Congratulations to AHA member Kat Ellinghaus on the publication of her new book, which reveals how the underlying centrality of ‘blood’ shaped official ideas about who was eligible to be defined as Indian by the General Allotment Act in the United States. The book traces the idea of blood quantum and how the concept came to dominate Native identity and national status between 1887 and 1934 and how related exclusionary policies functioned to dispossess Native people of their land.