Those Who Belong: Identity, Family, Blood, and Citizenship among the White Earth Anishinaabeg by Jill Doerfler (review)

IN THIS POINTED INVESTIGATION into citizenship debates among the Anishinaabeg of the White Earth Nation and the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Jill Doerfler provides a powerful model for decolonizing scholarship today. Working with her own community, she not only demonstrates how scholarship can be directly put to the service of complex Native nation debates, but also shows how we can theorize from and with Indigenous peoples, academics, histories, and stories. Unburdened by traditional disciplinary boundaries, Doerfler weaves together participatory ethnography, archival history, and literary criticism, demonstrating the true potential of American Indian studies today.

Those Who Belong begins with an excerpt from a 1913 federal investigation that attempted to map the blood quantum percentages of two hundred White Earth families. When asked about another man's status as either mixed or full blood, Ay-dow-ah-cumig-o-quay responded, "He is dead long ago. I don't know exactly what he was. You can go dig him out of his grave, and then you can find out" (xxi). From this provocative quip, Doerfler demonstrates the lack of resonance blood quantum had for Anishinaabeg in the early twentieth century, how this concept was imposed through problematic Euro-American scientific practice and governmental policy, and ultimately how blood quantum works against Native survivance.

Pulling heavily on Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor to theorize her primary terms, Doerfler argues throughout the text for Indigenous survivance—that is, a "reimagination of sovereignty that brings control to tribal nations and encompasses political status, resistance, cultural values, and traditions" (xxxii). While making an important contribution to Indigenous theories of sovereignty, this work also challenges the partition of theory and evidence. Using Vizenor's writing simultaneously as a primary text to understand the stakes of belonging among the Anishinaabeg and as an analytical tool to demonstrate the relevance of these discussions for a larger audience, Doerfler breaks down some of the colonizing binaries commonly found in scholarship.

From archival documents, Doerfler tells the story of continued Anishinaabeg resistance to various federal government attempts at consolidation and erasure, particularly during the 1910s and 1930s. Through this evidence she demonstrates how it was family, not blood quantum, that was the central organizing principle for the Anishinaabeg and how they repeatedly refused the imposition of federal government narratives. Tying citizenship numbers to the strength of a Native nation, Doerfler clearly demonstrates how blood quantum was a tool for elimination and thus colonization.

In chapter 3, Doerfler turns to the citizenship debates surrounding the twenty-first-century White Earth Nation constitutional convention. This chapter is a powerful example of how scholarship can work within and be part of emergent moments of community change. Describing the constitutional process and her role in detail, this chapter serves as a history for the community, a guide for other nations seeking governmental reform, as well as a grounded interrogation of blood quantum as a tool for citizenship. Rather than seeking to understand the motivations behind each perspective, the chapter, like the text as a whole, demonstrates the importance of scholarly advocacy in the face of ongoing colonialism. As the canonical scholar Linda Smith argues, "Research is not an innocent or distant academic exercise but an activity that has something at stake and that occurs in a set of political and social conditions" (Decolonizing Methodology: Research and Indigenous Peoples [London: Zed Books, 1999], 5). Throughout the text, Doerfler argues adamantly for overturning blood quantum standards and the colonial legacies they contain.

In concluding Those Who Belong with an Anishinaabe story, Doerfler demonstrates the true potential of theorizing from Indigenous values and traditions. Indigenous stories are too often selectively used to reinforce static notions of Indigenous peoples as a uniform primitive people with values fundamentally at odds with the modern world. Doerfler instead tells the Earthdiver story, which is about fundamental change in the face of massive destruction. This story of rebirth powerfully speaks to the potential of Indigenous people not just to...