(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Denying Montana's heritage one drop of blood at a time – Daily Montanan [1] ['More From Author', 'February', 'Russell Rowland'] Date: 2024-02-27 Fresh off winning the Golden Globe for her incredible performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Lily Gladstone met with the press, and the first question someone asked was about speaking the Blackfeet language in her acceptance speech. Gladstone responded by citing Robert Hall for coaching her in her native language. Hall, who lives and teaches on the Blackfeet reservation, has been working for years to not only retain the Blackfeet language, but also to create a written record of the language, something that has never been officially completed. So it came as a shock to Hall when, just 18 hours after this shining moment in his life, he received notice that he had been disenrolled from the Blackfeet tribe. Hall has been fighting for years to obtain membership in the tribe he considers his family. Like every tribe in Monana, the Blackfeet only enroll members who meet the required blood quantum level, a measure of a person’s family bloodlines that is determined by the tribal council, but which did not exist for the history of most tribes. For decades, tribes determined who would become a member based on several factors, only a small fraction of which had to do with bloodlines. But it became part of the government’s policy to control the money that was being distributed among the tribes to create a more quantifiable way of measuring who should be included, and thus the era of blood quantum was born. Hall likes to compare it to the “one drop” rule that was incorporated after the Emancipation Proclamation, where the government determined that even one drop of African American blood qualified a person as African American. The decision was a not so subtle way of denying more people the rights that were only available to white people. And Hall points out that blood quantum accomplishes that same goal, in that the people who are turned away from tribal membership, despite their commitment to the culture of the tribe, their contributions to the community, even their family heritage (Hall’s parents are both tribal members), they are denied enrollment in order to avoid having to pay more money to the tribes. For most of his life, the Blackfeet tribe had determined that Hall and others in his family were 1/64th short of the required level of blood quantum to apply for enrollment. But last year, he and his brother found some paperwork that indicated that one of their grandmothers, when she decided to move away from the reservation, had to lie in her official application because at that time, Blackfeet were not allowed to leave the reservation. So she claimed to be white, even though she was either one half or full Blackfeet, a fact Hall has not been able to definitively determine yet. But in Robert’s case, this realization that his grandmother was at least half Blackfeet meant that Hall and his siblings and cousins would now qualify for tribal enrollment. But Hall and his brother are well aware of how delicate tribal politics can be, so they were careful to approach the matter in a very deliberate manner, making sure they didn’t create any reason for anyone to question their motives. Because Hall has been an outspoken critic of blood quantum for years, they decided his brother should be the who approached each member of the tribal council with the documents that made their case for enrollment. Once he had done this, they requested an investigation into whether they were eligible for enrollment, which the council agreed to initiate. Their investigation led them to the same conclusion, that Hall and his cousins and brother were eligible, so they were voted into the tribe in November 2023. But almost immediately, this decision stirred up rumors in the community, and there’s a reason for that as well. In the Blackfeet Tribal Council, as with many of the councils around the state, tribal council meetings are not a matter of public record. So people started circulating stories that some of Hall’s relatives had made some kind of backroom deal to achieve their enrollment status. Certain members of the council began to feel the heat from other tribal members, and they presented a suggestion that the council withdraw the offer of enrollment, which is what they did on Jan. 8, 2024, the day after the Golden Globes. This time, Hall was hurt and angry enough that he decided to throw protocol to the wind, and he posted an angry but completely factual account of what happened on his Facebook page, an act that brought an almost immediate response from the tribal council that they were going to reconsider their decision. Hall and his family are still in limbo about which direction the decision will go, but his case brings up, once again, the issue that needs to be examined throughout Montana. Every single tribe in Montana has adopted the blood quantum rules for determining their tribal membership, and it’s only a matter of time, as people marry outside the tribes, before the number of tribal members will dwindle down to nothing. In the end, it’s just one more example of a subtle way of taking away the cultural importance of these people, and it should be addressed. 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