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Phantasmagoric-I think if you are half Native and a Native language speaker and participating in the culture, you are an Indian by anybody's definition and should be checking that box. And by the government's definition you are an Indian.
Everybody on a college campus gains by getting to know all kinds of people and sharing different points of view. That is the essence of what the college experience is all about, and you have something important to contribute with your ability to speak another language and deep experiences in your culture. I think the colleges will want to know about all of that because it is so much a part of who you are and it would be a mistake not to tell them because you would be leaving out something important about what your upbringing has taught you, and what you can contribute.
Where this thread got started was with the question of how to treat Indian heritage that is pretty remote and from a person with not much connection to the culture. That's where enrollment comes in. Some East Coast tribes were driven so far underground and assimilated so much that they are really searching for every member they can gather together to bring the tribe back together and revive the traditions. In those cases someone with not much native blood connection could get involved with the life of the tribe a little more easily than with some of the Western tribes. I'm from Pennsylvania and when I was a kid in the '50s the Lenni Lenape were described as no longer existing in Pennsylvania. Now they are in the process of reconstituting themselves as a tribe. They had been there all along, at least in the memories of their children and grandchildren and great grand children. My Mom's boss's grandmother was Lenni Lenape and they had some old native things that she had handed down through the family. Other than that he was just another white guy with a blond wife and blond kids. At that time there was no tribe or group of people to belong to and I think he considered himself white. I don't know if he has done anything about his tribal enrollment, but my hunch is that the Lenni Lenape would welcome him with open arms. They were driven so deep underground that every member they can find is probably treasured. I think this is one area where the idea of enrollment and who is an Indian gets complicated.
An example of another side of this complexity was a government job I was working on for a public housing project. I was the lead artist for some public art being done there, the idea was for me to mentor some URM artists so that they could learn to tackle these bigger, more lucrative commissions on their own. (they all have gone on to do this) This is a hard field to break into for anyone and if you don't have training in how to work the system it can be nearly impossible no matter how talented you are. It's jusat incredibly complicated to get something built in the public arena. An artist in town that I knew well for years with no Native identity that I was ever aware of, pulled out the "my Cherokee Great Great Grandmother" card and convinced the city to make her a member of the team. She has had every advatage of training etc that we were trying to help URM artists compensate for missing out on, with this mentorship program. I'm sure she really did have a Cherokee ancestor but she had no connection to the culture and had never described herself as native before. Although she was a friend and she did an excellent job, I always felt upset about how that came together because there were other URM candidates that could have also done a great job-who missed out on an opportunity to break into a new field. The two other team members were URMS and I was not the person who did the hiring, but it still felt weird because the only time she was ever an Indian was when she could get a boost by being one. I just don't know how to feel about that. I guess I think if you are a 1/32 of anything and have always thought of yourself as white,you should at least be willing to do the work of finding out what condition your tribe is in and how they look at enrollment, before you check the NA box to try to get an admissions boost. At least in the process of trying to get enrolled you might learn something about how things are going for the tribe your ancestor belonged to, right now. Otherwise folks should just check white and describe the connection in the space provided.
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