Blood Quantum
Bula Vinaka and welcome to Tabu Tok - Volavola (Writing), here you will be able to find a piece of writing that corresponds to the episode of the week. Our second piece discusses Blood Quantum.
The colonial term ‘Blood Quantum’ basically means a required amount of ancestral blood for legal purposes. The earliest documentation of this term is in Europe in the 1700’s, however blood quantum really became known more widely once it was used in America as a way to ‘establish and racially define populations for resource allocation’ within a colonial framework, more specifically the Indigenous people of America*. It was a tool of colonisation in many ways such as the dispossesion of land and being a way to segregate and ensure that ‘interracial’ relationships were illegal.
A persons ‘Blood Quantum’ would be defined by how many of their ancestors were considered ‘full blooded’, that number then becomes a fraction of the individuals final ‘quantum’ number. As any Indigenous person knows this is hugely problematic for many reasons. One of which is the fact that many Indigenous people historically did not look at belonging and resources in this way. So to have this type of need for ‘qualification’ in order to be considered of one’s ancestry is invasive and unfamiliar, to say the very least. There is much to be unpacked around why it is so problematic for Indigenous peoples to use ‘Blood Quantum’ as a measurement of how Indigenous someone is. An example of this is who gets to define the parameters or cut off, for when one is no longer considered Indigenous or how do we accurately measure the Indigeneity of one’s blood.
So when we talk about ourselves as halves or quarters what are we doing? Well essentially we are subscribing to a colonial idea that we have to be a certain amount of something to be enough. To be enough to claim anything. But we know that we are enough. We know that we do not need to measure how ‘Pacific’ our ancestors were in order to know that we are *insert specific Pacific heritage here*. Like how do we even measure that? How does anyone measure it! There is no need for us to. We know who we are and where we come from. We know the stories of our families and our ancestors and we are enough just the way we are. Not only does this reinforce and perpetuate separatism within our own people but it also doesn’t work well for us as we didn’t have written accounts of who slept with who and had what baby. We have oral histories and these are not viewed as legitimate in a western context. So it just does not fit with our Pacific iTulagi or worldviews.
Take for example family ‘adoptions’ as it would be called in a western framework. We know that for as long as we have existed whole villages have raised children. The idea of a ‘nuclear’ family only came when the settlers did and even then it was based on religion. ‘Nuclear’ in the Pacific sense of the word is ‘Community’. How would we in this day and age quantify someone’s blood if they have been raised by a shared community. In a Pacific sense we are of that community so we are a part of everyone and everyone is a part of us. This is still true today, with many families having children for those who cannot within their families and others sharing their children with friends and distant relatives. Families in the Pacific sense do not just constitute what is immediate in a western sense. We did not have first or second cousins, we did not have great aunts and uncles and we did not have step siblings or half siblings. We just have, family! Just like we did not measure ourselves in fractions or pieces in order to fit in. We are whole and we are enough.
There is an ingrained mentality sometimes among Pacific people around being a half of something or a quarter of something else. It can be harmful. Especially when we see or hear people trying to quantify themselves in order to prove that they are Pacific. Statements like “Oh they are only a quarter Sāmoan” said in a way that is diminishing their personhood. Or statements like “She doesn’t look Fijian she must be half caste” again diminishing one’s personhood. Half caste / Afakasi are problematic terms in and of themselves and have roots that connect with the colonial term ‘Blood Quantum’. Statements such as “Oh I’m a quarter Cook Island” … which part of you is the quarter? Is it one leg and half an arm? What we should be doing is questioning ourselves and asking why are we dividing our whole self into pieces, whose narrative does this fit.
Why do we use these terms to define ourselves? When we do this we are letting western standards and frameworks define who we are. When we already know who we are. We know that ‘Race’ is a social construct; it's a way to group humans based on similar characteristics, originally ‘Race’ was determined by languages spoken but then evolved into what we know it is today. Our ancestors didn’t know ‘Race’ they knew their distant family lived on islands that were across the ocean. They knew that their distant shared ancestors from the past settled the islands on the west and then travelled and settled the centre and then travelled some more and settled where we are today. Pacific peoples are unique and have many things which make them different but it is so important to remember that ‘Race’ was not one of these things. It is an introduced concept!
So why then do we continue to try and quantify ourselves against a construct people made up, to make sense of us, to themselves. It is a long debated, deep, intersting topic and one that we hope to encourage more discussion around. We hope that by starting this talanoa we enable people to think a little bit differently about how they think about themselves and others. Most importantly we hope it makes people think differently about how we talk about ourselves.
Shared with Love and Radical Hope.
Tabu Tok
*We would like to acknowledge the privilege in which we stand as Indigenous Pacific people and note that we stand in solidarity with Indigenous/Native American and all First Nations people who everyday battle against colonisation and the dispossesion of their lands. #LandBack !!! Blood Quantum is still used today by some Nations in America and we acknowledge and respect their self determining practices. Vinaka vakalevu.
