Sometimes it's petty political fighting. Sometimes it's a way of getting rid of a group that stands in the way of some project or goal held to be important by another faction.

This has been going on for years.


In other cases it really is all over tightening requirements. Some tribes have loosened them to keep their existence going. Most of their members are 1/16, 1/32 "Native." At some point that stops being a real ethnic distinction. Imagine an African-American community where most of the people had a single black (great-)great-great-grandparent and were indistinguishable overall from a community of ethnic Norwegians. All that's left is cultural affiliation, and culture is correlated with but easily severable from race: No reason I couldn't join a tribe if I changed my cultural affiliation.

Cultural affiliation is a funny thing. If you're 1/16th Native American and 1/2 Pilipino, odds are that you're going to consider yourself Pilipino.

The problem is that if most of the low-quantum members are off-reservation and not tied into reservation life, suddenly tribal politics are all about those off-reservation. It's like saying that Detroit may have elections, but all the people in the suburbs are honorary Detroit residents and can vote in local Detroit elections. Detroit politicians at that point wouldn't even need to pretend to have Detroit residents' best interests at heart.

And yet in some cases it is about money. Not just in venal ways. What if the casino is to help the people on the reservation, but 75% of the people live off-reservation? See the previous paragraph.

In a number of tribes as soon as money was in the offing enrollment swelled. People joined the tribe's rolls for the money. Not because they felt any special kinship to the tribe. I won't even dignify their relationship by calling it "their" tribe.

Once you purge enrollment you really should purge "color-blind." You set the standards and make few exceptions.