Native American identity in the United States
Native American identity in the United States is a community identity, determined by the tribal nation the individual or group belongs to. While it is common for non-Natives to consider it a racial or ethnic identity, for Native Americans in the United States it is considered a political identity, based on citizenship and immediate family relationships. As culture can vary widely between the 575 extant federally recognized tribes in the United States, the idea of a single unified "Native American" racial identity is a European construct that does not have an equivalent in tribal thought.
While some groups and individuals [|self-identify] as Native American, self-identification on its own does not make one eligible for membership among recognized tribes. There are a number of different factors which have been used by non-Natives to define "Indianness", and the source and potential use of the definition play a role in what definitions have been used in their writings, including culture, society, genes/biology, law, and self-identity. Peroff asks whether the definition should be dynamic and changeable across time and situation, or whether it is possible to define "Indianness" in a static way, based in how Indians adapt and adjust to dominant society, which may be called an "oppositional process" by which the boundaries between Indians and the dominant groups are maintained. Another reason for dynamic definitions is the process of "ethnogenesis", which is the process by which the ethnic identity of the group is developed and renewed as social organizations and cultures evolve. The question of identity, especially Indigenous identity, is common in many societies worldwide.
Factors and terminology
Preferred terminology for Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native Americans in the United States, or Indigenous Canadians as a whole varies regionally, as well as by age and other sociological factors. Most individuals prefer to be known as citizens or descendants of the exact tribes/nations they are from. As for general, overarching terms, the United States Census Bureau defines Native American as "all people indigenous to the United States and its territories—including Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders—whose data are published separately from American Indians and Alaska Natives".The use of Native American or native American to refer to Indigenous peoples who live in the Americas came into widespread, common use during the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. This term was considered to represent historical fact more accurately. In addition, activists also believed it was free of negative historical connotations that had come to be associated with previous terms. However, not all Native people accepted the change. In 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded in the United States. In 1977, a delegation from the International Indian Treaty Council, an arm of AIM, elected to collectively identify as "American Indian", at the United Nations Conference on Indians in the Americas in Geneva, Switzerland.
Some Indigenous activists and public figures, particularly those from the Plains nations, such as Russell Means, have preferred "Indian" to the more recently adopted "Native American". Means spoke frequently of his fear of the loss of traditions, languages, and sacred places. He was concerned that there may soon be no more Native Americans, only "Native American Americans, like Polish Americans and Italian Americans." As the number of self-reported "Indians" has grown, the number who carry on tribal traditions has reportedly shrunk, as has been common among many cultural groups over time. Means said, "We might speak our language, we might look like Indians and sound like Indians, but we won’t be Indians."
Between 1982 and 1993, most American manuals of style came to agree that "color terms" referring to ethnic groups, such as Black, should be capitalized as proper names, as well as Native American. By 2020, "Indigenous" was also included in these capitalization guidelines.
During the late 20th century the term "Indigenous peoples" evolved into a political term that refers to ethnic groups with historical ties to groups that existed in a territory prior to colonization or formation of a nation state. The "I" is capitalized as it refers to a group of people. In the Americas, the term "Indigenous peoples of the Americas" was adopted, and the term is tailored to specific geographic or political regions, such as "Indigenous peoples of Panama". "'Indigenous peoples'... is a term that internationalizes the experiences, the issues and the struggles of some of the world's colonized peoples", writes Māori educator Linda Tuhiwai Smith. "The final 's' in 'Indigenous peoples'... a way of recognizing that there are real differences between different Indigenous peoples." Many younger Native Americans now prefer "Indigenous" as a unifying term, over previous options.
Blood quantum or lineal descent
Some tribes have a blood quantum requirement for citizenship. Others use other methods, such as lineal descent. While almost two-thirds of all federally recognized Indian tribes in the United States require a certain blood quantum for citizenship, tribal nations are sovereign nations, with a government to government relationship with the United States, and set their own enrollment criteria. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 used three criteria: tribal membership, ancestral descent, and blood quantum.Traditional
While traditional definitions of Native American identity can vary between Native communities, such definitions usually refer to those who observe, preserve, and teach about the community's ancestral language, culture and ceremonies, and who protect and maintain the community's sacred sites and inherited landbase. The term is defined by Indigenous cultural standards, rather than mainstream academic and legal terminology. Language preservation in particular, and doing one's part to preserve the Native language of one's community, especially for young people, is seen as contributing to cultural survival, and is an important part of being "traditional". Those who maintain Native American traditions are often referred to as "traditional" or "traditionals".Some Indian artists find traditional definitions especially important. Crow poet Henry Real Bird offers his own definition, "An Indian is one who offers tobacco to the ground, feeds the water, and prays to the four winds in his own language." Pulitzer Prize-winning Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday gives a definition that is less spiritual but still based in the traditions and experience of a person and their family, "An Indian is someone who thinks of themselves as an Indian. But that's not so easy to do and one has to earn the entitlement somehow. You have to have a certain experience of the world in order to formulate this idea. I consider myself an Indian; I've had the experience of an Indian. I know how my father saw the world, and his father before him."
