I have my tribal ID dismissed as fake all the time. My cousin started boycotting Walmart in the 90’s, because they refused to sell her beer. She doesn’t have a drivers license and (due to a quirk where her home state wouldn’t recognize her out-of-state birth certificate as valid) she couldn’t easily get a state ID. So she used her tribal ID. It worked in most places because she lived in an area with lots of natives. But Walmart’s company policy was to refuse tribal IDs… Meaning she couldn’t buy beer at Walmart, or use their pharmacy. So she started boycotting them all the way back in the 90’s due to that.
Hell, it happened to me just two days ago at the bank. I changed my name a while ago, and needed a photo ID with my old name on it. I had already changed my driver’s license and passport to my new name, so all I had on me at the time was my old tribal ID. The bank manager (a tiny blonde white lady) and I went back and forth about it for a little while… But it became clear that she had no intention of accepting it as a valid ID. So now I’ve been stuck dealing with some bureaucratic BS for the past two days.
My wife (who is just as white as the bank manager) was more surprised about the denial than I was, because it was the first time she had seen it get denied. Like she knew conceptually that it happened, but she hadn’t seen it happen in person until then. Luckily, my cases of denied ID have had much lower stakes than this article. But I wouldn’t doubt for a second that it happened to her, because I know from personal experience that tribal IDs get dismissed as fake all the time.
I have my tribal ID dismissed as fake all the time. My cousin started boycotting Walmart in the 90’s, because they refused to sell her beer. She doesn’t have a drivers license and (due to a quirk where her home state wouldn’t recognize her out-of-state birth certificate as valid) she couldn’t easily get a state ID. So she used her tribal ID. It worked in most places because she lived in an area with lots of natives. But Walmart’s company policy was to refuse tribal IDs… Meaning she couldn’t buy beer at Walmart, or use their pharmacy. So she started boycotting them all the way back in the 90’s due to that.
Hell, it happened to me just two days ago at the bank. I changed my name a while ago, and needed a photo ID with my old name on it. I had already changed my driver’s license and passport to my new name, so all I had on me at the time was my old tribal ID. The bank manager (a tiny blonde white lady) and I went back and forth about it for a little while… But it became clear that she had no intention of accepting it as a valid ID. So now I’ve been stuck dealing with some bureaucratic BS for the past two days.
My wife (who is just as white as the bank manager) was more surprised about the denial than I was, because it was the first time she had seen it get denied. Like she knew conceptually that it happened, but she hadn’t seen it happen in person until then. Luckily, my cases of denied ID have had much lower stakes than this article. But I wouldn’t doubt for a second that it happened to her, because I know from personal experience that tribal IDs get dismissed as fake all the time.