wheeler, 435 U.S. 322-23 which held that: “the retained sovereignty of the [tribal entity] is that needed to control their own internal relations, and to preserve their own unique customs and social order [and] … to prescribe and enforce rules of conduct for their own members.” All other sovereign powers are incidental to the entity’s self-determination.
In Confederated Tribes of the Coleville Indian Reservation 100 S. Ct. at p. 2080 this applied to a confederacy of tribal bands similar to the structure of ACQTC (which qualifies as a composite tribal community).
As indicated above one ethnologist Charles Hudson has provided a model for indigenous identity that can be applied in at least three ways. A person, group etc. can be indigenous or aboriginal based on genetics, cultural affinity or social activity. Some individuals as well as some groups are more indigenous or aboriginal than others.
The right to leadership in ACQTC is based on ancestral sociopolitical forms of existence based on matrilineal clanship lineages. The Grand Sachem has the right to appoint chiefs over the bands and various forms of standing in the community is based on how much an individual shares/contributes to the greater good of the community. ACQTC membership is also divided into three types: 1. Full Membership, 2. Confederate Membership, and 3. Honorary Membership. This incorporation of three membership levels is an exercise of inherent sovereignty and autonomy in self-determination. I was taught that in order to be recognized as sovereign you must act in a sovereign way by making decisions that are clearly that of a sovereign. You don't wait and ask permission.
As Professor Gould surmised in 2001: “For each new person added to a [tribal community] with broadened membership, one more will be subject to the [tribal community’s] inherent sovereignty, and one less will be subject to interventions by a state…[and] consider[ing] the [tribal community] willing to blur the boundaries even more and to adopt at least a few non-Indi[genous] people. Imagine one day a [tribal community] secure enough to assimilate [outsiders]…”
That tribal entity is unequivocally ACQTC, the Algonquian Confederacy of the Quinnipiac Tribal Council.
The New Multicultural Ethos — Re-Defining Our Existence
The Puritan Theocracy made it extremely difficult when they executed their program of ethnic cleansing against us and declared us (Quinnipiac) extinct. The tribal communities of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine also declared other Algonquian peoples extinct. Most have returned from hiding in plain sight to reclaim their lands and identities. The Unkechauge and Venetie Courts have held that our indigenous communities cannot be penalized for accepting patterns of assimilation in order to survive.
Twenty-five years ago The New Haven Colony Historical Society (NHCHS) was of the position that the Quinnipiac were extinct and ceased to exist as a tribe. Today ACQTC has contraverted that premise using numerous factors and evidence to the contrary.
After a decade of exposure to ACQTC.com and now ACQTC.ORG that same group changed its name to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society, mainly from pressure generated by ACQTC to abandon its ethnocentric stereotypes.
In 2008, Benjamin Breton, Education Director for the New Haven Museum and Historical Society did a series of lectures and wrote a paper entitled: “The Quinnipiac; New Haven’s First Inhabitants.”
It begins with these words: “Prior to European contact, the indigenous people living in New Haven [Connecticut] had an advanced civilization. As a result of disease, war … and what the author calls a ‘not-so-subtle form of ethnic cleansing’, the Quinnipiac way of life was dramatically changed…”
The same lecture/paper ends with the following words: “[W]hile there are many people in America living today that are descended from the original Quinnipiac of New Haven … History has not been kind to the Quinnipiac Indians. Cultural misunderstandings, blind indifference, and naked greed have resulted in not only the [grievous] loss of their land, but also a change in their entire way of life … Today, those few descendants of the Quinnipiac who remain are [focusing] to resurrect their language, culture and institutions of the Quinnipiac…”
At the conclusion of this lecture/paper, Breton indicates: “This raises some interesting questions for those who study the humanities…” Three of the questions posed by Breton are provided here along with answers to them.
Q1: Must a tribal community of people all live in the same vicinity?
The practical response is based on historical precedents. The Iroquois, for example, has a large membership (similar to ACQTC) that is separated by the USA-CANADA border. Their reservations at St. Regis and Akwesasne are half in the USA and half in Canada because they existed prior to the implementation of this border. Their members live on and off the reservations, in New York City where they are employed etc. They also live in several Canadian provinces.
