Wyandotte Nation
The Wyandotte Nation is the only federally recognized Native American tribe in the U.S. descended from the Wendat Confederacy. Historically, they lived near Georgian Bay and Lake Huron in Canada. Under pressure from Haudenosaunee and other tribes, then from European settlers and the United States government, the tribe gradually moved south and west to Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and finally Oklahoma in the United States. As of 2025, just over 7000 people were enrolled in the Wyandotte Nation.
Name and Identity
The nation's traditional name in its own Iroquoian language is Waⁿdát. The nation was renamed "Wyandotte" after merging with related groups from the Northeastern woodlands in the seventeenth century. The name is commonly thought to mean "dwellers on a peninsula" or "islanders".The nation's flag is white, with a central turtle emblem. The turtle, an earth symbol in the nation's creation stories, carries a peace pipe and war club representing peace and war, with willow branches signifying lasting life. A twelve‑pointed shield on the turtle's shell symbolizes the nation's clans, and a central council fire alludes to its traditional role as "Keepers of the Council Fire."
Government
The Wyandotte Nation is a federally recognized Indian tribe in the United States. Under U.S. federal law, the Wyandotte Nation can participate in all programs and services provided to American Indians. The nation exercises inherent sovereignty and the "self-evident right to govern ."Administration
, the current administration is:- Chief: Billy Friend
- Second Chief: Norman Hildebrand, Jr.
- Council Person: Vivian Fink
- Council Person: Eric Lofland
- Council Person: Rob Nesvold
- Council Person: Keith Gray
Land and Sovereignty
The Wyandotte Nation’s tribal jurisdictional area is located in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, with its headquarters in the town of Wyandotte. Beyond Oklahoma, the Nation also controls the Wyandot National Burying Ground in Kansas City, Kansas.Government Services
The Wyandotte Nation operates two main health and wellness sites: the Bearskin Health and Wellness Center and the Bearskin Fitness Center. The Nation also operates environmental services, including the Lost Creek Recycling Center, managed by the tribe's Environmental Department and Planning and Natural Resources Department. The nation has its own newspaper, The Turtle Speaks.The Wyandotte Nation issues its own tribal vehicle tags and operates its own housing authority. It has a ten-man police department providing 24-hour law enforcement response to the Nation and surrounding area.
Demographics
As of May 2025, 7,254 people were enrolled citizens of the nation. Enrollment is based in lineal descent; that is, the nation has no minimum blood quantum requirement. This requirement is similar to other nations, such as the Cherokee Nation and Choctaw Nation.Only about 25 percent of enrolled Wyandottes live within the state of Oklahoma. In 2011, 1,218 of the 4,957 Wyandotte citizens lived in Oklahoma.
Economic Development
The Nation operates several gaming enterprises. Two of them, River Bend Casino & Hotel and Lucky Turtle Casino, are located in Wyandotte, Oklahoma. The nation also owns two casinos in Kansas: the 7th Street Casino in the former Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in Kansas City, Kansas and the Cross Winds Casino in Park City, Kansas.The Nation also operates retail locations. It owns a truck stop, Turtle Stop fuel stations, and a smoke shop.
