Bending to a common purpose is more important than arising from a common place. Of course, just remaining alive and Indian for the last 150 years has been one of the hardest things imaginable. A respect for blood is a respect for the integrity of that survival, and lineage should remain a metric for tribal enrollment. But not the only one. Having survived this long and come this far, we must think harder about who we want to be in the future, and do something more than just measure out our teaspoons of blood.

—David Treuer, from the Ojibwe author’s op-ed in The New York Times on ”blood quantum laws” and how they have been used historically to cast out members without pure tribal bloodlines.

Hear him talk at length with Krista Tippett about how his Ojibwe language is the only vehicle that can carry forward the unfolding experiences of culture in the On Being show “Language and Meaning: an Ojibwe Story.”

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