Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (review)

In this well-written and insightful book, Circe Sturm undertakes the difficult task of sifting through the quagmire of "blood" and "identity" as it means to the Cherokee people found within the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma; or as she describes it, "to explain how racial ideologies are constructed and then filter from the national level to the local level, where they are simultaneously internalized, reproduced, manipulated, and resisted in different ways in various Cherokee communities" (p. 2).

Underlying the book are the related issues of identifying how we understand, make sense of, and tell others what we see and hear. Sturm approaches this question through the use of a narrative that she incorporates into several of the book's eight chapters. Sturm refers to this approach as a "southern storytelling aesthetic" that lets her "present an angle on events, experiences, and even myself that I otherwise could not" (p. xvii). The narrative is, in almost all cases, drawn from a particular ethnographic moment during her fieldwork. Some of these moments become reflexive, owing in part to Sturm's family background. With Anglo, Sicilian, German, Choctaw, and Cherokee ancestors in her family, she is as much a subject of her study as the people she interviews; however, she never overpowers the subject with these reflexive moments. They become a part of the overall narrative, and she uses them to great effect.

Blood Politics addresses a wide range of topics and peoples. Blood is a messy thing, and an understanding of its social construction by Cherokees calls for multiple avenues of exploration. Sturm pays particular attention to the historical formation of blood in its various modern interpretations by Oklahoma Cherokees. She examines how kinship, marriage, nation building, and race came to converge and diverge around blood from the eighteenth century to the present. She pointedly shows how Cherokees, in their local communities as well as their government (the Cherokee Nation), developed strategies born out of Cherokee cultural notions as well as those adopted through their interactions with the American colonies and government. That these discourses became contradictory and conflicting lends itself to her overall theory.

This historical background proves invaluable in understanding contemporary notions surrounding the sticky issue of "blood quantum," which, although the Cherokee Nation remains one of the few tribes without a blood quantum limit, becomes part of the discourse used by various Cherokees in Oklahoma. Sturm details how Cherokees, both "full blood" and "mixedblood," construct their notions of themselves and others in the process of maintaining a sense of distinctiveness. At different times Cherokees will use different criteria to evaluate who is (or is not) "Cherokee" or "Indian." Social markers such as phenotype, religion, community, behavior, and language become important markers of identity, and Cherokee people use them singly or in combination to evaluate others and even themselves. History, too, becomes important in understanding the contradictory place given to Cherokee freedmen, many of whom had Cherokee "blood," versus the higher social status given to "white" Cherokees, meaning those people who had Cherokee blood, but were not considered to be "Indian." Ultimately, Sturm shows that the social and cultural diversity of the Cherokee population has helped Cherokees survive through social strife, the removal (the "Trail of Tears"), allotment, and today. In doing so, she provides an analysis that surpasses any previous work on the subject in detail and sophistication.