ACQTC members are scattered in CT, NY, MA, NJ, NH, VT, ME, and in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia. Some of our Quinnipiac ancestors migrated to Brotherton, NY in Oneida territory. Some then migrated to Wisconsin with the Oneida and Stockbridge Muncie band of the Mohecan. In several Iroquois Treaties is mentioned the "Friends of the Iroquois" who were provided refuge after being relocated from their original homelands. Outsiders believe our people lost their forms of self identity when they were given refuge at other reserved lands, but in fact they continued to exist as tribal communities within a composite tribal community (an allied confederacy).
Other tribal communities such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek, all composite tribal groups formed into allied confederations, as well as the Delaware (Lenni Lanape) were all forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands to collective land in Oklahoma, known as "Indian Country", and in Texas, Kansas and Mexico. Yet this did nothing to diminish their sovereignty or identity as tribal communities. The legal doctrine associated with this subject is very clear as well.
In the Montoya ruling (supra) a "tribal community" is a group of people living in an area that provides their own means of self identity. It also held that “inhabiting a particular, though ill-defined territory” was flexible. The Quinnipiac lived along the shores of Long Island Sound in the summer and along river far inland in the winter. Our confederacy is also indigenous to a large part of SW New England, and as one of the seven Confederacies of the Dawnland a regional self-identity was also in effect contemporaneously.
In Montoya, as long as a tribal group is “united under one leadership” it represents a cohesive tribal entity and is subject to considerable flexibility and understanding of their forms of self-identity and in “respect to changes within native groups over time and [any] differences between native groups in different parts of the country.”
"Assimilation" as held by the Unkechauge court and Venetie court “does not destroy tribal [communities] status.” When a tribal community exists within an "ill-defined" or scattered boundary the tribal entity must show “that their people are joined together as a unit through beliefs, way of life … which go beyond … place of residence.”
Lastly, in both Unkechauge and Venetie, the concept of a “particular, although ill-defined territory … does not require ownership or possession of land” and further specifies that “specific boundaries need not be drawn.”
It also found that as long as some members remained in their homeland “some out-migrating of members is not proof that a particular [group] does not occupy a particular area.”
Q2: Since members of the Quinnipiac are scattered throughout the USA [and Canada] can they rely on the Internet and literature to resurrect their ancient culture?
OTC Press literature and internet websites are generated by Quinnipiac historians, linguists, culture-bearers and elders, not outsiders, so we are merely carrying on a tradition of passing our teachings along from generation to generation. Tribal traditions began with a combination of oral and graphic lore. Today our QTC Press publications contain those same oral texts in written form and the graphics accompany them as well. Only the manner in how these traditions are passed along has changed, not the content.
ACQTC is currently involved in a massive work in progress entitled Dawnland Traditions. It consists of 20 separate sections focusing on Algonquian traditions in general and Quinnipiac traditions in particular.
Q3: Are a certain amount of genetic similarities required for inclusion in the Quinnipiac? Or is tribal identity primarily a cultural construct?
This depends on just who is answering the question. Outsiders believe that race and genetics, skin color etc. are what constitutes identity. Quinnipiac and Algonquian tradition, however, say different. One scholar stated “A [tribal] community unlike a [human] body can lose a central 'organ' and not die. All the critical elements of identity are in specific conditions replaceable, language, land, blood, leadership [and] religion….Viable [tribal communities] exist [today] in which any one or even most of these elements are missing, replaced, [etc.]…”
ACQTC, The Algonquian Confederacy of the Quinnipiac Tribal Council, exemplifies the best of both worlds and has maintained all the conditions precedent for the existence of a viable tribal community. We have endured, survived, and transformed our destiny while maintaining our sovereign autonomy. We did so not as "Native Americans" or "American Indians" and surely not as a "tribe", but on modes of self-determination, self-identity and ancient traditions.
Endnotes
