Los nativos americanos , a veces llamados indios americanos , primeros americanos o indígenas americanos , son los pueblos indígenas de la tierra en la que se encuentran los Estados Unidos de América . En esencia, incluye a los pueblos indígenas de los 48 estados inferiores más Alaska; además, puede incluir a cualquier estadounidense cuyos orígenes se encuentren en cualquiera de los pueblos indígenas de América del Norte o del Sur. La Oficina del Censo de los Estados Unidos publica datos sobre "indios americanos y nativos de Alaska ", que define como cualquier persona "que tenga orígenes en cualquiera de los pueblos originales de América del Norte y del Sur (incluida América Central) y que mantenga una afiliación tribal o un apego comunitario". [3] Sin embargo, el censo no enumera a los "nativos americanos" como tales, señalando que este último término puede abarcar un conjunto más amplio de grupos, por ejemplo, los nativos hawaianos y otros estadounidenses de las islas del Pacífico , que tabula por separado. [4]
La colonización europea de las Américas que comenzó en 1492 resultó en una disminución precipitada en el tamaño de la población nativa americana debido a las enfermedades recién introducidas , incluidas las enfermedades armadas y la guerra biológica por parte de los colonizadores europeos, [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] guerras , limpieza étnica y esclavitud . Numerosos historiadores han clasificado los elementos de la colonización como genocidio . Como parte de una política de colonialismo de asentamiento blanco , los colonos europeos continuaron librando guerras y perpetrando masacres contra los pueblos nativos americanos, los expulsaron de sus tierras ancestrales y los sometieron a tratados gubernamentales unilaterales y políticas gubernamentales discriminatorias. En el siglo XX, estas políticas posteriores se centraron en la asimilación forzada . [10] [11] [12]
Cuando se estableció Estados Unidos, las tribus indígenas estadounidenses eran consideradas naciones semiindependientes, porque generalmente vivían en comunidades separadas de las comunidades de colonos blancos . El gobierno federal firmó tratados a nivel de gobierno a gobierno hasta que la Ley de Asignaciones Indígenas de 1871 puso fin al reconocimiento de las naciones indígenas independientes y comenzó a tratarlas como "naciones dependientes nacionales" sujetas a las leyes federales aplicables. Esta ley preservó los derechos y privilegios acordados en virtud de los tratados, incluido un gran grado de soberanía tribal . Por esta razón, muchas reservas indígenas estadounidenses siguen siendo independientes de la ley estatal y las acciones de los ciudadanos tribales en estas reservas están sujetas solo a los tribunales tribales y la ley federal, que a menudo se aplica de manera diferente a las tierras tribales que a los estados o territorios de EE. UU. por exención, exclusión, tratado o ley tribal o federal sustitutiva. La Ley de Ciudadanía India de 1924 otorgó la ciudadanía estadounidense a todos los nativos americanos nacidos en los Estados Unidos que aún no la habían obtenido. Esto eliminó la categoría de "indios no sujetos a impuestos" establecida por la Constitución de los Estados Unidos , permitió a los nativos votar en las elecciones estatales y federales y extendió las protecciones de la Decimocuarta Enmienda otorgadas a las personas "sujetas a la jurisdicción" de los Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, algunos estados continuaron negando a los nativos americanos el derecho al voto durante varias décadas. Los Títulos II a VII de la Ley de Derechos Civiles de 1968 comprenden la Ley de Derechos Civiles de los Indios, que se aplica a las tribus nativas americanas de los Estados Unidos y hace que muchas, pero no todas, las garantías de la Carta de Derechos de los Estados Unidos sean aplicables dentro de las tribus (esa Ley aparece hoy en el Título 25, secciones 1301 a 1303 del Código de los Estados Unidos ). [13]
Desde la década de 1960, los movimientos de autodeterminación de los nativos americanos han dado lugar a cambios positivos en las vidas de muchos nativos americanos, aunque todavía hay muchos problemas contemporáneos que enfrentan . Hoy en día, hay más de cinco millones de nativos americanos en los Estados Unidos, el 78% de los cuales vive fuera de las reservas. Los estados con el mayor porcentaje de nativos americanos en los EE. UU. son Alaska , Oklahoma , Nuevo México , Dakota del Sur , Montana y Dakota del Norte . [14] [15]
A partir de finales del siglo XV, la migración de los europeos a las Américas dio lugar a siglos de transferencia y ajuste de población, cultura y agricultura entre las sociedades del Viejo y el Nuevo Mundo , un proceso conocido como el intercambio colombino . Debido a que la mayoría de los grupos nativos americanos habían preservado previamente sus historias por medio de tradiciones orales y obras de arte, los primeros relatos escritos del contacto fueron proporcionados por los europeos . [16]
Los etnógrafos suelen clasificar a los pueblos indígenas de América del Norte en diez regiones geográficas habitadas por grupos de personas que comparten ciertos rasgos culturales , llamadas áreas culturales. [17] Algunos académicos combinan las regiones de la Meseta y la Gran Cuenca en el Oeste Intermontano, algunos separan a los pueblos de las Praderas de los pueblos de las Grandes Llanuras, mientras que otros separan a las tribus de los Grandes Lagos de los Bosques del Noreste. Las diez áreas culturales son: [ cita requerida ]
En la época del primer contacto, las culturas indígenas eran bastante diferentes de las de los inmigrantes protoindustriales y mayoritariamente cristianos . Algunas culturas del noreste y del suroeste, en particular, eran matrilineales y estaban organizadas y operaban sobre una base más colectiva que la cultura con la que estaban familiarizados los europeos. La mayoría de las tribus indígenas americanas trataban sus cotos de caza y sus tierras agrícolas como parcelas de tierra que podían ser utilizadas por toda la tribu. En esa época, los europeos tenían culturas que habían desarrollado conceptos de derechos de propiedad individual con respecto a la tierra que eran extremadamente diferentes. Las diferencias culturales entre los nativos americanos establecidos y los inmigrantes europeos, así como las alianzas cambiantes entre las diferentes naciones durante los períodos de guerra, causaron una gran tensión política, violencia étnica y disrupción social. [ cita requerida ]
Los nativos americanos sufrieron altas tasas de mortalidad por el contacto con enfermedades europeas que eran nuevas para ellos y a las que aún no habían adquirido inmunidad ; las enfermedades eran endémicas para los españoles y otros europeos, y se propagaban por contacto directo, probablemente principalmente por contacto con cerdos domésticos que habían sido traídos por las expediciones europeas y luego habían escapado. [18] Se cree que las epidemias de viruela causaron la mayor pérdida de vidas para las poblaciones indígenas. Como William M. Denevan, un destacado autor y profesor emérito de geografía en la Universidad de Wisconsin-Madison, en "El mito prístino: el paisaje de las Américas en 1492": "El declive de las poblaciones nativas americanas fue rápido y severo, probablemente el mayor desastre demográfico de la historia. Las enfermedades del Viejo Mundo fueron la principal causa de muerte. En muchas regiones, particularmente las tierras bajas tropicales, las poblaciones cayeron en un 90 por ciento o más en el primer siglo después del contacto". [19] [20]
Las estimaciones de la población precolombina de la zona que hoy es Estados Unidos varían considerablemente. Van desde la estimación de 3,8 millones de William M. Denevan -en su obra de 1992, The Native Population of the Americas in 1492- hasta los 18 millones de Henry F. Dobyns en su obra de 1983, Their Number Become Thinned . [18] [19] [21] [22] Debido a que la de Henry F. Dobyns es, con mucho, la estimación de un solo punto más alta entre los investigadores académicos profesionales, ha sido criticada por estar "motivada políticamente". [18] El crítico más vehemente de Dobyns es quizás David Henige, un bibliógrafo de literatura africana en la Universidad de Wisconsin, cuyo Numbers From Nowhere (1998) [23] ha sido descrito jocosamente como "un hito en la literatura de fulminación demográfica". [18] Henige escribe sobre el trabajo de Dobyns: "Sospechoso en 1966, no es menos sospechoso hoy en día... En todo caso, es peor". [18]
El historiador Jeffrey Ostler destaca la colonización europea como la causa principal de la disminución de la población indígena americana debido a los trastornos que causó a las comunidades nativas. Ostler escribe: "La mayoría de las comunidades indígenas acabaron sufriendo diversas enfermedades, pero en muchos casos esto ocurrió mucho después de la llegada de los primeros europeos. Cuando se produjeron epidemias graves, a menudo se debió menos a la falta de inmunidad de los nativos que a que el colonialismo europeo perturbó a las comunidades nativas y dañó sus recursos, volviéndolas más vulnerables a los patógenos". [24]
Después de que las trece colonias británicas se rebelaron contra Gran Bretaña y establecieron los Estados Unidos, el presidente George Washington y el secretario de Guerra Henry Knox concibieron la idea de " civilizar " a los nativos americanos en preparación para su asimilación como ciudadanos estadounidenses. [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] La asimilación, ya fuera voluntaria, como fue el caso de los choctaw , [30] [31] o forzada , se mantuvo consistentemente como una cuestión de política por varias administraciones estadounidenses consecutivas.
Durante el siglo XIX, la ideología conocida como destino manifiesto se convirtió en parte integral del movimiento nacionalista estadounidense. La expansión hacia el oeste de las poblaciones euroamericanas después de la Revolución estadounidense resultó en una creciente presión sobre los nativos americanos y sus tierras, guerras y crecientes tensiones. En 1830, el Congreso de los EE. UU. aprobó la Ley de Reubicación de los Indios , autorizando al gobierno federal a reubicar a los nativos americanos de sus tierras natales dentro de los estados establecidos a tierras al oeste del río Misisipi , para dar cabida a la continua expansión euroamericana. Esto resultó en lo que equivalió a la limpieza étnica o genocidio de muchas tribus, que fueron sometidas a brutales marchas forzadas . La más infame de estas llegó a ser conocida como el Sendero de las Lágrimas .
