Borrows: What does blood have to do with being Anishinaabe?

Nice counterpart to the “quantum test” advocates. Laurence Hill, in Blood, made a similar point “who among us is not mixed:”

…Anishinaabe people, like every human community, are genetically diverse. We may have mixed Indigenous roots. Most of us also have ancestors from other continents too. Despite these truths, some don’t see Anishinaabe as multi-ethnic, self-determining political communities with constitutional rights as First Nations. We are racialized by percentages, and this diminishes us in the process. 

Blood quantum is the vampire of our people. I am wholly Anishinaabe, just as I am wholly a Canadian citizen. I should not be required to divide, apportion or segregate myself into smaller units. No one, including five-year-olds, should be considered more or less Anishinaabe because of their genetic heritage. We must insist on our rights to self-determination, to freely choose who we are and who we will be. 

Our children must be made and become whole. 

John Borrows is the Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law at the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, and a Class of 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of The Seven Cycles of Life: Seeking Healing, Connection and Justice in Anishinaabe Teaching, from which this essay has been adapted.

Source: What does blood have to do with being Anishinaabe?