Race and Indigeneity

Looking at processes of racial boundary formation, especially in everyday practices, allows for researchers to understand how racialized distinctions are made, remade, and understood. For Native Nations, membership is heavily influenced by Indigenous kinship practices. Kinship systems reinforce laws that maintain place-based forms of social organization; however, Indigenous kinship practices are not always accounted for in discussions regarding American Indian racial boundary formation. Overlooking Indigenous kinship practices leaves room for misidentification, especially when misidentification is grounded in anti-Indian and anti-Black racism. Overlooking Indigenous kinship systems also leaves room for Native identity and trauma to be appropriated, namely by white American settlers. This chapter discusses how not accounting for Indigenous kinship systems leaves room for misclassification, appropriation, and racial violence.