Los nativos americanos contemporáneos tienen una relación única con los Estados Unidos porque pueden ser miembros de naciones, tribus o bandas que tienen soberanía y derechos de tratado sobre los cuales se basan la ley india federal y una relación de fideicomiso indígena federal. [32] El activismo cultural desde fines de la década de 1960 ha aumentado la participación de los pueblos indígenas en la política estadounidense. También ha llevado a esfuerzos ampliados para enseñar y preservar las lenguas indígenas para las generaciones más jóvenes y establecer una infraestructura cultural más sólida: los nativos americanos han fundado periódicos independientes y medios de comunicación en línea, incluido First Nations Experience , el primer canal de televisión nativo americano; [33] establecieron programas de estudios nativos americanos , escuelas tribales, universidades , museos y programas de idiomas. La literatura está a la vanguardia de los estudios indios americanos en muchos géneros, con la notable excepción de la ficción: algunos indios americanos tradicionales experimentan las narrativas ficticias como insultantes cuando entran en conflicto con las narrativas tribales orales tradicionales. [34]
Los términos utilizados para referirse a los nativos americanos han sido a veces controvertidos . Las formas en que los nativos americanos se refieren a sí mismos varían según la región y la generación, y muchos nativos americanos mayores [ cita requerida ] se identifican a sí mismos como "indios" o "indios americanos", mientras que los nativos americanos más jóvenes [ cita requerida ] a menudo se identifican como "indígenas" o "aborígenes". El término "nativo americano" no ha incluido tradicionalmente a los nativos hawaianos ni a ciertos nativos de Alaska [ 35 ] , como los pueblos aleutianos , yup'ik o inuit . En comparación, los pueblos indígenas de Canadá generalmente se conocen como Primeras Naciones , Inuit y Métis ( FNIM ). [ cita requerida ]
No se sabe definitivamente cómo o cuándo los nativos americanos surgieron por primera vez o se establecieron en las Américas y los actuales Estados Unidos . La teoría más popular es que las personas migraron desde Eurasia a través de Beringia , un puente terrestre que conectaba Siberia con la actual Alaska , y luego se extendieron hacia el sur por las Américas durante las generaciones posteriores. [36] Los hallazgos de 2021 de huellas humanas fosilizadas en sedimentos lacustres relictos cerca del Parque Nacional White Sands en el actual Nuevo México sugieren una presencia humana allí que se remonta al Último Máximo Glacial (LGM), hace entre 18.000 y 26.000 años. [37] [38] [39] Esta edad se basa en un registro estratigráfico bien restringido y en la datación por radiocarbono de semillas en los sedimentos. También se ha propuesto que la migración pre-LGM a través de Beringia explica las supuestas edades pre-LGM de sitios arqueológicos en las Américas, como las cuevas Bluefish [40] [41] en el territorio de Yukón y el refugio rocoso Meadowcroft en Pensilvania. [42] [43]
La evidencia genética ha sugerido que al menos tres olas de migrantes llegaron desde el este de Asia , y la primera ocurrió hace al menos 15.000 años. [44] Estas migraciones pueden haber comenzado hace 30.000 años [45] y continuaron hasta hace unos 10.000 años, cuando el puente terrestre quedó sumergido por el aumento del nivel del mar al inicio del período interglacial actual . [46]
En noviembre de 2018, científicos de la Universidad de São Paulo y la Universidad de Harvard publicaron un estudio sobre la Mujer Luzia , un esqueleto de una mujer paleoindia de 11.500 años de antigüedad que fue encontrado en una cueva en Brasil . Si bien inicialmente se creyó que era parte de la ola de migrantes asiáticos, el ADN y otras pruebas han demostrado que esto es improbable. Usando la secuenciación del ADN, los resultados mostraron que Luzia era "enteramente amerindia", genéticamente. [47] [48] [49]
La era precolombina abarca todas las subdivisiones de la historia y la prehistoria de las Américas antes de la aparición de influencias europeas significativas en el continente americano , abarcando desde el asentamiento original en el Paleolítico superior hasta la colonización europea durante el período moderno temprano . Si bien técnicamente se refiere a la era anterior a la llegada de Cristóbal Colón al continente en 1492, en la práctica el término generalmente incluye la historia de las culturas indígenas hasta que fueron conquistadas o significativamente influenciadas por los europeos, incluso si esto sucedió décadas, o incluso siglos, después del desembarco inicial de Colón. [ cita requerida ]
Las culturas nativas americanas normalmente no se incluyen en las caracterizaciones de las culturas avanzadas de la Edad de Piedra como " Neolítico ", que es una categoría que más a menudo incluye solo las culturas de Eurasia, África y otras regiones. Los períodos arqueológicos utilizados son las clasificaciones de períodos arqueológicos y culturas establecidas en el libro de Gordon Willey y Philip Phillips de 1958 Método y teoría en la arqueología estadounidense . Dividieron el registro arqueológico en las Américas en cinco fases . [50]
Numerosas culturas paleoindias ocuparon América del Norte , algunas de ellas se establecieron alrededor de las Grandes Llanuras y los Grandes Lagos de los Estados Unidos y Canadá actuales , así como en áreas al oeste y suroeste. Según las historias orales de muchos de los pueblos indígenas, han estado viviendo en este continente desde su génesis, descrita por una amplia gama de historias tradicionales de la creación . Otras tribus tienen historias que relatan migraciones a través de largas extensiones de tierra y un gran río que se cree que es el río Misisipi . [51]
La evidencia arqueológica en el sitio de Gault cerca de Austin, Texas , sugiere que pueblos pre-Clovis se asentaron en la actual Texas hace unos 16.000–20.000 años. También se han encontrado evidencias de culturas pre-Clovis en las cuevas de Paisley en el centro-sur de Oregón y en huesos de mastodonte descuartizados en un sumidero cerca de Tallahassee, Florida . De manera más convincente, pero también controvertida, se ha descubierto otro pre-Clovis en Monte Verde en Chile. [52]
La cultura Clovis , una cultura de caza de megafauna , se identifica principalmente por el uso de puntas de lanza estriadas. Los artefactos de esta cultura fueron excavados por primera vez en 1932 cerca de Clovis, Nuevo México . La cultura Clovis se extendió por gran parte de América del Norte y partes de América del Sur . La cultura se identifica por la distintiva punta Clovis , una punta de lanza de sílex escamada con una flauta dentada, por la que se insertaba en un eje. La datación de materiales Clovis se ha realizado por asociación con huesos de animales y por el uso de métodos de datación por carbono . Reexámenes recientes de materiales Clovis utilizando métodos mejorados de datación por carbono produjeron resultados de 11.050 y 10.800 años de radiocarbono BP (aproximadamente 9100 a 8850 a. C.). [53]
La tradición Folsom se caracterizó por el uso de puntas Folsom como puntas de proyectiles y actividades conocidas de los sitios de matanza, donde se llevaba a cabo la matanza y descuartizamiento de bisontes . Las herramientas Folsom se dejaron atrás entre el 9000 a. C. y el 8000 a. C. [54]
Los pueblos de habla na-dené entraron en América del Norte a partir de alrededor de 8000 a. C., alcanzaron el noroeste del Pacífico alrededor de 5000 a. C. [55] y desde allí migraron a lo largo de la costa del Pacífico hacia el interior. Los lingüistas, antropólogos y arqueólogos creen que sus antepasados compusieron una migración separada hacia América del Norte, posterior a los primeros paleoindios. Emigraron a Alaska y el norte de Canadá, al sur a lo largo de la costa del Pacífico, al interior de Canadá y al sur a las Grandes Llanuras y el suroeste estadounidense. Los pueblos de habla na-dené fueron los primeros antepasados de los pueblos de habla atabascana , incluidos los navajos y apaches actuales e históricos . Construyeron grandes viviendas multifamiliares en sus aldeas, que se usaban estacionalmente. La gente no vivía allí todo el año, sino durante el verano para cazar y pescar, y para recolectar alimentos para el invierno. [56]
Desde la década de 1990, los arqueólogos han explorado y datado once sitios del Arcaico Medio en las actuales Luisiana y Florida en los que las culturas tempranas construyeron complejos con múltiples montículos de tierra ; eran sociedades de cazadores-recolectores en lugar de los agricultores sedentarios que se creían necesarios según la teoría de la Revolución Neolítica para sostener aldeas tan grandes durante largos períodos. El mejor ejemplo es Watson Brake en el norte de Luisiana, cuyo complejo de 11 montículos está datado en 3500 a. C., lo que lo convierte en el sitio más antiguo y datado en América del Norte para una construcción tan compleja. [57] Es casi 2000 años más antiguo que el sitio de Poverty Point . La construcción de los montículos continuó durante 500 años hasta que el sitio fue abandonado alrededor del 2800 a. C., probablemente debido al cambio de las condiciones ambientales. [58]
Los pueblos de la tradición Oshara vivieron desde alrededor de 5440 a. C. hasta 460 d. C. Formaban parte de la tradición arcaica del suroeste centrada en el centro-norte de Nuevo México , la cuenca de San Juan , el valle del Río Grande , el sur de Colorado y el sureste de Utah . [59] [60] [61]
La cultura de Poverty Point es una cultura arqueológica del Arcaico Tardío que habitó el área del valle inferior del Misisipi y la costa del Golfo circundante. La cultura prosperó desde el 2200 a. C. hasta el 700 a. C., durante el período Arcaico Tardío. [62] Se han encontrado evidencias de esta cultura en más de 100 sitios, desde el complejo principal de Poverty Point, Luisiana (un sitio de Patrimonio Mundial de la UNESCO ) a lo largo de un rango de 100 millas (160 km) hasta el sitio de Jaketown cerca de Belzoni, Misisipi .
Las etapas Formativa, Clásica y Postclásica a veces se incorporan juntas como el período Postarcaico, que se extiende desde el año 1000 a. C. en adelante. [63] Los sitios y culturas incluyen: Adena , Old Copper , Oasisamerica , Woodland , Fort Ancient , la tradición Hopewell y las culturas misisipianas .
