Blood Quantum Laws or Indian Blood Laws is an umbrella term that describes legislation enacted in the United States to define membership in Native American tribes or nations. "Blood quantum" refers to describing the degree of ancestry for an individual of a specific racial or ethnic group, for instance, 1/4 Omaha tribe.

Its use started in 1705 when Virginia adopted laws which limited colonial civil rights of Native Americans and persons of half or more Native American ancestry. The concept of blood quantum was not widely applied until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The government used it to establish which individuals could be recognized as Native American and be eligible for financial and other benefits under treaties that were made, or sales of land. Since that time, however, Native American nations have re-established their own rules for tribal membership, which vary among them. In the early 21st century these rules have been used to exclude people who had previously been considered members, such as in the case of the Cherokee Freedmen.

Quantum mechanics (QM - also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory) is a branch of physics dealing with physical phenomena where the action is on the order of the Planck constant. Quantum mechanics departs from classical mechanics primarily at the quantum realm of atomic and subatomic length scales. QM provides a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter.

In advanced topics of quantum mechanics, some of these behaviors are macroscopic and only emerge at extreme (i.e., very low or very high) energies or temperatures. The name quantum mechanics derives from the observation that some physical quantities can change only in discrete amounts (Latin quanta), and not in a continuous (cf. analog) way. For example, the angular momentum of an electron bound to an atom or molecule is quantized. In the context of quantum mechanics, the wave–particle duality of energy and matter and the uncertainty principle provide a unified view of the behavior of photons, electrons, and other atomic-scale objects.

Earth is an American musical group based in Seattle, Washington, formed in 1989 and led by the guitarist Dylan Carlson.

Earth's music is nearly all instrumental, and can be divided into two distinct stages. Their early work is characterized by heavy distorted droning, minimalist, lengthy, and repetitive structures; it is recognized as pioneering the genre of drone doom — an experimental offshoot of doom metal . Following a break due to Carlson's personal problems, Earth reappeared around 2005 with a markedly different sound. Their music was still drone based, slow-paced and lengthy, but now with a drummer and featuring strong elements of country music, jazz, and English folk rock, including Fairport Convention.^{[citation needed]}

Dylan Carlson founded the band in 1989 along with Slim Moon and Greg Babior, taking the title "Earth" from Black Sabbath's original name. Carlson has remained the core of the band's line-up throughout its changes. Outside of the underground music world, Carlson is perhaps best known for having been a close friend of grunge icon Kurt Cobain, as well as the person who purchased the gun that Cobain later used to commit suicide. Cobain sang lead vocals in the song "Divine and Bright", from a demo included on the re-release of the live album Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars.

Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an author and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government. His work features controversial and provocative views, written in a direct, often confrontational style.

In January 2005, Churchill's work attracted publicity because of the widespread circulation of a 2001 essay, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens". In the essay, he claimed that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of what he views as unlawful US policy, and he referred to the "technocratic corps" working in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns".

In March 2005 the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct; it reported in June 2006 that he had done so. Churchill was fired on July 24, 2007, leading to a claim by some scholars that he was fired over the ideas he expressed. Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009 a Denver jury found that Churchill was wrongly fired, awarding him $1 in damages. In July, 2009, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, deciding the university has "quasi-judicial immunity". In February, 2010, Churchill appealed the judge's decision. In November 2010, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court's ruling that the University of Colorado officials sued by Ward Churchill were immune from his lawsuit accusing them of violating his First Amendment rights when they dismissed him as a tenured ethnic-studies professor. Churchill has appealed that decision to the Colorado Supreme Court, which agreed in May 2011 to hear his case.

Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Peltier's indictment and conviction is the subject of the 1992 documentary Incident at Oglala, a film directed by Michael Apted. Peltier has been identified as a political prisoner by certain activist groups. Amnesty International placed his case under the "Unfair Trials" category of its Annual Report: USA 2010 , citing concerns with the fairness of the proceedings. His murder conviction has survived appeals in various courts^{[citation needed]} over the years.

In 2002 and 2003, Paul DeMain, editor of News From Indian Country, wrote that sources had told him that Peltier had said he killed the FBI agents; DeMain withdrew his support for clemency. At the trials in 2004 and 2010 of two men indicted for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash in December 1975 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, prosecution witnesses testified that Peltier had told them and a small group of fugitive activists, including Aquash, that he had shot the two FBI agents. Peltier issued a statement in 2004 accusing one witness of perjury for her testimony and being a sellout. The two men charged in the murder of Aquash were convicted.