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Resisting a Genetic Identity: The Black Seminoles and Genetic Tests of Ancestry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Josephine Johnston
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Extract

In July 2000, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma passed a resolution that would effectively expel a significant portion of its tribal members. The resolution amended the Nation's constitution by changing its membership criteria. Previously, potential members needed to show descent from an enrollee of the 1906 Dawes Rolls, the official American Indian tribal rolls established by the Dawes Commission to facilitate the allotment of reservation land. The amended constitution requires possession of one-eighth Seminole Indian blood, a requirement that a significant portion of the tribe's membership cannot fulfill. The members of the Nation who fail to meet this new membership criterion all have one thing in common: they are black.

Descendents of former slaves who came to live among the Seminole Indians of Florida in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the black Seminoles have been officially recognized by the U.S. government as members of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma since 1866.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , Summer 2003 , pp. 262 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2003

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