I've been thinking about the historic criteria that informs both an inclusionary and exclusionary view of American Indian Identities and somewhat informs the role of this particular narrative. Of course, they should to some extent, as these are the histories of our ancestors who had to endure weird stuff happening all around them from an obvious dominant colonial environment. As a member of Kha Po Owinge/Santa Clara Pueblo, a lot about my membership is not just about being an enrolled member. It is something I actively do. It's my accountability as a Tewa person, an academic, and a community member. A lot of my mentorship with students and intersectional views regarding Indigeneity isn't primarily focused on criteria, but more so how Indigeneity is relevant in what you actively do.
 
In my previous article, I mentioned my experience as someone of a mixed Indigenous background. One thing I also never share is that I am also Apssaalooke or "Crow" – on my "Tewa/Pueblo'' side. I never mention any of this because it is something I have not been primarily exposed to as a Native person. Yes, my grandmother is a relative of Lodge Grass Montana and our family is Walks-OverIce from "Greasy Mouth Clan." However, I didn't grow up there and did not learn anything relatively close to Apsaalooke culture and practice. My family regularly visits our Montana relatives, but I have never been there. I know that CrowFair is a huge event among the Crow nation, but it's always an event happening around feast day in Kha Po (Santa Clara Pueblo), so I never go because I'm at home from Berkeley and in the kiva with my peeps.
 
Everyone at home also knows that as a member I reside primarily off site. I refer to myself as the "urban Indian" because I get to go home and also reconcile with all my California academic jargin and honestly just be the individual person who my family and community know me as. In my experience living away from my home community within both of these worlds, I have learned that these views are also similar to the experience of others regarding colonial histories and frameworks that surround identity, Indigenous, and academia. One of the best books surrounding this topic is Xmarks by Scott Richard Lyons. The book is an academic review regarding nationalism and tribalism; from a similar experience yet from an Ojibwe Indigenous perspective. Lyons refers to the Xmark as a metaphor for what he calls the "Indian assent to the new," calling into question binary oppositions that are produced from colonial history, and also reaffirming that Indigeneity is something that Native people do and not what they are.
 
In the context of Santa Clara tribal membership, many can also include the interpretation of Santa Clara Pueblo V. Martinez regarding my tribal background. This is a notable federal Indian Law case, which basically means a tribe can independently design its own membership criteria. Yet with the process of our governance, my community selected paternal legacy to support tribal membership, which also rendered an entire population of Tewa/Santa Clara members without enrolled representation. We as a community know our responsibilities and our relatives as a Tewa culture. However, membership criteria that arrive from this colonial past creates interpretation to further exclusion and inclusion. 

I get to reconcile with my identity when I visit home, and I'm sure others with a similar perspective do this as well. It's a healthy form of reciprocity. It reinforces my responsibility as a Native person to critically process my perspective and rejoin a difficult landscape for solutions in contemporary new spaces and often with difficult dialogue. Nobody really learned anything by an unhelpful gesture or by not having difficult dialogue and resolve. I love being able to join these difficult conversions as an Indigenous person working in the academy. We are all operating off developments from previous generations that were required to interpret their difficult environment towards a new solution. We must enter difficult spaces to create healing and redress for our ancestors. This is what Indigenous individuals continuously do.

Patrick V. Naranjo is the executive director of the American Indian Graduate Program at UC Berkeley.