When the Supreme Court ruled on June 25 in a case regarding the adoption of a Cherokee baby, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, the prevailing justices seemed to forget tribal sovereignty exists at all. In Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, the very first sentence read, “This case is about a little girl (Baby Girl) who is classified as an Indian because she is 1.2% (3/256) Cherokee.” Through the inherent right of tribal sovereignty, the Cherokee Nation determines its own citizens. The Cherokee Nation doesn’t use the practice of blood quantum, and instead identifies its members through the use of very specific genealogical records. Therefore, the baby at question in the case is not 1 percent Cherokee; she is Cherokee.

Popular conversation about the ruling followed Alito’s lead. A headline in USA Today declared that the Supreme Court “gives 1% Cherokee girl to adoptive parents.” The obsession with classifying Natives by blood is a contemporary anomaly that society reserves rather exclusively for Natives. USA Today would have never run a headline in 2008, for example, that read, “Voters elect first 50% black President.” We’ve figured out ways to get so much right when it comes to race—but still almost unknowingly accept when so much is wrong, and fundamentally misunderstood, about tribal sovereignty.