Circe Sturm takes a bold and original approach to one of the most highly charged and important issues in the
United States today: race and national identity. Focusing on the Oklahoma Cherokee, she examines how Cherokee identity
is socially and politically constructed, and how that process is embedded in ideas of blood, color, and race. Not
quite a century ago, blood degree varied among Cherokee citizens from full blood to 1/256, but today the range
is far greater--from full blood to 1/2048. This trend raises questions about the symbolic significance of blood
and the degree to which blood connections can stretch and still carry a sense of legitimacy. It also raises questions
about how much racial blending can occur before Cherokees cease to be identified as a distinct people and what
danger is posed to Cherokee sovereignty if the federal government continues to identify Cherokees and other Native
Americans on a racial basis. Combining contemporary ethnography and ethnohistory, Sturm's sophisticated and insightful
analysis probes the intersection of race and national identity, the process of nation formation, and the dangers
in linking racial and national identities.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chapter One. Opening
Chapter Two. Blood, Culture, and Race: Cherokee Politics and Identity in the Eighteenth Century
Chapter Three. Race as Nation, Race as Blood Quantum: The Racial Politics of Cherokee Nationalism in the Nineteenth
Century
Chapter Four. Law of Blood, Politics of Nation: The Political Foundations of Racial Rule in the Cherokee Nation,
1907-2000
Chapter Five. Social Classification and Racial Contestation: Local Non-National Interpretations of Cherokee Identity
Chapter Six. Blood and Marriage: The Interplay of Kinship, Race, and Power in Traditional Cherokee Communities
Chapter Seven. Challenging the Color Line: The Trials and Tribulations of the Cherokee Freedmen
