International Comparisons of First Nations’ Citizenship and Membership Criteria

Two broad policy types govern citizenship (also referred to as membership) in Native nations that share geography with the United States:

• Descent policies, which restrict citizenship to those individuals who descend from a designated list of Tribal members at some point in the past.

• Blood quantum policies, which restrict citizenship to those descendants of the Tribal community with a minimum degree of tribal ancestry.

Unfortunately, each of these policies has significant drawbacks: under lineal descent, a Native nation may struggle to sustain defining Cultural Knowledges and an actionable sense of community across a large population; under a blood quantum criterion, a Native nation may struggle to persist as a community at all.

Native Nations Institute researchers, working under the direction of Dr. Jorgensen, have gathered policies from U.S.-based Native nations that mitigate the negative effects of both types of citizenship rules. A Mo’s Policy Scholar is sought to expand this research to include relevant information from the constitutions of Canadian First Nations, the organizing documents of Native corporations in Australia, and the chartering documents of Māori entities in Aotearoa New Zealand. This research effort will involve finding, reviewing, and excerpting relevant material from other community governing documents, gaining permission to share the material in a policy paper, and comparing the data to offer new ideas and opportunities to Native nations seeking to revise their citizenship rules.