Culture
The tribe's annual powwow is held in Oklahoma in September and features traditional dances, regalia, music, food vendors, and other family-friendly activities. It is a three day event that attracts dancers and drum groups from around the country. Dances include shawl dancing, fancy dancing, gourd dancing, and stomp dance.Language
Today, most members speak English. Although the last native speaker died in 1972, the Wyandot language is the subject of ongoing revitalization efforts. The Wyandotte Nation offers preschool and elementary‑level Wyandot classes and has developed online lessons for self‑study.History
The Wyandotte Nation descends from multiple groups: the Tionontati, the Erie, the Attiwandaronk, the Wendats, and the Wenro. They trace their community to the first Wendat Confederacy. This confederacy was created around 1400 CE, when the Attignawantan and Attigingueenongnahac combined forces. They, in turn, were joined by the Arendaronon, Ataronchronon, and the Tahontaenrat. Archaeologists have excavated large, 16th-century settlement sites north of Lake Ontario, suggesting that this may have been a site of the coalescence of the Wendat people. They later migrated to the area near Georgian Bay, where they were encountered by French explorers in the early 17th century.Early European contact
French explorers encountered some of the people who would become the Wyandotte around 1536 and dubbed them the Huron. They were fierce enemies of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, then based in present-day New York. Obliterated by smallpox epidemics, the Wendat Confederacy became seriously weakened during the early decades of the early 17th century. In 1649, the Haudenosaunee dispersed most of the Wendat. A small number joined other enemies of the Iroquois, such as the Petun, and they all migrated southwest. For a while, they settled with Odawa and Illinois tribes. Other Wendat moved east into Quebec and became today's present-day Wendat Nation. The survivors formed a new, unified group, known as the Wyandot or Wyandotte. This is the group from which today's Wyandotte Nation descends. They spent most of the second half of the seventeenth century looking for a new home.18th-century developments
By the beginning of the 18th century, the Wyandotte people had moved into the Ohio River Valley, extending into areas of what would become West Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan. Around 1745, large groups settled near Upper Sandusky, Ohio. After the American Revolution, a treaty signed with the United States in 1785 confirmed their landholdings. However, the 1795 Treaty of Greenville greatly reduced its size.19th-century developments
The 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs reduced the Wyandotte lands drastically, leaving the people only small parcels in Ohio. In 1842, the Wyandotte nation all of its land east of the Mississippi River, under pressure of the United States government policy to remove the Native Americans to the West. It made a treaty with the U.S. government by which it was to be compensated for its lands.The tribe was removed to the Delaware Reservation in present-day Kansas, then considered Indian Territory. During this migration and the early months, it suffered much illness. In 1843, survivors buried their dead on a high ridge overlooking the Missouri River in what became the Huron Cemetery in present-day Kansas City, Kansas. In 1971 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was renamed Wyandot National Burying Ground.
After the American Civil War, Wyandotte people who had not become citizens of the United States in 1855 in Kansas were removed a final time in 1867 to present-day Oklahoma. They were settled on in the northeast corner of Indian Territory. The Seneca, Shawnee, and Wyandotte Industrial Boarding School, also called the Wyandotte Mission, opened for classes in Wyandotte, Oklahoma in 1872.
In 1893, the Dawes Act required that the tribal communal holdings in the Indian Territory be divided into individual allotments. The land was divided among the 241 tribal citizens listed on the Dawes Rolls. The Wyandotte citizens in Oklahoma retained some tribal structure, and still had control of the communal property of the Huron Cemetery, which by then annexed into Kansas City, Kansas.
20th century
In 1937, seizing the opportunity presented by the US Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1934 to regain tribal structure and self-government, citizens of the Wyandotte tribe organized into the Wyandotte Nation. The act enabled Native Americans to hold property in common again, and to develop self-government and sovereignty.For a couple decades in the middle of the century, the Wyandotte's federal recognition was in jeopardy. On August 1, 1956, the US Congress passed Public Law ch. 843, 70 Stat. 893 to terminate the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma as part of the federal Indian termination policy. Three years were allotted for completing the termination. One of the stipulations required that a parcel of land in Kansas City, Kansas, reserved as the Huron Cemetery, which had been awarded to the Wyandot by treaty on January 31, 1855, was to be sold by the United States. Litigation was filed by a group of Absentee Wyandot against the United States and Kansas City, prohibiting the federal government from fulfilling the terms of the termination statute and ultimately preventing the termination of the Wyandotte Nation. The Bureau of Land Management records confirm that the Federal Register never published the termination of the Wyandotte lands and thus they were never officially terminated.
Congress later restored several Oklahoma Tribes, including the Wyandotte. On May 15, 1978, in a single Act titled Public Law 95-281, the termination laws were repealed, and the three tribes were reinstated with all rights and privileges they had prior to termination. They later changed the Nation's name to simply "Wyandotte Nation" by the time of the Nation's 1999 Constitution.
The twentieth century also saw a century-long dispute over the Huron Cemetery, which the Wyandotte Nation generally preferred to sell or develop, while the Wyandot Nation of Kansas wanted to preserve it for cultural activities. In 1998, after more than 100 years of disagreement, the two organizations agreed to use the Huron Cemetery only for religious, cultural, or other compatible sacred activities.
21st century
In August 1999, the Wyandotte Nation joined the contemporary Wendat Confederacy, together with the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, the Huron-Wendat Nation of Wendake, and the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation in Michigan. The tribes pledged to provide mutual aid to each other in a spirit of peace, kinship, and unity.This followed an important meeting of Huronia reconciliation in Midland, Ontario, Canada, attended by representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy, Wyandotte nations, British, French, Dutch, Anglican Church, and Catholic Jesuit brothers. The weekend of events was organized by the Huronia Reconciliation Committee.