08/30/2026
Blood quantum does-clearly-have some relevance, and children with 4 Native grandparents have opportunities that children with 1 Native grandparent do not have.
This discussion, whether you agree or not is relevant to all Federally Recognized Tribal Citizens in the United States.
Blood Quantum-factually-was created for our demise, and we must look at Citizenship as the treaty issue that it is-or we will, by default become “extinct”.
“On Blood Quantum, and the Path Back to the Center 🌿
Here_ci! My relatives. Buckle up! This is a long one 😎
I want speak gently but clearly to something rising before us—a moment that could change the very foundation of how we see ourselves, our children, and the generations to come.
The conversation around the Freedmen is not just about them. It is about all of us. It is about the end of blood quantum—a Federal and bureaucratic invention that has lingered too long in our lives, shaping the way we define who belongs, who is worthy, and who we are.
Let me say this plainly:
Blood quantum never told the truth about a person. At best, it told a narrow story—about the choices their parents or grandparents made.Who they loved. How they survived. What they needed to do to protect their families from a changing, dangerous world.
Some chose to marry outside our Nation to keep their children safe. Some married Black or white (or maybe even Cherokee God forbid. Just kidding apologies to my Cherokee relatives! Eee) I m just saying they (we) followed their hearts or their communities. (Okay to be honest maybe some just followed momentary impulses! But we all have them. We are a passionate people in our own way.)
Some however we're very considered in their decisions. Being from particularly small towns or large families some deliberately did not marry what we consider close kin, or clan relatives because our people have always understood the dangers of concentrating certain traits, of reinforcing weakness through insularity.
That was not betrayal or mistakes. I think we can all agree the children are sacred and none are mistakes. I see it as a certain wisdom. It was care.
But blood quantum turned that care into punishment.It turned those choices into subtraction.It told our children they were “less.”
🧬 Blood Quantum Is Not Identity
Let’s be clear: Blood quantum is not science.It is not culture. It is not Mvskoke.
It is a colonial fiction. A bureaucratic tool.
It was designed by outsiders as a placeholder—something to mimic our systems of belonging while quietly counting us out, generation by generation, until there were none left to count.
We have lived for too long under this math of disappearance. A child born today may be told they are “1/8 or 3/16 or 7/32 or whatever”
But they know the language.
They sing the songs.
They dance at the grounds.
They worship up at the church.
They care for their parents and their grandparents.
They are full of our ways.
So let me ask: Who dares say they are not Mvskoke? Quite the opposite I'm proud to claim them. Most would be I believe.
🌀 We Know Who We Are
In our own terms, we know what matters:
Family
Faith
Ceremony
Language
Responsibility
Memory
Kinship
Belonging
These are the things that make a person Mvskoke.Not numbers. Not purity myths. Not percentages passed down like property titles. Or quarter horse genealogies. (My grandpa was a quarter horse breeder for 50 years and bred his stock carefully. We are not horses or dogs though but that's another post)
Sufficient to say We are not fractions. We are not carbon copies of our ancestors.We are their continuation—and their hope.
🔥 This Moment Is a Return
This moment—the end of blood quantum—if we let it come, is not a collapse. It is a return.
It is how we:
Finally and fully welcome our Yuchi, Natchez, Alabama etc relatives whose "blood" may or may not be Muscogee in it's most technical sense depending on who and what day you ask.
Embrace our adopted children, children from other nations that have become ours raised in our ways but marked “not enough” by a broken system.
Recognize our Freedmen kin as the court has demanded, and whose ancestors walked beside ours through fire, treaty, removal, and rebuilding.
None of these relatives diminish us. They restore us.
🌱 We Are All Full Citizens
When we leave blood quantum behind, we are not becoming “less defined.” We are becoming fully whole. But this new wholeness brings with it responsibility. Citizenship is not a card. It is a commitment:
Learn or reclaim the language.
Show up for the Nation.
Participate in our democracy.
Care for our lands and our elders.
Pass on our ways to our children.
Speak up when others are voiceless.
Being Mvskoke is inherited. But it is inherited fully and it is lived in relation.
🪶 To Those Who Are Unsure
I know this won’t feel easy for everyone.
Some of us (myself included) were raised in the mid-20th century model. We learned to trust the paperwork, the clarity of charts, the logic of systems. I admit there have been times when I've taken comfort from the fractions on my card.
But I believe we’ve confused administration with tradition.We’ve confused fear with care.
We’ve confused the BIA filing cabinet with our ancestors’ fire.
This however is not about a rejection of structure. I understand we are in the process of redrafting our laws and ordinances even now. What we are seeing is actually a restoration of our own structure. It is an act of sovereignty just as our signing of the treaty was.
It may have been under duress but we still had the power to refuse it but we did not. The Mcgirt Case said "at the end of the trail there was a promise" by the United States. We also made a promise but it was as much to ourselves as to the United States. It was to "treat all of our citizens equally". Our own Muscogee Supreme Court reminded us of that. Reminded us that we do not have fractional children.
That we do not have an 1/8 of a daughter or 1/16th of a grandchild.
And I believe looking squarely at it we will never be able to unsee that. Carving our children and grandchildren into fragments. Nothing could be less traditional, less "Creek" than that.
🌄 A Spiral Journey Home
This is not an argument. It is not a Facebook fight. I'm too old to be interested in that.
I take this whole situation as a reminder that this is the path I was raised to walk.The song I was taught to remember. The fire I was told to keep alive. Espokitis Omes Kerresko. Keeps reverberating through my mind as I write this. Outside of it being my favorite song I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the hope that this will be the last time this will be an issue. Doubtful I guess but we can hope!
Anyway, looking at the future I see us walking a spiral—not backwards, but inward, toward the center. If we do this together—with care, with truth, with courage—then our children will no longer be counted in parts.
They will be counted in possibility.
And each generation will grow stronger.
So I suppose I see myself as a little boy walking home from school up a dirt road in Wetumka no longer a "half breed" (a term my grandmother found abhorrent) with a card to prove it. But singing that hymn or maybe a stomp dance song. Undivided and whole.
So might I humbly suggest let us all walk home complete, secure and joyful. Leaving the evil of fractionation to a different century.
Let us welcome the ones already at the fire.
Let us stop measuring our future in fractions.
Let us be Mvskoke from this generation forward, whole and rising.
Mvto.
Still here.
Still Mvskoke.
And now—more fully ourselves than ever.
Okis-ce”
—William Harjo
