“When you’re seven years old and you find out you can’t be Little Miss Salish Princess, it’s quite a disappointment,” said University of Montana graduate and Arlee, Montana, native Jasa Santos.

She laughs about it now. But what seven-year-old wouldn’t be disappointed? Jasa couldn’t enter the contest because her blood quantum- the percentage of her blood that comes from Salish ancestry- is about 1/32nd too low for her to enroll in the tribe.

That “smidgen” of blood, as her father Joe calls it, precludes her from getting aid for college or health care on the reservation. More deeply, and as Jasa freely admits, that blood has caused her to question her identity.

Blood quantum, says her father, “can turn people to say God, am I Indian? Because I don’t have a piece of paper saying I am.”