El período Woodland de las culturas precolombinas de América del Norte se refiere al período de tiempo de aproximadamente 1000 a. C. a 1000 d. C. en la parte oriental de América del Norte. La región cultural de Eastern Woodlands cubre lo que ahora es el este de Canadá al sur de la región subártica , el este de los Estados Unidos , a lo largo del Golfo de México . [64] La tradición Hopewell describe los aspectos comunes de la cultura que floreció a lo largo de los ríos en el noreste y medio oeste de los Estados Unidos desde 100 a. C. hasta 500 d. C., en el período Woodland medio . La tradición Hopewell no era una sola cultura o sociedad, sino un conjunto ampliamente disperso de poblaciones relacionadas. Estaban conectadas por una red común de rutas comerciales. [65] [66] Este período se considera una etapa de desarrollo sin cambios masivos en un período corto, sino que tuvo un desarrollo continuo en herramientas de piedra y hueso, trabajo del cuero, fabricación textil, producción de herramientas, cultivo y construcción de refugios. [65]
La cultura misisipiana fue una civilización nativa americana que construía montículos y que los arqueólogos datan de aproximadamente el 800 d. C. al 1600 d. C., variando regionalmente. [67] Estaba compuesta por una serie de asentamientos urbanos y aldeas satélite (suburbios) conectados entre sí por una red comercial flexible, [68] siendo la ciudad más grande Cahokia , que se cree que fue un importante centro religioso. La civilización floreció en lo que ahora es el medio oeste , el este y el sureste de los Estados Unidos . [69] [70]
Numerosas sociedades precolombinas eran sedentarias, como los pueblos indios , los mandan , los hidatsa y otros, y algunas establecieron grandes asentamientos, incluso ciudades, como Cahokia , en lo que hoy es Illinois . La Liga de Naciones iroquesa o "Pueblo de la Casa Larga" era una sociedad políticamente avanzada y democrática, que algunos historiadores consideran que influyó en la Constitución de los Estados Unidos , [71] [72] y el Senado aprobó una resolución a tal efecto en 1988. [73] Otros historiadores han cuestionado esta interpretación y creen que el impacto fue mínimo o no existió, señalando las numerosas diferencias entre los dos sistemas y los amplios precedentes de la constitución en el pensamiento político europeo. [74] [75] [76]
Después de 1492, la exploración y colonización europea de las Américas revolucionó la percepción que el Viejo y el Nuevo Mundo tenían de sí mismos. Muchos de los primeros contactos importantes se produjeron en Florida y en la costa del Golfo por parte de exploradores españoles . [77]
Durante la exploración y colonización europea de las Américas, los europeos adoptaron el uso de la doctrina del descubrimiento , que implica que una nación "descubre" tierras y reclama los derechos sobre ellas. Hay dos elementos importantes de la doctrina que se relacionan directamente con la reclamación de tierras nativas; estos elementos son el cristianismo y la civilización. La doctrina implicaba que los pueblos no cristianos no tenían los mismos derechos sobre las tierras que los cristianos. Como los pueblos indígenas no eran cristianos, los europeos utilizaron eso como justificación para declarar derechos sobre las tierras indígenas. Los europeos veían a los pueblos indígenas como "salvajes incivilizados"; por lo tanto, la civilización fue un aspecto crucial del Descubrimiento. Los europeos creían que Dios quería que trajeran la civilización a los pueblos indígenas y sus tierras. [78]
Desde el siglo XVI hasta el siglo XIX, la población de nativos americanos disminuyó drásticamente. [79] La mayoría de los académicos convencionales creen que, entre los diversos factores contribuyentes, [80] las enfermedades epidémicas (por ejemplo, la viruela ) fueron la causa abrumadora de la disminución de la población de los nativos americanos debido a su falta de inmunidad a las nuevas enfermedades traídas de Europa. [81] [82 ] [83] [84] [85] Es difícil estimar el número de nativos americanos precolombinos que vivían en lo que hoy es los Estados Unidos de América. [86] Las estimaciones variaron desde un mínimo de 720.000 (Kroeber 1939) hasta un máximo de 15 millones ( Dobyns 1983), con un reanálisis que estima 5,65 millones (Thornton 1990). [87] [21] [88] Para 1800, la población nativa de los actuales Estados Unidos había disminuido a aproximadamente 600.000, y solo 250.000 nativos americanos permanecían en la década de 1890. [89] La varicela y el sarampión , endémicos pero rara vez fatales entre los europeos (mucho después de ser introducidos desde Asia), a menudo resultaron mortales para los nativos americanos. [90] [91] [92] [93] En los 100 años posteriores a la llegada de los españoles a las Américas, grandes epidemias de enfermedades despoblaron grandes partes del este de los Estados Unidos en el siglo XVI. [94]
La historiadora Dina Gilio-Whitaker destaca los efectos de la colonización europea en la disminución de la población indígena debido a la destrucción de las tierras y los recursos indígenas, que destruyó los modos de vida de los indígenas. Destaca las formas comunes y violentas en que las milicias expulsaban a los indígenas americanos de sus tierras. Las poblaciones indígenas fueron expulsadas por la fuerza de sus tierras hacia el oeste, lo que perjudicó negativamente a sus poblaciones. Gilio-Whitaker describe cómo durante el genocidio de California "las violaciones eran rampantes y los niños siempre estaban bajo amenaza de secuestro para ser vendidos en el comercio legalizado de esclavos de California". El Tratado Medicine Lodge de 1867 "expulsó a los comanches, kiowas y apaches kiowa (apaches de las llanuras) de sus territorios en Texas, confinándolos a reservas en Oklahoma, donde el hambre y la enfermedad redujeron drásticamente sus poblaciones". [95]
El ejemplo mejor documentado de una posible propagación intencional de la viruela ocurrió en 1763, cuando William Trent y Simeon Ecuyer, un mercenario suizo al servicio de Gran Bretaña, pudieron haber regalado artículos de una enfermería de viruela a emisarios nativos americanos con la esperanza de propagar la enfermedad mortal a las tribus cercanas. Se desconoce la eficacia, aunque se sabe que el método utilizado es ineficiente en comparación con la transmisión respiratoria y estos intentos de propagación de la enfermedad son difíciles de diferenciar de las epidemias que se produjeron a partir de contactos previos con colonos. [96]
En 1837, los nativos americanos Mandan en Fort Clark fueron víctimas de una epidemia de viruela ; algunos estudiosos han afirmado que fueron infectados intencionalmente con mantas de viruela. [97] [98] [99] [100] [101]
En 1634, Andrew White, de la Sociedad de Jesús, estableció una misión en lo que hoy es el estado de Maryland , y el propósito de la misión, expresado a través de un intérprete al jefe de una tribu india allí, era "extender la civilización y la instrucción a su raza ignorante, y mostrarles el camino al cielo". [102] Los diarios de White informan que en 1640, se había fundado una comunidad a la que llamaron St. Mary's, y los indios enviaban allí a sus hijos "para que se educaran entre los ingleses". [103] Esto incluía a la hija del jefe indio de Piscataway, Tayac, lo que ejemplifica no solo una escuela para indios, sino una escuela para niñas o una escuela mixta temprana . Los mismos registros informan que en 1677, "nuestra Sociedad abrió una escuela de humanidades en el centro de [Maryland], dirigida por dos de los Padres; y la juventud nativa, dedicándose asiduamente al estudio, hizo buenos progresos. Maryland y la escuela recientemente establecida enviaron a dos muchachos a St. Omer que cedieron en habilidades a pocos europeos, cuando compitieron por el honor de ser los primeros en su clase. De modo que no solo el oro, ni la plata, ni los demás productos de la tierra, sino también los hombres se reunieron de allí para llevar a esas regiones, que los extranjeros han llamado injustamente feroces, a un estado superior de virtud y cultivo". [104]
A mediados del siglo XVII, las Guerras de los Castores se libraron por el comercio de pieles entre los iroqueses y los hurones , los algonquinos del norte y sus aliados franceses. Durante la guerra, los iroqueses destruyeron varias confederaciones tribales importantes, entre ellas los hurones , los neutrales , los erie , los susquehannock y los shawnee , y se convirtieron en los dominantes de la región y ampliaron su territorio.
En 1727, las Hermanas de la Orden de Santa Úrsula fundaron la Academia Ursulina en Nueva Orleans , que actualmente es la escuela para niñas en funcionamiento continuo más antigua y la escuela católica más antigua de los Estados Unidos. Desde el momento de su fundación, ofreció las primeras clases para niñas indígenas americanas, y más tarde ofrecería clases para esclavas afroamericanas y mujeres libres de color .
Entre 1754 y 1763, muchas tribus nativas americanas participaron en la Guerra franco-india / Guerra de los Siete Años . Aquellos involucrados en el comercio de pieles tendían a aliarse con las fuerzas francesas contra las milicias coloniales británicas. Los británicos habían hecho menos aliados, pero se les unieron algunas tribus que querían demostrar asimilación y lealtad en apoyo de tratados para preservar sus territorios. A menudo se sentían decepcionados cuando dichos tratados eran revocados más tarde. Las tribus tenían sus propios fines, utilizando sus alianzas con las potencias europeas para luchar contra los enemigos nativos tradicionales. Algunos iroqueses que eran leales a los británicos y los ayudaron a luchar en la Revolución estadounidense huyeron al norte, a Canadá.