Connection to ancestral landbase
The preservation and revitalization of language, cultural and ceremonial traditions is often seen as central to Native American identity. While these ways are also maintained by urban Indians and those who live in other Native communities, residence on tribal lands is often seen as important as well, with even those who are not permanent residents returning to their homelands for ceremonies and family functions. Many Native American elders live on their ancestral land bases, which may be Indian reservations, reserves or land allotments, and may work in cultural centers in their communities. The Land Back movement, and other Native American civil rights organizations, prioritizes the protection and preservation of sacred sites, as well as the landbase that provides traditional foods, housing and cultural meaning to the people. Many Native Americans feel the connection to ancestral lands is an important part of identity.Construction by others
European and settler conceptions of "Indianness" have influenced how some Native Americans see themselves, and have created persistent stereotypes which may negatively affect treatment of Indians. The noble savage stereotype is famous, but American colonists held other stereotypes as well. For example, some colonists imagined Indians as living in a state similar to their own ancestors, for example the Picts, Gauls, and Britons before "Julius Caesar with his Roman legions had... laid the ground to make us tame and civil".In the 19th and 20th century, particularly until John Collier's tenure as Commissioner of Indian Affairs began in 1933, various policies of the United States federal and state governments amounted to an attack on Indian cultural identity and an attempt to force assimilation. These policies included but were not limited to the banning of traditional religious ceremonies; forcing traditional hunter-gatherer people to begin farming, often on land that was unsuitable and produced few or no crops; forced cutting of hair; coercing "conversion" to Christianity by withholding rations; coercing Indian parents to send their children to boarding schools where the use of Native American languages was met with violence and where many children died under suspicious circumstances; freedom of speech restrictions; and restriction on travel between reservations. In the Southwest sections of the U.S. under Spanish control until 1810, where the majority of inhabitants were Indigenous, Spanish government officials had similar policies.
United States government definitions
Some authors have pointed to a connection between the social identity of Native Americans and their political status as members of a tribe. There are 561 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, which have the right to establish their own legal requirements for membership. In recent times, legislation related to Indians uses the "political" definition, identifying as Indians those who are members of federally recognized tribes. Most often given is the two-part definition: an "Indian" is someone who is a member of an Indian tribe and an "Indian tribe" is any tribe, band, nation, or organized Indian community recognized by the United States.The government and many tribes prefer this definition because it allows the tribes to determine the meaning of "Indianness" in their own membership criteria. However, some still criticize this, saying that the federal government's historic role in setting certain conditions on the nature of membership criteria means that this definition does not transcend federal government influence. Thus in some sense, one has greater claim to a Native American identity if one belongs to a federally recognized tribe, recognition that many who claim Indian identity do not have. Holly Reckord, an anthropologist who heads the BIA Branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition, discusses the most common outcome for those who seek membership: "We check and find that they haven't a trace of Indian ancestry, yet they are still totally convinced that they are Indians. Even if you have a trace of Indian blood, why do you want to select that for your identity, and not your Irish or Italian? It's not clear why, but at this point in time, a lot of people want to be Indian".
The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 attempts to take into account the limits of definitions based in federally recognized tribal membership. In the act, having the status of a state-recognized Indian tribe is discussed, as well as having tribal recognition as an "Indian artisan" independent of tribal membership. In certain circumstances, this allows people who identify as Indian to legally label their products as "Indian made", even when they are not members of a federally recognized tribe. In legislative hearings, one Indian artist, whose mother is not Indian but whose father is Seneca and who was raised on a Seneca reservation, said, "I do not question the rights of the tribes to set whatever criteria they want for enrollment eligibility; but in my view, that is the extent of their rights, to say who is an enrolled Seneca or Mohawk or Navajo or Cheyenne or any other tribe. Since there are mixed bloods with enrollment numbers and some of those with very small percentages of genetic Indian ancestry, I don't feel they have the right to say to those of us without enrollment numbers that we are not of Indian heritage, only that we are not enrolled.... To say that I am not and to prosecute me for telling people of my Indian heritage is to deny me some of my civil liberties...and constitutes racial discrimination."
Some critics believe that using federal laws to define who is "Indian" allows continued government control over Indians, even as the government seeks to establish a sense of deference to tribal sovereignty. Critics say Indianness becomes a rigid legal term defined by the BIA, rather than an expression of tradition, history, and culture. For instance, some groups which claim descendants from tribes that predate European contact have not been able to achieve federal recognition. On the other hand, Indian tribes have participated in setting policy with BIA as to how tribes should be recognized. According to Rennard Strickland, an Indian Law scholar, the federal government uses the process of recognizing groups to "divide and conquer" Indians: "the question of who is 'more' or 'most' Indian may draw people away from common concerns".
Writers and scholars all describe Native American identity in the United States as a political status rather than a simple label. In this perspective, being a Native is connected to membership or citizenship in a tribal nation, and the tribal government reserves the power to decide the requirement for belonging. Additionally, this perspective emphasizes the relationship between the Native and the United States, and as well as, challenging the categorization of the "Native American."
The government data, as well as health systems reveal the other side of the Native identity and how it is defined and sometimes twisted. Many studies of cancer and health surveillance have shown that many American Indian and Alaskan people are often classified in the wrong racial group in medical records, which in turn, lead to the undercount of the Native populations and hiding the disparities within the Native communities. Problems such as misclassification and undercounting the Native populations prevents it from receiving proper benefits and makes it difficult to understand the conditions of the Natives.
The Native identity is also defined by how the people see themselves in everyday life. Studies with the Native people in the Southwestern United States have concluded that the languages, family relationships, as well as the communities they grew up in all influence how strong they feel about their identity as a Native and how they understood their place in the United States. This also helps to highlight that the "Native" identity isn't about blood, but rather about their daily lives, traditions, and the bond within people and community they grew up with.