Rep. Paul Wesselhoft is authoring a bill eliminating the blood degree
requirement as a qualification to be appointed as the Native American
Liaison to the office of Governor of Oklahoma.
Current law states, “Any person appointed to the position of Oklahoma
Native American Liaison shall be an American Indian of at least one-fourth
blood.”
Wesselhoft desires to change the qualification to, “Any person appointed to
the position of Oklahoma Native American Liaison shall be a member of a
federally recognized Indian tribe and shall have valid proof of membership.
Wesselhoft believes any blood degree requirement in state government jobs
is “discriminatory and ultimately destructive.”
“Blood degree is an artificial definition of an Indian fostered by the federal
government to ultimately deny their treaty obligations in the future by
setting some arbitrary blood percentage,” Wesselhoft says.
Wesselhoft, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is also an elected
Representative in their legislature.
“Most tribes, he says, “rely on the historic 1893 Dawes Rolls to ascertain
membership in a tribal nation. If one is directly related to an Indian listed on
the Dawes Rolls, then that person qualifies as an Indian.”
Wesselhoft concludes, “If we allow blood degree to be legal and binding,
eventually Indian prodigy, through intermarriage, would run out of such a
degree of blood to qualify for certain jobs. Additionally, blood degree
ultimately denies citizenship in the tribe and citizenship would no longer be
afforded to future generations of Native Americans.”
The position of Oklahoma Native American Liaison was created last session
to replace the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission. The position has not
been filled by the governor. Wesselhoft, in the future, will author a bill to
make the liaison position a cabinet post.