THE PENCIL TEST: A SAD AND TRUE STORY OF OPPRESSION AND SUPPRESSION OF NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN HERITAGE

Pictured: Lumbee Children (North Carolina)

A Native child living in Robeson County, NC was denied their Native heritage based on a racist anthropology test. It is a fact that this Indian child had the very same BIOLOGICAL parents as their sibling who was also a subject of the test. Both parents were Native American Indians.

An anthropologist decided to test hair to see if it was what he personally deemed as Indian hair, basically straight hair. The scientist used a pencil and stuck it in the subjects hair and told each subject to shake their head vigorously, and if the pencil fell out they were considered to be an Indian. If the pencil stayed in their hair during the experiment they were consider to be black...these children had the exact same mother and father.

These two Indian children from the same Indian family took this test...one was deemed not to be Native American Indian because they had curls, and their sibling was deemed to be an Indian because they had straight hair.

This is a perfect example of how ignorant assumptions of race can cross over to laws based on the prejudicial views of Europeans in government. The anthropologist in this story was one example, and the others are U.S. census workers, and even vital record employees who worked with hospitals in recording birth records who also continuously practice Paper Genocide on Indians.

WHO in their right mind is ignorant enough to say Native American Indians can't have curly, bushy hair, or wavy hair? How can someone try to define Native blood by something as silly as hair type. Our people have various traits. White people have very curly hair at time and also bushy hair and that does not qualify them as Black persons so why define Indians with curly or bushy hair as Black persons, when they are not Black.

Sadly, some people still do this and go out of their way to promote this ignorance, and it is because they have a brainwashed mindset due to believing every negative stereotype the European has set up in our land concerning our Native people in order to turn us Natives on each other based on European stereotypes brought to our land.

Europeans for centuries wanted to promote one hair trait for Natives causing a loss of culture, identity, and birth rights for many full, to nearly full blood Native American Indians living on the East Coast of America.

Our Native phenotypes cannot be suppressed any longer by anyone who is biased to it because of their own misinformation.

We come in many shades, hair types, and eye colors. We don't fit in the European settlers box, in fact we must throw that box in the incinerator where it belongs.

Notes: "Physical anthropologist was also sent to determine the racial ancestry and degree of "Indian blood" of Robeson's Indians. Both anthropologists used "scientifically based" means to determine the authenticity of physical features and blood type to ascertain if any of those tested would qualify as having half or more "Indian blood." An example of the scientific means used to assess "Indianness" was the "pencil test." A pencil was slipped into a subject's hair. If the pencil stayed after mild to vigorous shaking of the head, the subject's hair was deemed too tight or "non-Indian." If the pencil fell, it was understood to have fallen out of real Indian hair. OUT OF 209 LUMBEE INDIVIDUALS TESTED, 22 WERE CATEGORIZED BY SELTZER AS "INDIANS" (SELTZER 1936). In one particular instance of two full siblings, sharing the same parents, one was deemed to be Indian and the other non-Indian (Blu 1980:72)."