TWO SUCCESSES

Half of Blackfeet live off the rez and half live inside the boundary.  I don't know how that correlates with where they were born, nor do I know the average claimed "blood quantum."   Those who left were both voluntary, like those during WWII who went to build ships and planes for the war effort and just didn't come back, and were semi-involuntary, like those who accepted programs to move to cities and learn new skills (Relocation) or the Canadian Sixties Scoop.  Some followed spouses.

Nobody looks like they did when the rez was created in 1850, partly because of the way they dress now and partly because of genetic mixing and partly because of being indoors instead of always outdoors and moving as they were in those days.  

Most get a share of the tribal money in trust with the US government, though the management of that trust -- set up because it was assumed that rez people didn't understand money -- has been so corrupt and negligent that people scoff at the few dollars they are sent annually.  Now and then there is a bigger payout, but it's not "free" money -- rather, payment for what was taken.

One of the major questions today is how to escape from the safeguards that have become prisons, and how to even decide who belongs in the demographic category.  Here are some options:

Provenance, often called "blood quantum" though it's about generations.

Sovereignty, which is a matter of self-governance, but -- eeks -- self-supporting.

Actual DNA indication of tribal identity, which is unreliable since any one "set" of characteristics is altered in the next generation.  Advertising that says it can identify tribal origin is largely false.

Appearance such as skin color and facial stereotypes, like whether one looks like Two Guns Whitecalf, which is hard on Navajo and Inuit.

Residence, actually living on the rez, esp. doing something in the rural parts.

Participation, being a part of the local community work whether schools, roads, tribal council, or churches.

Culture: paying special attention and renewing the language, the ceremonies, the values of the People 200 years ago.

None of these is perfect.  No one seems to show ALL these indicators.  The people who try the hardest might be the people who are least "Indian."

Consider two examples, both of them men I've known for fifty years.  Some people here believe that the only way to escape poverty, alcoholism, and early death is to get away from here and find a way to survive in the city, probably by becoming educated at a college grad level.  One way to do this, maybe the most dependable, is to conform, fit in, and not buck the system.  There are off-rez "white men" always looking for "Indians" they can work with and who can become interface enablers.  

Education is probably the main field where this works.  So the student who chose off-rez corporate education support still comes back because he misses the old rez free-form ways.  But he comes back in a car that cost twice the tax value of this house and he has two houses, one in the city and one on the rez that stays empty most of the time.  The one in the city is in a "gentrifying neighborhood" and is increasing in value.  

Those like this who do come back, find that the infrastructure is weaker, the distances are longer, the culture has changed.  They begin to petition the tribe to pull up its socks -- without being entirely sure those guys wear socks.  He's used to having a salary and mentors.  His pension is nice.  The contrast between the city life and the rez is daunting.

The other example is a man who was able to qualify for a more rarified kind of education.  It wasn't the content that made the diff, but the quality and kind of contacts, which is one of the real values of higher education.  Moving through sociological roles, but resisting the conventional middle-class terms, he cut trail.  After years working across the continent and painful periods of depression and self-examination, he became convinced that the way to innovate education -- in this case to renew the indigenous language -- was to define and create his own "charter school" that did just that.  As soon as he had thought it through and found others who could help to explore the way forward, he was joined by idealistic people.

This man settled on the rez to focus on this school and find the teachers he needed.  He was willing to travel to raise a LOT of money through his contacts.  He didn't use paper instruments, but rather personal speaking.  This life wears people out, and it was not at all easy, but when he was home on the rez, he was really with his people.  He also had two houses, one of them a cabin on a rez lake.  Today he is not retired, but deceased, much mourned. He was never on the tribal council was never controlled by the federal BIA.

These are two honorable life-paths.  Both men are enrolled, identified as indigenous.  They know and like each other, but both express how hard it is to understand each other.  The difference is so deep that it can't quite be put into words.  There are dozens of other ways to go: learn a trade, front for a local white man, marry well . . . 

In the Sixties when I came to the rez, young people were idealistic, outraged, and activist. Many of them had major impact on many lives.  One of the group was Eloise Cobell, who finally put the spotlight on federal trust malfeasance.