The Land is Alive and so are the Dead: Blood Quantum a First Nations Zombie Film

The policing of blood has been apart of indigenous discourses since the first colonial encounter. The colonial state uses blood to racialized the other. Just as the one-drop rule for Black Americans made them Black, one drop of white blood was thought to remove the native from the body — a key tenant of the second phase of the genocide: forced removal of children. Blood has become an identifier of the linkage between being non-native and native — and in this film, blood means those who stay dead and those who come back.

The film drives its heavy-handed metaphor of the colonial and the undead through the immunity of all indigenous peoples — resisting the blood rules by showing those with white parents also being resistant. Family is a strong subplot of the film which shows the battle of an often excluded bi-racial son compared to his native brother and the politics of acceptance. As if to prove his own loyalty to his blood, the bi-racial son Lysol is the lead voice against taking in white survivors and goes to extreme measures to ensure the removal of whites from the reservation. As I said the metaphor and “role reversal” narrative are heavy and the characters relentlessly remind you of the importance of blood — when it is shared and when it is spilled.