{"id":24922,"date":"2012-08-22T21:45:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T21:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24922"},"modified":"2012-08-22T21:18:41","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T21:18:41","slug":"disentangling-%e2%80%9crace%e2%80%9d-and-indigenous-status-the-role-of-ethnicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24922","title":{"rendered":"Disentangling \u201cRace\u201d and Indigenous Status: The Role of Ethnicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disentangling \u201cRace\u201d and Indigenous Status: The Role of Ethnicity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Queen’s Law Journal<\/a>
\n Volume 33, Issue 2<\/a> (Spring 2008)
\npages 487<\/p>\n

S\u00e9bastien Grammond<\/a><\/strong>, Dean and Associate Professor of Law
\n University of Ottawa<\/em><\/p>\n

The notion of “race” is a social construction, discredited today by scientists as\u00a0factually unsound. Individuals cannot be organized into discrete groups of people based\u00a0solely on physical characteristics. An individual’s identity is now understood to consist of\u00a0more than the contents of one’s blood. This more robust understanding takes account of\u00a0other important elements of identity, such as the individual\u2019s cultural and historical\u00a0makeup. Despite this progress, the author argues, notions of race (sometimes in the form\u00a0of blood quantum requirements) still define indigenous status in many countries,\u00a0including Canada. The author posits that group identity would be best understood by\u00a0reference to the concept of ethnicity, which leads to a broader understanding of identity\u00a0that goes beyond the biological classifications associated with race.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The author analyzes the American Supreme Court case of Rice v. Cayetano<\/a><\/em>, where the\u00a0majority found that an ameliorative provision of the Hawaiian Constitution violated the\u00a0Fifteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution due to its racial distinctions. The author\u00a0contends that what separated the majority and dissenting judgements was the fact that the\u00a0former took a racial view of indigenous identity and the latter an ethnic view. The\u00a0majority focused on the word \u201crace\u201d in the impugned provision, thereby automatically\u00a0labeling it as racist. According to the dissent, the intent of the provision was to recognize\u00a0status on the basis of ancestry, and not on the basis of rigid blood purity requirements, as\u00a0a racial distinction would. The author supports the dissenting view. He argues that while\u00a0the concept of race is incoherent, ancestry might be a legitimate definition of identity, as\u00a0it can reflect non-biological elements transmitted by descent.<\/strong> Rice v. Cayetano<\/em> demonstrates how an inaccurate definition of indigenous status can undermine public\u00a0policy initiatives meant to redress harm done to indigenous peoples. The author\u00a0concludes by proposing that while ancestry may be a satisfactory determinant of\u00a0ethnicity, group identity would be better understood with reference to other relevant\u00a0sociological factors, such as language, residence, culture, participation in community\u00a0events and self-identification.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disentangling \u201cRace\u201d and Indigenous Status: The Role of Ethnicity Queen’s Law Journal Volume 33, Issue 2 (Spring 2008) pages 487 S\u00e9bastien Grammond, Dean and Associate Professor of Law University of Ottawa The notion of “race” is a social construction, discredited today by scientists as\u00a0factually unsound. Individuals cannot be organized into discrete groups of people based\u00a0solely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,1467,8,3015,20],"tags":[11612,11613],"class_list":["post-24922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-canada","category-law","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-queens-law-journal","tag-sebastien-grammond"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}