Después de que los exploradores europeos llegaran a la Costa Oeste en la década de 1770, la viruela mató rápidamente al menos al 30% de los nativos americanos de la Costa Noroeste . Durante los siguientes ochenta a cien años, la viruela y otras enfermedades devastaron a las poblaciones nativas de la región. [105] La población del área de Puget Sound , que alguna vez se estimó en 37.000 personas, se redujo a solo 9.000 sobrevivientes cuando los colonos llegaron en masa a mediados del siglo XIX. [106]
Las epidemias de viruela de 1780-1782 y 1837-1838 provocaron devastación y una drástica despoblación entre los indios de las llanuras . [107] [108] En 1832, el gobierno federal estableció un programa de vacunación contra la viruela para los nativos americanos ( Ley de vacunación india de 1832 ). Fue el primer programa federal creado para abordar un problema de salud de los nativos americanos. [109] [110]
Con el encuentro de dos mundos, animales, insectos y plantas fueron llevados de uno al otro, tanto deliberadamente como por casualidad, en lo que se llama el Intercambio Colombino . [111] En el siglo XVI, los españoles y otros europeos trajeron caballos a México. Algunos de los caballos escaparon y comenzaron a reproducirse y aumentar sus números en la naturaleza. A medida que los nativos americanos adoptaron el uso de los animales, comenzaron a cambiar sus culturas de manera sustancial, especialmente al extender sus rangos nómadas para la caza. La reintroducción del caballo en América del Norte tuvo un profundo impacto en la cultura nativa americana de las Grandes Llanuras .
La Guerra del Rey Felipe , también llamada Guerra de Metacom o Rebelión de Metacom, fue el último gran conflicto armado [112] entre los habitantes nativos americanos del actual sur de Nueva Inglaterra y los colonos ingleses y sus aliados nativos americanos entre 1675 y 1676. Continuó en el norte de Nueva Inglaterra (principalmente en la frontera de Maine) incluso después de que el rey Felipe fuera asesinado, hasta que se firmó un tratado en la bahía de Casco en abril de 1678. [113]
Algunos filósofos europeos consideraban que las sociedades indígenas americanas eran verdaderamente "naturales" y representativas de una época dorada que sólo conocían en la historia popular. [114]
Durante la Revolución estadounidense , los patriotas estadounidenses compitieron con los colonialistas británicos por la lealtad de las naciones indígenas americanas al este del río Misisipi . La mayoría de los indígenas americanos que se unieron a la lucha se pusieron del lado de los británicos, basándose tanto en sus relaciones comerciales como en la esperanza de que una derrota de los Estados Unidos resultaría en un freno a una mayor expansión en las tierras indígenas americanas. La primera comunidad nativa en firmar un tratado con el nuevo gobierno de los Estados Unidos fue la de los lenape .
En 1779, durante la Guerra de la Independencia de los Estados Unidos, se llevó a cabo la expedición Sullivan contra los británicos y las cuatro naciones aliadas de los iroqueses. George Washington dio órdenes que dejaban claro que quería eliminar la amenaza iroquesa :
La expedición que se le ha encomendado dirigir se dirigirá contra las tribus hostiles de las Seis Naciones de indios, con sus asociados y partidarios. Los objetivos inmediatos son la destrucción y devastación total de sus asentamientos y la captura de tantos prisioneros de todas las edades y sexos como sea posible. Será esencial arruinar sus cosechas que están ahora en el suelo e impedir que siembren más. [115]
Los británicos hicieron las paces con los estadounidenses en el Tratado de París (1783) , mediante el cual cedieron vastos territorios indígenas a los Estados Unidos sin informar ni consultar a los indígenas.
Los colonos de Nueva Inglaterra y los nuevos inmigrantes que llegaron a los Estados Unidos estaban ansiosos por expandir sus asentamientos, desarrollar zonas agrícolas y de caza en áreas nuevas para ellos y satisfacer su creciente hambre de tierras. El gobierno nacional inicialmente intentó comprar tierras de los nativos americanos mediante tratados . Los colonos violaron continuamente estos tratados. [116]
La política de los Estados Unidos hacia los nativos americanos siguió cambiando después de la Revolución Americana. George Washington y Henry Knox creían que los nativos americanos eran iguales pero que su sociedad era inferior. Washington formuló una política para fomentar el proceso de "civilización". [26] Washington tenía un plan de seis puntos para ello, que incluía:
A finales del siglo XVIII, los reformistas, empezando por Washington y Knox, [117] apoyaron la educación de los niños y adultos nativos americanos al estilo europeo, en un esfuerzo por "civilizarlos" o asimilarlos de otro modo a la sociedad en general (en lugar de relegarlos a reservas ). La Ley del Fondo de Civilización de 1819 promovió esta política de civilización al proporcionar fondos a sociedades (en su mayoría religiosas) que trabajaban en pos de lo que definieron como "la mejora de los nativos americanos". [118]
La población de indios de California se redujo en un 90% durante el siglo XIX, de más de 250.000 a 200.000 a principios del siglo XIX a aproximadamente 15.000 a finales del siglo, principalmente debido a enfermedades. [119] [120] [121] Las epidemias arrasaron el territorio indio de California , como la epidemia de malaria de 1833. [122] La población entró en declive como resultado de que las autoridades españolas obligaran a los nativos californianos a vivir en las misiones donde contrajeron enfermedades de las que tenían poca inmunidad. Cook estima que 15.250 o el 45% de la disminución de la población en las misiones fue causada por enfermedades. Dos epidemias de sarampión, una en 1806 y la otra en 1828, causaron muchas muertes. Las tasas de mortalidad eran tan altas que las misiones dependían constantemente de nuevas conversiones. [123] Durante la fiebre del oro de California , muchos nativos fueron asesinados por los colonos que llegaban, así como por unidades de milicias financiadas y organizadas por el gobierno de California. [124] Algunos académicos sostienen que la financiación estatal de estas milicias, así como el papel del gobierno de los EE. UU. en otras masacres en California, como las masacres de Bloody Island y Yontoket , en las que hasta 400 o más nativos fueron asesinados en cada masacre, constituye una campaña de genocidio contra los pueblos indígenas de California . [125] [126]
A medida que continuaba la expansión estadounidense, los nativos americanos resistieron la invasión de los colonos en varias regiones de la nueva nación (y en territorios no organizados), desde el noroeste hasta el sureste, y luego en el oeste, cuando los colonos se encontraron con las tribus nativas americanas de las Grandes Llanuras . Al este del río Misisipi, un ejército intertribal liderado por Tecumseh , un jefe shawnee, luchó en una serie de enfrentamientos en el noroeste durante el período 1811-1812, conocido como la Guerra de Tecumseh . Durante la Guerra de 1812 , las fuerzas de Tecumseh se aliaron con los británicos. Después de la muerte de Tecumseh, los británicos dejaron de ayudar a los nativos americanos al sur y al oeste del Alto Canadá y la expansión estadounidense prosiguió con poca resistencia. Los conflictos en el sureste incluyen la Guerra Creek y las Guerras Seminole , tanto antes como después de las expulsiones indias de la mayoría de los miembros de las Cinco Tribus Civilizadas .
En la década de 1830, el presidente Andrew Jackson firmó la Ley de Remoción de los Indios de 1830 , una política que obligaba a los indios a abandonar sus países de origen y trasladarse a nuevos territorios indios y reservas en áreas circundantes que carecían del parentesco y las relaciones no humanas que alguna vez tuvieron con su tierra natal, para mercantilizar sus tierras para asentamientos no nativos. [128] Esto resultó en el Sendero de las Lágrimas .
En julio de 1845, el editor del periódico neoyorquino John L. O'Sullivan acuñó la frase " Destino Manifiesto ", como el "designio de la Providencia" que apoyaba la expansión territorial de los Estados Unidos. [130] El Destino Manifiesto tuvo graves consecuencias para los nativos americanos, ya que la expansión continental de los EE. UU. se produjo a costa de sus tierras ocupadas. [131] Una justificación para la política de conquista y subyugación de los pueblos indígenas emanó de las percepciones estereotipadas de todos los nativos americanos como "salvajes indios despiadados" (como se describe en la Declaración de Independencia de los Estados Unidos ). [132] Sam Wolfson en The Guardian escribe: "El pasaje de la declaración se ha citado a menudo como una encapsulación de la actitud deshumanizadora hacia los indígenas estadounidenses en la que se fundó Estados Unidos". [133]
La Ley de Asignaciones Indígenas de 1851 sentó el precedente para las actuales reservas de nativos americanos al asignar fondos para trasladar a las tribus occidentales a las reservas, ya que no había más tierras disponibles para la reubicación.
