Defining Native American identity

Determining what makes a person a Native American is harder than you might think, according to Bethany Schneider.

Schneider, a professor who teaches a graduate-level Native American literature class at Penn, discussed Indian identity at a meeting of Six Directions, a student-run group focusing on Native American issues, yesterday.

Schneider said it is challenging to pin down a precise definition of what it means to be Indian.

"Communities are always re-imagining what it means to be an Indian," Schneider said.

Schneider said the U.S. government often wants to define being Native American in terms of "blood quantum" or genetics, while native communities define identity in terms of beliefs and practices.

"In America, you're black, white or Asian, and that's the face you put forward," Schneider said.

Most of the students present were only partially Native American, and they said the Indian aspect of the their heritage was sometimes suffocated by other ethnicities.

"It's schizophrenic in terms of identity," College sophomore Mia King said.

She added that many people identify themselves with different ethnic groups depending on the situation at hand.

The group was small and personal, with less then a dozen students in attendance. .

The organization of Six Directions, which is not funded by the Student Activities Council, is "kind of nebulous," King admitted.

The group's size reflects the size of the Native American population at Penn, which College senior Elaine Bretschneider said is among the lowest in the Ivies.

"There's an atmosphere at the University that Cornell and Dartmouth are sucking up all smart natives," she said.

She said she hopes this attitude will change under the leadership of Penn President Amy Gutmann.

Bretschneider said the United Minorities Council at Penn has made Native American recruitment a priority.

She also noted that Penn will host a Native American Ivy League student conference this spring, which will bring students from throughout the Ivy League to discuss research and to socialize.

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