From The Arizona Republic:
The Navajo tribe is considering making it easier to be a Navajo.
A proposal to lower the minimum blood requirement from one-quarter to one-eighth is being debated this week in the Navajo Nation Council, the governing body of the largest tribe in the United States. If approved, membership could double, increasing to more than 600,000 from about 310,000. …
Tribal membership across the country has become controversial as some people clamber to join to get in on per capita casino payments.
“For those highly successful tribes, with new riches of gaming, people want to enroll,” said Peterson Zah, former chairman and president of the Navajo Nation.
But the tribe has no casino, no individual payments to members, and Zah said he believes this proposal is more about recognizing successive generations of those who have married outside the tribe and making sure all community voices are counted in votes.
“This is a response to so many of our tribal members who are intermarrying with other nationalities,” said Zah, an adviser on American Indian affairs to the president of Arizona State University. “We are in the same situation as many other tribes that have had to redo their qualifications.”
The article from The Arizona Republic continues, discussing both sides of the Navajo issue and providing the larger historical context for Indian tribal membership.