Settlers who wanted land during the allotment period often made spurious claims to being Creek, or Seminole, or Cherokee in order to get an allotment or control over an Indian child and the land allotted to the child. These spurious claims became family myths, and even today people will say that they are “part Indian” as an entitlement to belonging. But this kind of claim to being Indian isn’t about belonging to a community; it works to erase us, to shift us off the land and replace us with white settlers who are “part Indian.”
