Here

Here, the juvenile court properly inquired about Shahida’s Indian ancestry at each hearing, and the Department conscientiously interviewed several family members to obtain additional information. During these family interviews, the maternal great uncle informed the Department he had Creek and Seminole ancestry. The maternal grandmother also informed the Department she believed, based at least in part on photographs she no longer possessed, she had Blackfeet ancestry. The court found the Blackfeet claim insufficiently supported and, according to the Department, the Creek and Seminole ancestry too remote.

Neither explanation proffered by the court and the Department constitutes an adequate ground for failure to give notice of Kadence’s dependency case to the identified tribes. As to the remoteness of Kadence’s possible connection to the Seminole and Creek tribes, although the suggestion of Creek and Seminole ancestry was based on information about her great-great-great grandparents, nothing was presented to the juvenile court or included in the record on appeal concerning the membership rules for those tribes. It could well be, for example, that membership under tribal rules is passed to successive generations, as a matter of right, through bilineal or double descent without regard to intermarriage or blood quantum and that the absence of formal enrollment does not affect tribal membership. Under those circumstances Kadence could be an Indian child within the meaning of ICWA.(See Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978) 436 U.S. 49, 72, fn. 21 [98 S.Ct. 1670, 56 L.Ed.2d 106 [Indian tribe is final arbiter of its membership rights] . . .