Las naciones nativas americanas en las llanuras del oeste continuaron los conflictos armados con los EE. UU. a lo largo del siglo XIX, a través de lo que generalmente se llamó Guerras Indias . [134] Los conflictos notables en este período incluyen la Guerra Dakota , la Gran Guerra Sioux , la Guerra de la Serpiente , la Guerra de Colorado y las Guerras Texas-Indias . Expresando el sentimiento antiindio de la frontera, Theodore Roosevelt creía que los indios estaban destinados a desaparecer bajo la presión de la civilización blanca, declarando en una conferencia de 1886:
No llego a pensar que los únicos indios buenos sean los indios muertos, pero creo que nueve de cada diez lo son, y no me gustaría investigar demasiado en el caso del décimo. [135]
Uno de los últimos y más notables eventos durante las guerras indias fue la Masacre de Wounded Knee en 1890. [136] En los años previos a ella, el gobierno de los EE. UU. había seguido apoderándose de las tierras de los Lakota . Un ritual de Danza Fantasma en la reserva de los Lakota del Norte en Wounded Knee, Dakota del Sur , condujo al intento del Ejército de los EE. UU. de someter a los Lakota. La danza era parte de un movimiento religioso fundado por el líder espiritual de los Paiute del Norte, Wovoka , que hablaba del regreso del Mesías para aliviar el sufrimiento de los nativos americanos y prometía que si vivían vidas rectas y realizaban la Danza Fantasma correctamente, los colonos europeos americanos desaparecerían, los bisontes regresarían y los vivos y los muertos se reunirían en un mundo edénico. [ 136] El 29 de diciembre en Wounded Knee, estallaron disparos y los soldados estadounidenses mataron a hasta 300 indios, en su mayoría ancianos, mujeres y niños. [136]
Días después de la masacre, el autor L. Frank Baum escribió:
El Pionero ya ha declarado que nuestra única seguridad depende del exterminio total de los indios. Después de haberles causado daño durante siglos, sería mejor que, para proteger nuestra civilización, cometiéramos otro daño más y expulsáramos de la faz de la tierra a estas criaturas salvajes e indomables. [137]
Los nativos americanos sirvieron tanto en el ejército de la Unión como en el de la Confederación durante la Guerra Civil estadounidense . Al estallar la guerra, por ejemplo, el partido minoritario de los Cherokee dio su lealtad a la Confederación, mientras que originalmente el partido mayoritario se inclinó por el Norte. [139] Los nativos americanos lucharon sabiendo que podrían poner en peligro su independencia, sus culturas únicas y sus tierras ancestrales si terminaban en el lado perdedor de la Guerra Civil. [139] [140] 28.693 nativos americanos sirvieron en los ejércitos de la Unión y la Confederación durante la Guerra Civil, participando en batallas como Pea Ridge , Second Manassas , Antietam , Spotsylvania , Cold Harbor y en los asaltos federales a Petersburg . [140] [141] Unas pocas tribus nativas americanas, como los Creek y los Choctaw, eran propietarios de esclavos y encontraron una comunidad política y económica con la Confederación. [142] Los Choctaw poseían más de 2.000 esclavos. [143]
En el siglo XIX, la incesante expansión de los Estados Unidos hacia el oeste obligó a un gran número de nativos americanos a reasentarse más al oeste, a menudo por la fuerza y casi siempre de mala gana. Los nativos americanos creían que esta reubicación forzada era ilegal, dado el Tratado de Hopewell de 1785. Bajo la presidencia de Andrew Jackson , el Congreso de los Estados Unidos aprobó la Ley de Traslado de los Indios de 1830, que autorizó al Presidente a celebrar tratados para intercambiar tierras de los nativos americanos al este del río Misisipi por tierras al oeste del río.
Como resultado de esta política de deportación de indios , unos 100.000 nativos americanos se trasladaron al oeste . En teoría, se suponía que la reubicación sería voluntaria y muchos nativos americanos permanecieron en el este. En la práctica, se ejerció una gran presión sobre los líderes nativos americanos para que firmaran tratados de deportación. La violación más flagrante, el Sendero de las Lágrimas , fue la deportación de los cherokees por parte del presidente Jackson al Territorio Indio . [144] En 1864, el gobierno de los EE. UU. obligó a 9000 navajos a ir a un campo de internamiento en Bosque Redondo , [145] donde, bajo guardias armados, hasta 3500 hombres, mujeres y niños navajos y apaches mescaleros murieron de hambre y enfermedades durante los cuatro años siguientes. A los navajos internados se les permitió regresar a su patria ancestral en 1868. [145]
En 1817, los cheroquis se convirtieron en los primeros indígenas americanos reconocidos como ciudadanos estadounidenses. En virtud del artículo 8 del tratado cheroqui de 1817, "más de 300 cheroquis (jefes de familia), en la honesta sencillez de sus almas, eligieron convertirse en ciudadanos estadounidenses". [31] [146]
Los factores que establecen la ciudadanía incluyen:
Después de la Guerra Civil estadounidense, la Ley de Derechos Civiles de 1866 establece que "todas las personas nacidas en los Estados Unidos y no sujetas a ningún poder extranjero, excluyendo a los indios no sujetos a impuestos, son declaradas por la presente ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos". [147]
En 1871, el Congreso añadió una cláusula adicional a la Ley de Asignaciones Indígenas , firmada por el presidente Ulysses S. Grant , que ponía fin al reconocimiento por parte de los Estados Unidos de otras tribus indígenas americanas o naciones independientes y prohibía tratados adicionales. [148]
Después de las guerras indias a fines del siglo XIX, el gobierno estableció internados para nativos americanos , inicialmente administrados por misioneros cristianos, pero eventualmente también por otras organizaciones religiosas. [149] En ese momento, la mayoría de la sociedad no nativa americana pensaba que los niños nativos americanos necesitaban ser aculturados a la sociedad dominante y asimilados a la cultura blanca. [150]
Los niños indígenas fueron separados a la fuerza de sus familias y admitidos en estos internados. Se les obligó a abandonar sus tradiciones culturales y se les enseñó sobre las ideas estadounidenses de refinamiento y civilización. [151] Se les dio nombres blancos, se les cortó el pelo y se les quitó la ropa tradicional, se les obligó a hablar inglés y se les golpeó cuando no obedecían. [152] [153] Se les obligó a practicar el cristianismo y no se les permitió practicar sus religiones indígenas, y de muchas otras maneras se les obligó a abandonar sus identidades nativas americanas. [154] [155] Si bien a sus padres se les dijo que las escuelas eran para actividades escolares, muchas de ellas eran más como granjas de trabajo , con "clases" sobre cómo realizar trabajos manuales como la agricultura y el mantenimiento del hogar. Cuando no estaban en clase, se esperaba que mantuvieran el mantenimiento de las escuelas. Las condiciones de vida sucias y superpobladas llevaron a la propagación de enfermedades y muchos estudiantes no recibieron suficiente comida. Se ofrecieron recompensas para los estudiantes que intentaran huir y muchos estudiantes se suicidaron. A veces, los estudiantes que morían eran colocados en ataúdes y enterrados en el cementerio de la escuela por sus propios compañeros de clase. [152] Esta asimilación forzada aumentó el abuso de sustancias y los suicidios entre estos estudiantes, ya que sufrían enfermedades mentales como depresión y trastorno de estrés postraumático. Estas enfermedades también aumentaron el riesgo de desarrollar enfermedades cardiovasculares. [151]
El abuso sexual de los niños indígenas en los internados fue perpetrado por los administradores de estos programas. Maestros, monjas y sacerdotes realizaron estos actos con sus estudiantes. Los mentores, que se suponía que debían educarlos, tocaban y abusaban sexualmente de los niños para usarlos como placer. Varios mentores consideraban a estos estudiantes como objetos y abusaban sexualmente de ellos formando turnos para entrar y salir cuando terminaban de atormentar sexualmente al siguiente estudiante. Estos adultos también usaban el abuso sexual como una forma de vergüenza hacia los demás. Al rastrear el camino de la violencia, varios estudiantes sufrieron una agresión que "sólo puede describirse como inconcebible, fue una violación no sólo del cuerpo de un niño sino un asalto a su espíritu". Este acto creó una mayoría entre los niños que fueron víctimas en silencio. Esto se repitió en los internados de todo el país en diferentes escenarios. Estos incluyen niños que fueron agredidos sexualmente en su decimotercer cumpleaños hasta niñas que fueron tomadas por la fuerza por la noche por el sacerdote para ser utilizadas como objetos. [156]
Antes de la década de 1930, las escuelas de las reservas no proporcionaban ninguna educación formal más allá de lo que los colonos consideraban el sexto grado. Para obtener una educación más formal, que les permitiera conseguir trabajo entre los colonos, los niños eran enviados a menudo a internados. [157] Las reservas pequeñas con unos pocos cientos de habitantes solían enviar a sus hijos a escuelas públicas cercanas.
El " New Deal indio " de la década de 1930 cerró muchos de los internados y minimizó los objetivos asimilacionistas , aunque algunas de las escuelas permanecieron abiertas hasta bien entrado el siglo XX. [158]
La División India del Cuerpo Civil de Conservación llevó a cabo proyectos de construcción a gran escala en las reservas, y construyó miles de nuevas escuelas y edificios comunitarios. Bajo el liderazgo de John Collier, la Oficina de Asuntos Indígenas (BIA) trajo maestros colonos para remodelar la educación indígena. En 1938, la BIA enseñaba a 30.000 estudiantes en 377 internados y escuelas diurnas, es decir, el 40% de todos los niños indígenas escolarizados. Los navajos se oponían en gran medida a la escolarización de cualquier tipo, pero las otras tribus aceptaron el sistema. Ahora había escuelas secundarias en reservas más grandes, que educaban no solo a adolescentes sino también a un público adulto. No había instalaciones indias para la educación superior. [159] [160]
Desde el surgimiento de la autodeterminación de los nativos americanos y la revelación del abuso que tuvo lugar en los internados, las comunidades nativas americanas ahora tienen sus propias escuelas, muchas de las cuales además incluyen las lenguas y la cultura tribales, y la historia tribal en el plan de estudios. A partir de la década de 1970, las tribus también han fundado universidades en sus reservas, controladas y operadas por nativos americanos, para educar a los jóvenes para el trabajo, así como para transmitir sus culturas. Alrededor de 2020, la Oficina de Educación Indígena opera aproximadamente 183 [161] escuelas, principalmente sin internado, y ubicadas principalmente en reservas. Las escuelas tienen 46.000 estudiantes. [162] En marzo de 2020, la BIA finalizó una norma para crear un Sistema de Estándares, Evaluaciones y Responsabilidad (SAAS) para todas las escuelas de la BIA. La motivación detrás de la norma es preparar a los estudiantes de la BIA para que estén listos para la universidad y las carreras. [163]
El 29 de agosto de 1911, Ishi , generalmente considerado el último nativo americano que vivió la mayor parte de su vida sin contacto con la cultura europea americana, fue descubierto cerca de Oroville, California . [164] [165] [166]
En 1919, Estados Unidos bajo la presidencia de Woodrow Wilson concedió la ciudadanía a todos los nativos americanos que habían servido en la Primera Guerra Mundial. Casi 10.000 hombres se habían alistado y servido, un número alto en relación con su población. [167] A pesar de esto, en muchas áreas los nativos americanos enfrentaron resistencia local cuando intentaron votar y fueron discriminados con barreras para el registro de votantes.
