Legal Definitions of "Indianness"
Indian identity has been defined in a number of ways in the Anglo-American legal tradition, all of which have some relevance for the study of Indian autobiography. The first of these definitions dates back to the earliest period of exploration and colonization. Behind the law of discovery, as it developed from the 16th through the 18th centuries, lay the broad assumption that the "Indian" is a kind of man somehow inferior to the subject-citizen of European civil society. Indians lack a rational awareness of the proper use of real property, live nomadic lives, and lack a cohesive civil order (so the narrative proceeds). A lack of discernable religious belief (meaning Christianity) was also central to the discourse. Early Indian autobiography, rooted in narratives of conversion, clearly engages directly with these assumptions about Indian selves.
With the emergence of contractarian political theory (especially the versions of Hobbes and Locke) and its fusion with the discourse of English common law (in the work of William Blackstone), legal definitions of Indianness become more precise but no less problematic. Eighteenth-century contractarian thinkers imagined the Indian to be the image of original man in the "state of nature." The telelogical thrust of contractarianism (which assumes that natural man must progress from the state of nature into the state of civil society) thus came to stand behind the assimilationist strain of subsequent Indian law. (Indeed, the allotment policy of the late 19th century clearly represents an attempt to reproduce the central legal fictions of social contract theory as public policy.) The familiar stereotype of the noble savage has clear links to this facet of Anglo-American legal discourse. While the popular imagination split the Indian into two contrasting types (the skulking savage and the noble son of the forest—Magua and Chingachgook), the law (during the 19th century, especially) tended to see Indians as proto-Europeans either destined to die out in the face of civilization or capable of forcibly being brought forward in time to join the ranks of modern man. It has only been in the 20th century that we have seen a significant retreat away from these evolutionary assumptions. Indian autobiographers at the turn of the century were immersed in this kind of discourse, however.
The defintions discussed above are broad ones, embedded within the very fabric of early U.S. Indian law. But there are other definitions of "Indianness," arising in conjunction with reservation life, that must also be noted. These definitions can vary widely, depending upon which political entity we are discussing. The federal government, tribal governments, and state governments all have different criteria for determining who is an Indian in a legal sense (who is entitled to tribal membership, access to benefits and resources, etc.) The same individual may be recognized as "Indian" by their own tribe, in other words, but not by the U.S. government. The factors generally applied in determining Indian identity include (1) blood quantum, or identifiable Indian ancestry, and (2) recognition by a legitimate Indian community. Of course, the second of these raises another set of complications; the federal government has specific standards that must be met for a tribe itself to be recognized as "authentic" (an issue of great significance for communities that were dislocated or terminated in the past). The debates about authenticity surrounding Indian autobiography discussed in the literary history section of this site become more resonant when seen in light of these larger, legal issues.
The current criteria for tribal recognition (set by the Secretary of the Interior in 1978) include the following. A tribe must prove to the BIA that: