The commodification of Indian identity

Pre-Cabotian, Native North American peoples, like all peoples, had myriad ways of defining their group's membership, relying generally on kinship criteria. The systems of self-definition were group specific, and there is little evidence of a pan-Indian label of common identity. With the arrival of Europeans, things changed. The colonialists made a ''market'' for ethnic identities, in which they have been traded as a commodity ever since. The federal government itself has taken steps to regulate the purity of the product-to guarantee the customer is getting ''the real McCoy.''