El 2 de junio de 1924, el presidente estadounidense republicano Calvin Coolidge firmó la Ley de Ciudadanía India , que convertía en ciudadanos estadounidenses a todos los nativos americanos nacidos en Estados Unidos y sus territorios. Antes de la aprobación de la ley, casi dos tercios de los nativos americanos ya eran ciudadanos estadounidenses, por matrimonio, servicio militar o por haber aceptado asignaciones de tierras. [168] [169] La ley extendió la ciudadanía a "todos los indios no ciudadanos nacidos dentro de los límites territoriales de los Estados Unidos". [167]
El republicano Charles Curtis , congresista y senador de los Estados Unidos por Kansas durante mucho tiempo, era kaw y de ascendencia osage, potawatomi y europea. Después de servir como representante de los Estados Unidos y ser reelegido repetidamente como senador de los Estados Unidos por Kansas, Curtis sirvió como líder de la minoría del Senado durante 10 años y como líder de la mayoría del Senado durante cinco años. Fue muy influyente en el Senado. En 1928, se postuló como candidato a vicepresidente con Herbert Hoover para presidente, y sirvió desde 1929 hasta 1933. Fue la primera persona nativa americana y la primera persona con ascendencia no europea reconocida en ser elegida para cualquiera de los cargos más altos del país.
En la actualidad, los indios americanos de los Estados Unidos tienen todos los derechos garantizados por la Constitución estadounidense , pueden votar en las elecciones y presentarse como candidatos a cargos políticos. Sigue habiendo controversias sobre hasta qué punto el gobierno federal tiene jurisdicción sobre los asuntos tribales, la soberanía y las prácticas culturales. [170]
A mediados de siglo, la política de terminación de los indios y la Ley de Reubicación de los Indios de 1956 marcaron una nueva dirección para la asimilación de los nativos americanos a la vida urbana . [171]
El censo contabilizó 332.000 indios en 1930 y 334.000 en 1940, incluidos los que vivían dentro y fuera de las reservas de los 48 estados. El gasto total en los indios promedió 38 millones de dólares al año a finales de la década de 1920, descendiendo a un mínimo de 23 millones de dólares en 1933 y volviendo a 38 millones de dólares en 1940. [172]
Unos 44.000 nativos americanos sirvieron en el ejército de los EE. UU. durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial : en ese momento, un tercio de todos los hombres indios físicamente aptos de entre dieciocho y cincuenta años de edad. [173] Descrito como el primer éxodo a gran escala de pueblos indígenas de las reservas desde las expulsiones del siglo XIX, el servicio de los hombres con el ejército de los EE. UU. en el conflicto internacional fue un punto de inflexión en la historia de los nativos americanos. La abrumadora mayoría de los nativos americanos acogieron con agrado la oportunidad de servir; tuvieron una tasa de alistamiento voluntario que fue un 40% más alta que la de los reclutados. [174]
Sus compañeros soldados los tenían a menudo en alta estima, en parte porque la leyenda del duro guerrero nativo americano se había convertido en parte del tejido de la leyenda histórica estadounidense. Los militares blancos a veces mostraban un respeto desenfadado hacia sus camaradas nativos americanos llamándolos "jefes". El consiguiente aumento del contacto con el mundo exterior al sistema de reservas trajo consigo cambios profundos en la cultura de los nativos americanos. "La guerra", dijo el Comisionado Indio de los Estados Unidos en 1945, "causó la mayor perturbación de la vida nativa desde el comienzo de la era de las reservas", afectando a los hábitos, puntos de vista y bienestar económico de los miembros de la tribu. [175] El más significativo de estos cambios fue la oportunidad -como resultado de la escasez de mano de obra en tiempos de guerra- de encontrar trabajo bien remunerado en las ciudades, y mucha gente se trasladó a zonas urbanas, en particular en la Costa Oeste con el desarrollo de la industria de defensa.
También hubo pérdidas como consecuencia de la guerra. Por ejemplo, un total de 1.200 hombres indígenas de la tribu Pueblo sirvieron en la Segunda Guerra Mundial; solo la mitad volvió con vida a casa. Además, muchos más navajos sirvieron como codificadores para el ejército en el Pacífico. El código que crearon, aunque criptográficamente muy simple, nunca fue descifrado por los japoneses.
El servicio militar y la residencia urbana contribuyeron al auge del activismo indígena americano, en particular después de la década de 1960 y la ocupación de la isla de Alcatraz (1969-1971) por un grupo de estudiantes indígenas de San Francisco . En el mismo período, se fundó el Movimiento Indio Americano (AIM) en Minneapolis y se establecieron capítulos en todo el país, donde los indígenas americanos combinaron el activismo espiritual y político. Las protestas políticas ganaron la atención de los medios nacionales y la simpatía del público estadounidense.
A mediados de la década de 1970, los conflictos entre los gobiernos y los nativos americanos estallaron ocasionalmente en violencia. Un evento notable de finales del siglo XX fue el incidente de Wounded Knee en la reserva india de Pine Ridge . Molestos con el gobierno tribal y los fracasos del gobierno federal para hacer cumplir los derechos de los tratados, alrededor de 300 activistas de Oglala Lakota y AIM tomaron el control de Wounded Knee el 27 de febrero de 1973. [176]
Activistas indígenas de todo el país se unieron a ellos en Pine Ridge, y la ocupación se convirtió en un símbolo de la creciente identidad y poder de los indios americanos. Los agentes federales encargados de hacer cumplir la ley y la Guardia Nacional acordonaron la ciudad, y los dos bandos estuvieron en un punto muerto durante 71 días. Durante los muchos tiroteos, un alguacil de los Estados Unidos resultó herido y quedó paralizado. A finales de abril, un hombre cherokee y un lakota local murieron por disparos; los ancianos lakota pusieron fin a la ocupación para asegurarse de que no muriera más gente. [176]
En junio de 1975, dos agentes del FBI que intentaban detener a un hombre por robo a mano armada en la reserva Pine Ridge resultaron heridos en un tiroteo y murieron a corta distancia. El activista de AIM Leonard Peltier fue condenado en 1976 a dos condenas consecutivas de cadena perpetua por las muertes cometidas por el FBI. [177]
En 1968, el gobierno promulgó la Ley de Derechos Civiles de los Indios . Esta otorgó a los miembros de las tribus la mayoría de las protecciones contra los abusos de los gobiernos tribales que la Carta de Derechos otorga a todos los ciudadanos estadounidenses con respecto al gobierno federal. [178] En 1975, el gobierno estadounidense aprobó la Ley de Autodeterminación y Asistencia Educativa de los Indios , que marcó la culminación de quince años de cambios de política. Fue el resultado del activismo indígena estadounidense, el Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles y los aspectos de desarrollo comunitario de los programas sociales del presidente Lyndon Johnson de la década de 1960. La Ley reconoció el derecho y la necesidad de los nativos americanos de autodeterminación. Marcó el giro del gobierno estadounidense respecto de la política de la década de 1950 de terminación de la relación entre las tribus y el gobierno. El gobierno estadounidense alentó los esfuerzos de los nativos americanos por autogobernarse y determinar su futuro. Las tribus han desarrollado organizaciones para administrar sus propios programas sociales, de bienestar y de vivienda, por ejemplo. La autodeterminación tribal ha creado tensión con respecto a la obligación histórica de confianza del gobierno federal de cuidar a los indios; Sin embargo, la Oficina de Asuntos Indígenas nunca ha estado a la altura de esa responsabilidad. [179]
Navajo Community College, ahora llamado Diné College , el primer colegio tribal, fue fundado en Tsaile, Arizona , en 1968 y acreditado en 1979. Inmediatamente surgieron tensiones entre dos filosofías: una que los colegios tribales deberían tener los mismos criterios, currículo y procedimientos para la calidad educativa que los colegios tradicionales, la otra que el profesorado y el currículo deberían adaptarse estrechamente a la cultura histórica particular de la tribu. Hubo una gran rotación, exacerbada por presupuestos muy ajustados. [180] En 1994, el Congreso de los EE. UU. aprobó una legislación que reconocía a los colegios tribales como colegios de concesión de tierras , lo que proporcionó oportunidades de financiación a gran escala. Treinta y dos colegios tribales en los Estados Unidos pertenecen al Consorcio de Educación Superior Indígena Estadounidense . A principios del siglo XXI, las naciones tribales también habían establecido numerosos programas de recuperación lingüística en sus escuelas.
Además, el activismo de los nativos americanos ha llevado a importantes universidades de todo el país a establecer programas y departamentos de estudios sobre los nativos americanos , aumentando la conciencia de las fortalezas de las culturas indias, brindando oportunidades para los académicos y profundizando la investigación sobre la historia y las culturas de los Estados Unidos. Los nativos americanos han ingresado al mundo académico, al periodismo y los medios de comunicación, a la política a nivel local, estatal y federal, y al servicio público, por ejemplo, influyendo en la investigación y la política médica para identificar cuestiones relacionadas con los indios americanos.
