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The Indian Card by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz

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The Indian Card

Who Gets to Be Native in America

by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz

Narrator Amy Hall

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Length 7 hours 51 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz offers an in-depth and personal look at the long history of colonialism's effects on Native identity. Through interviews and her own experiences, she presents a rich tapestry of rules surrounding Tribal membership, the concept of blood quantum, and the often complex emotions involved in self-identity. This is a rich introductory education into issues many non-Native Americans know very little about - and should. ”
— Nancy • Raven Book Store

Bookseller recommendation

“I found this book to be both radically personal and deeply intriguing. Schhuettpelz answers many questions I’ve had about the process of enrolling into a Native American tribe that I would have googled to oblivion but never asked. How does blood quantum work? What is it like seeking connection after generations of separation from a culture? What are the intersections of tribes keeping their identity and culture without succumbing to colonial ideas of belonging and ownership? I couldn’t recommend this more highly.”
— Destinee • East City Bookshop

Summary
About the author

A groundbreaking and deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment, and what it means to be Native American in the United States

“Candid, unflinching . . . Her thorough excavation of the painful history that gave rise to rigid enrollment policies is a courageous gift to our understanding of contemporary Native life.” —The Whiting Foundation Jury

Who is Indian enough?

To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded—increasing 85 percent in just ten years—the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe.

In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity—the story of her enrollment and the enrollment of her children—she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today’s Tribal identity policing. With this intimate perspective of the ongoing fight for Native sovereignty, The Indian Card sheds light on what it looks like to find a deeper sense of belonging.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

History Nonfiction Social Science

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She spent seven years working in the Obama Administration on issues of homelessness and Native policy. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The Indian Card is her first book.