88 “We come in all colors,” said Jackie Polk, Ealy’s cousin and secretary for the tribe’s council. “We are the definition of a contemporary tribe, and the reason why we’re so blended with color is because our identity was literally almost destroyed at onset, when those people set foot here and because we didn’t leave. “That’s where the whole problem with our identity started. We weren’t pushed out. We kind of got quiet, stayed there on that little side of the river, where a Cherokee or a Choctaw got pushed farther along with their family and their tribe. “Later on when those tribes traveled on the Trail of Tears and were pushed into reservations, what they took with them was a pure bloodline that stayed pure. They also took with them a grandmother or a grandfather who had experienced all of their culture and their traditions. Those things were passed down to the kids who went on that trail. “We didn’t have that benefit. We were immediately inundated with outsider culture and traditions. Our bloodline started being diluted centuries ago. When you see a Pascagoula River Tribe Indian, you’re going to see a lot of different colors. It’s not always going to be your Indian-looking person with dark straight hair and dark skin. You could line up me and my four siblings and see that, while we have a lot of the same features, we’re all different colors.” “According to the federal government, being Native American means you have to be connected to a community,” Haggard said. “It doesn’t matter what your blood quantum is. It doesn’t matter what your ancestry is. Tons of people across the country have native ancestry. That does not make you Indian. You could be 100 percent native blood, but if you can’t show a connection to a historic Native American community, you’re not Indian in the eyes of the United States.” The Bureau of Indian Affairs mandates, among a long list of other things, that a tribe seeking recognition must show that it had a community and government in place in 1900 and that it has maintained certain social institutions and connections every decade since then. The tribe must also show how many people have married within the tribe versus how many married outside the tribe and where the tribal members were living each decade from 1950 until now. That means tracking down decades worth of documents and information and presenting it cohesively for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to review. The burden of proof is solely on the tribe. “It’s a very complicated, and in some ways convoluted, process,” Haggard said. “It’s the data collection and the 88