En 2009, la Ley de Asignaciones Presupuestarias para la Defensa incluyó una "disculpa a los pueblos indígenas de los Estados Unidos", en la que se establecía que los Estados Unidos "se disculpan en nombre del pueblo de los Estados Unidos ante todos los pueblos indígenas por los numerosos casos de violencia, maltrato y negligencia infligidos a los pueblos indígenas por ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos". [181]
En 2013, la jurisdicción sobre las personas que no eran miembros de una tribu en virtud de la Ley sobre la Violencia contra la Mujer se extendió a los territorios indígenas, lo que colmó una laguna que impedía el arresto o procesamiento por parte de la policía tribal o los tribunales de parejas abusivas de miembros de una tribu que no fueran nativos o de otra tribu. [182] [183]
La migración de los nativos americanos a las zonas urbanas siguió creciendo, pasando del 8% en 1940 al 45% en 1970 y hasta el 70% en 2012. Entre las zonas urbanas con poblaciones indígenas americanas significativas se encuentran Phoenix, Tulsa, Minneapolis, Denver, Albuquerque, Tucson, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Houston, Nueva York, Los Ángeles y Rapid City. Muchos viven en la pobreza. El racismo, el desempleo, las drogas y las pandillas eran problemas comunes que las organizaciones de servicios sociales indígenas, como el complejo de viviendas Little Earth en Minneapolis, intentan abordar. [184] También se han llevado a cabo esfuerzos de base para apoyar a las poblaciones indígenas urbanas, como en el caso de Bringing the Circle Together en Los Ángeles. [185]
En 2020, el Congreso aprobó una ley para transferir la gestión de la Reserva Nacional del Bisonte en más de 18.000 acres en el noroeste de Montana del Servicio de Pesca y Vida Silvestre de Estados Unidos a las Tribus Confederadas Salish y Kootenai . [186] En la década de 1900, el gobierno de Estados Unidos tomó estas tierras sin el consentimiento de las Tribus Confederadas Salish y Kootenai. [186] La secretaria del Interior, Deb Haaland, celebró esta transición en el Salish Kootenai College el 21 de mayo de 2022, calificándola de "un regreso a algo puro y sagrado". [186]
Según el censo de 2020, la población de Estados Unidos era de 331,4 millones de personas. De esta población, 3,7 millones de personas (el 1,1 %) declararon tener ascendencia india americana o nativa de Alaska únicamente. Además, 5,9 millones de personas (el 1,8 %) declararon tener ascendencia india americana o nativa de Alaska en combinación con una o más razas diferentes. [187]
La definición de indio americano o nativo de Alaska utilizada en el censo de 2010 fue la siguiente:
Según la Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto, "indio americano o nativo de Alaska" se refiere a una persona que tiene orígenes en cualquiera de los pueblos originarios de América del Norte y del Sur (incluida América Central) y que mantiene una afiliación tribal o un vínculo comunitario. [188]
A pesar de que generalmente se refiere a grupos indígenas de los EE. UU. continentales y Alaska, este grupo demográfico, según la definición de la Oficina del Censo de los EE. UU., incluye a todos los pueblos indígenas de las Américas , incluidos los pueblos mesoamericanos como los mayas , así como los nativos canadienses y sudamericanos . [189] En 2022, 634 503 indígenas en los Estados Unidos se identificaron con grupos indígenas centroamericanos, 875 183 se identificaron con los pueblos indígenas de México y 47 518 se identificaron con las Primeras Naciones canadienses . [190] De los 3,2 millones de estadounidenses que se identificaron como indígenas estadounidenses o nativos de Alaska solo en 2022, alrededor del 45 % son de etnia hispana o latina , y este número aumenta a medida que un número cada vez mayor de indígenas de países latinoamericanos emigran a los EE. UU. y más latinos se autoidentifican con la herencia indígena. [191] De los grupos indígenas de los Estados Unidos, las tribus más numerosas declaradas son los cherokee (1.449.888), los navajos (434.910), los choctaw (295.373), los blackfeet (288.255), los sioux (220.739) y los apaches (191.823). [192] 205.954 encuestados especificaron una identidad nativa de Alaska .
Native Hawaiians are counted separately from Native Americans by the census, being classified as Pacific Islanders. According to 2022 estimates, 714,847 Americans reported Native Hawaiian ancestry.[193]
The 2010 census permitted respondents to self-identify as being of one or more races. Self-identification dates from the census of 1960; prior to that the race of the respondent was determined by the opinion of the census taker. The option to select more than one race was introduced in 2000.[194] If American Indian or Alaska Native was selected, the form requested the individual provide the name of the "enrolled or principal tribe".
Censuses counted around 346,000 Native Americans in 1880 (including 33,000 in Alaska and 82,000 in Oklahoma, back then known as Indian Territory), around 274,000 in 1890 (including 25,500 in Alaska and 64,500 in Oklahoma), 362,500 in 1930 and 366,500 in 1940, including those on and off reservations in the 48 states and Alaska. Native American population rebounded sharply from 1950, when they numbered 377,273; it reached 551,669 in 1960, 827,268 in 1970, with an annual growth rate of 5%, four times the national average.[195] Total spending on Native Americans averaged $38 million a year in the late 1920s, dropping to a low of $23 million in 1933, and returning to $38 million in 1940.[172] The Office of Indian Affairs counted more American Indians than the Census Bureau until 1930:
American Indians and Alaska Natives as percentage of the total population between 1880 and 2020:
Absolute numbers of American Indians and Alaska Natives between 1880 and 2020 (since 1890 according to the Census Bureau):
78% of Native Americans live outside a reservation. Full-blood individuals are more likely to live on a reservation than mixed-blood individuals. The Navajo, with 286,000 full-blood individuals, is the largest tribe if only full-blood individuals are counted; the Navajo are the tribe with the highest proportion of full-blood individuals, 86.3%. The Cherokee have a different history; it is the largest tribe, with 819,000 individuals, and it has 284,000 full-blood individuals.[204]
As of 2012, 70% of Native Americans live in urban areas, up from 45% in 1970 and 8% in 1940. Urban areas with significant Native American populations include Minneapolis, Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Houston, New York City, and Los Angeles. Many live in poverty. Racism, unemployment, drugs and gangs are common problems which Indian social service organizations such as the Little Earth housing complex in Minneapolis attempt to address.[184]
Below are numbers for U.S. citizens self-identifying to selected tribal groupings, according to the 2010 U.S. census.[205][206]
There are 573 federally recognized tribal governments[208] and 326 Indian reservations[209] in the United States. These tribes possess the right to form their own governments, to enforce laws (both civil and criminal) within their lands, to tax, to establish requirements for membership, to license and regulate activities, to zone, and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money (this includes paper currency).[210] In addition, there are a number of tribes that are recognized by individual states, but not by the federal government. The rights and benefits associated with state recognition vary from state to state.
Many Native Americans and advocates of Native American rights point out that the U.S. federal government's claim to recognize the "sovereignty" of Native American peoples falls short, given that the United States wishes to govern Native American peoples and treat them as subject to U.S. law.[211] Such advocates contend that full respect for Native American sovereignty would require the U.S. government to deal with Native American peoples in the same manner as any other sovereign nation, handling matters related to relations with Native Americans through the Secretary of State, rather than the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Bureau of Indian Affairs reports on its website that its "responsibility is the administration and management of 55,700,000 acres (225,000 km2) of land held in trust by the United States for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives".[212] Many Native Americans and advocates of Native American rights believe that it is condescending for such lands to be considered "held in trust" and regulated in any fashion by any entity other than their own tribes.
Some tribal groups have been unable to document the cultural continuity required for federal recognition. To achieve federal recognition and its benefits, tribes must prove continuous existence since 1900. The federal government has maintained this requirement, in part because through participation on councils and committees, federally recognized tribes have been adamant about groups' satisfying the same requirements as they did.[213] The Muwekma Ohlone of the San Francisco Bay Area are pursuing litigation in the federal court system to establish recognition.[214] Many of the smaller eastern tribes, long considered remnants of extinct peoples, have been trying to gain official recognition of their tribal status. Several tribes in Virginia and North Carolina have gained state recognition. Federal recognition confers some benefits, including the right to label arts and crafts as Native American and permission to apply for grants that are specifically reserved for Native Americans. But gaining federal recognition as a tribe is extremely difficult; to be established as a tribal group, members have to submit extensive genealogical proof of tribal descent and continuity of the tribe as a culture.
In July 2000, the Washington State Republican Party adopted a resolution recommending that the federal and legislative branches of the U.S. government terminate tribal governments.[215] In 2007, a group of Democratic Party congressmen and congresswomen introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to terminate Federal recognition of the Cherokee Nation.[216] This was related to their voting to exclude Cherokee Freedmen as members of the tribe unless they had a Cherokee ancestor on the Dawes Rolls, although all Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants had been members since 1866.
As of 2004, various Native Americans are wary of attempts by others to gain control of their reservation lands for natural resources, such as coal and uranium in the West.[217][218]
The State of Maine is the only State House Legislature that allows Representatives from Indian Tribes. The three nonvoting members represent the Penobscot Nation, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, and Passamaquoddy Tribe. These representatives can sponsor any legislation regarding American Indian affairs or co-sponsor any pending State of Maine legislation. Maine is unique regarding Indigenous leadership representation.[219]
In the state of Virginia, Native Americans face a unique problem. Until 2017 Virginia previously had no federally recognized tribes but the state had recognized eight. This is related historically to the greater impact of disease and warfare on the Virginia Indian populations, as well as their intermarriage with Europeans and Africans. Some people confused ancestry with culture, but groups of Virginia Indians maintained their cultural continuity. Most of their early reservations were ended under the pressure of early European settlement.
Some historians also note the problems of Virginia Indians in establishing documented continuity of identity, due to the work of Walter Ashby Plecker (1912–1946). As registrar of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics, he applied his own interpretation of the one-drop rule, enacted in law in 1924 as the state's Racial Integrity Act. It recognized only two races: "white" and "colored".
