Those Who Belong may well serve as encouragement for those tribes who are facing declining membership due to a constitutional requirement of a minimum one-quarter (or even one-eighth) blood quantum for enrollment. In this work Jill Doerfler explains how one group of Ojibwe, the White Earth Nation of Minnesota, faced the problem of declining numbers and exercised their sovereignty in creating a constitution that stipulated lineal descent, not blood quantum, as the sole qualification for citizenship.
Finding herself excluded from citizenship in the White Earth Nation, Doerfler (2007) decided to study the problem of lineal descent versus blood quantum in her dissertation. It is a study of citizenship and identity and the foundation for this book. At first Doerfler explores the various ways in which the members of the White Earth Anishinaabeg understood identity in the early twentieth century, when Congress tried to eliminate the Indians from landownership...