Plecker, a segregationist, believed that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" by intermarriage with African Americans; to him, ancestry determined identity, rather than culture. He thought that some people of partial black ancestry were trying to "pass" as Native Americans. Plecker thought that anyone with any African heritage had to be classified as colored, regardless of appearance, amount of European or Native American ancestry, and cultural/community identification. Plecker pressured local governments into reclassifying all Native Americans in the state as "colored" and gave them lists of family surnames to examine for reclassification based on his interpretation of data and the law. This led to the state's destruction of accurate records related to families and communities who identified as Native American (as in church records and daily life). By his actions, sometimes different members of the same family were split by being classified as "white" or "colored". He did not allow people to enter their primary identification as Native American in state records.[213] In 2009, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee endorsed a bill that would grant federal recognition to tribes in Virginia.[220]
As of 2000[update], the largest groups in the United States by population were Navajo, Cherokee, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Blackfeet, Iroquois, and Pueblo. In 2000, eight of ten Americans with Native American ancestry were of mixed ancestry. It is estimated that by 2100 that figure will rise to nine out of ten.[221]
The civil rights movement was a very significant moment for the rights of Native Americans and other people of color. Native Americans faced racism and prejudice for hundreds of years, and this increased after the American Civil War. Native Americans, like African Americans, were subjected to the Jim Crow Laws and segregation in the Deep South especially after they were made citizens through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. As a body of law, Jim Crow institutionalized economic, educational, and social disadvantages for Native Americans, and other people of color living in the south.[222][223][224] Native American identity was especially targeted by a system that only wanted to recognize white or colored, and the government began to question the legitimacy of some tribes because they had intermarried with African Americans.[222][223] Native Americans were also discriminated and discouraged from voting in the southern and western states.[224]
In the south segregation was a major problem for Native Americans seeking education, but the NAACP's legal strategy would later change this.[225] Movements such as Brown v. Board of Education was a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement headed by the NAACP, and inspired Native Americans to start participating in the Civil Rights Movement.[226][227] Martin Luther King Jr. began assisting Native Americans in the south in the late 1950s after they reached out to him.[227] At that time the remaining Creek in Alabama were trying to completely desegregate schools in their area. In this case, light-complexioned Native children were allowed to ride school buses to previously all white schools, while dark-skinned Native children from the same band were barred from riding the same buses.[227] Tribal leaders, upon hearing of King's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, contacted him for assistance. He promptly responded and, through his intervention, the problem was quickly resolved.[227] King would later make trips to Arizona visiting Native Americans on reservations, and in churches encouraging them to be involved in the Civil Rights Movement.[228] In King's book Why We Can't Wait he writes:
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.[229]
Native Americans would then actively participate and support the NAACP, and the civil rights movement.[230] The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) would soon rise in 1961 to fight for Native American rights during the Civil Rights Movement, and were strong King supporters.[231][232] During the 1963 March on Washington there was a sizable Native American contingent, including many from South Dakota, and many from the Navajo nation.[227][233] Native Americans also participated the Poor People's Campaign in 1968.[231] The NIYC were very active supporters of the Poor People's Campaign unlike the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI); the NIYC and other Native organizations met with King in March 1968 but the NCAI disagreed on how to approach the anti-poverty campaign; the NCAI decided against participating in the march.[232] The NCAI wished to pursue their battles in the courts and with Congress, unlike the NIYC.[231][232] The NAACP also inspired the creation of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) which was patterned after the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund.[227] Furthermore, the NAACP continued to organize to stop mass incarceration and end the criminalization of Native Americans and other communities of people of color.[234] The following is an excerpt from a statement from Mel Thom on May 1, 1968, during a meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk:[232] (It was written by members of the Workshop on American Indian Affairs and the NIYC)
We have joined the Poor People's Campaign because most of our families, tribes, and communities number among those suffering most in this country. We are not begging. We are demanding what is rightfully ours. This is no more than the right to have a decent life in our own communities. We need guaranteed jobs, guaranteed income, housing, schools, economic development, but most important- we want them on our own terms. Our chief spokesman in the federal government, the Department of Interior, has failed us. In fact it began failing us from its very beginning. The Interior Department began failing us because it was built upon and operates under a racist, immoral, paternalistic and colonialistic system. There is no way to improve upon racism, immorality and colonialism; it can only be done away with. The system and power structure serving Indian peoples is a sickness which has grown to epidemic proportions. The Indian system is sick. Paternalism is the virus and the secretary of the Interior is the carrier.
Native American struggles amid poverty to maintain life on the reservation or in larger society have resulted in a variety of health issues, some related to nutrition and health practices. The community suffers a vulnerability to and disproportionately high rate of alcoholism:[235]
It has long been recognized that Native Americans are dying of diabetes, alcoholism, tuberculosis, suicide, and other health conditions at shocking rates. Beyond disturbingly high mortality rates, Native Americans also suffer a significantly lower health status and disproportionate rates of disease compared with all other Americans.
— U.S. Commission on Civil Rights[236] (September 2004)
Recent studies also point to rising rates of stroke,[237] heart disease,[238] and diabetes[239] in the Native American population.
Native Americans have been subjected to discrimination for centuries. In response to being labeled "merciless Indian savages" in the Declaration of Independence, Simon Moya-Smith, culture editor at Indian Country Today, states, "Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating. [July Fourth] is a day we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions — literally millions — of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism."[240]
In a study conducted in 2006–2007, non-Native Americans admitted they rarely encountered Native Americans in their daily lives. This is largely due to the number of Native Americans having dwindled since white settler colonialism, while those who survived were forcibly moved into reservations; both of these factors were referenced by Adolf Hitler in 1928 when he admiringly stated the US had "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage".[241][242] While sympathetic toward Native Americans and expressing regret over the past, most people had only a vague understanding of the problems facing Native Americans today. For their part, Native Americans told researchers that they believed they continued to face prejudice, mistreatment, and inequality in the broader society.[243]
Federal contractors and subcontractors, such as businesses and educational institutions, are legally required to adopt equal opportunity employment and affirmative action measures intended to prevent discrimination against employees or applicants for employment on the basis of "color, religion, sex, or national origin".[244][245] For this purpose, a Native American is defined as "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains a tribal affiliation or community attachment". The passing of the Indian Relocation Act saw a 56% increase in Native American city dwellers over 40 years.[246] The Native American urban poverty rate exceeds that of reservation poverty rates due to discrimination in hiring processes.[246] However, self-reporting is permitted: "Educational institutions and other recipients should allow students and staff to self-identify their race and ethnicity unless self-identification is not practicable or feasible."[247]
Self-reporting opens the door to "box checking" by people who, despite not having a substantial relationship to Native American culture, innocently or fraudulently check the box for Native American.[248]
The difficulties that Native Americans face in the workforce, for example, a lack of promotions and wrongful terminations are attributed to racial stereotypes and implicit biases. Native American business owners are seldom offered auxiliary resources that are crucial for entrepreneurial success.[246]
Throughout history, settler colonialism has remained a violent and destructive tool to displace and exterminate Native American peoples. The use of sexual violence to perpetuate this is very common. Musocgee Creek law professor Sarah Deer highlights the high number of Native women who still experience this violence: "Since 1999 a variety of reports and studies have come to the same conclusion- namely, that Native women in particular suffer the highest rate of per capita rape in the United States." The continued acts of sexual violence against Native women have been perpetuated by colonization and the actions of colonizers. Native women through time have been portrayed as extremely sexual which only enforces sexual violence. Deer explains, "Dispossession and relocation of indigenous peoples on this continent both necessitated and precipitated a highly gendered and sexualized dynamic in which Native women's bodies became commodities- bought and sold for the purposes of sexual gratification (or profit), invariably transporting them far away from their homes."[249]
American Indian activists in the United States and Canada have criticized the use of Native American mascots in sports, as perpetuating stereotypes. This is considered cultural appropriation. There has been a steady decline in the number of secondary school and college teams using such names, images, and mascots. Some tribal team names have been approved by the tribe in question, such as the Seminole Tribe of Florida's approving use of their name for the teams of Florida State University.[250][251]
Among professional teams, the NBA's Golden State Warriors discontinued use of Native American-themed logos in 1971. The NFL's Washington Commanders, formerly the Washington Redskins, changed their name in 2020, as the term is considered to be a racial slur.[252]
MLB's Cleveland Guardians were formerly known as the Cleveland Indians. Their use of a caricature called Chief Wahoo faced protest for decades.[253][254] Starting in 2019, Chief Wahoo ceased to be a logo for Cleveland Indians, though Chief Wahoo merchandise could still be sold in the Cleveland-area.[255][256][257][258] On December 13, 2020, The New York Times reported that Cleveland would be officially changing their name.[259] On November 19, 2021, the team officially became the Cleveland Guardians.[260][261]
Native Americans have been depicted by American artists in various ways at different periods. A number of 19th- and 20th-century United States and Canadian painters, often motivated by a desire to document and preserve Native culture, specialized in Native American subjects. Among the most prominent of these were Elbridge Ayer Burbank, George Catlin, Seth Eastman, Paul Kane, W. Langdon Kihn, Charles Bird King, Joseph Henry Sharp, and John Mix Stanley.
In the 20th century, early portrayals of Native Americans in movies and television roles were first performed by European Americans dressed in mock traditional attire. Examples included The Last of the Mohicans (1920), Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957), and F Troop (1965–67). In later decades, Native American actors such as Jay Silverheels in The Lone Ranger television series (1949–57) came to prominence. The roles of Native Americans were limited and not reflective of Native American culture. By the 1970s some Native American film roles began to show more complexity, such as those in Little Big Man (1970), Billy Jack (1971), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), which depicted Native Americans in minor supporting roles.
For years, Native people on U.S. television were relegated to secondary, subordinate roles. During the years of the series Bonanza (1959–1973), no major or secondary Native characters appeared on a consistent basis. The series The Lone Ranger (1949–1957), Cheyenne (1955–1963), and Law of the Plainsman (1959–1963) had Native characters who were essentially aides to the central white characters. This continued in such series as How the West Was Won. These programs resembled the "sympathetic" yet contradictory film Dances With Wolves of 1990, in which, according to Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, the narrative choice was to relate the Lakota story as told through a Euro-American voice, for wider impact among a general audience.[262]Like the 1992 remake of The Last of the Mohicans and Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Dances with Wolves employed a number of Native American actors, and made an effort to portray Indigenous languages. In 1996, Plains Cree actor Michael Greyeyes would play renowned Native American warrior Crazy Horse in the 1996 television film Crazy Horse,[263] and would also later play renowned Sioux chief Sitting Bull in the 2017 movie Woman Walks Ahead.[264]
The 1998 film Smoke Signals, which was set on the Coeur D'Alene Reservation and discussed hardships of present-day American Indian families living on reservations, featured numerous Native American actors as well.[265] The film was the first feature film to be produced and directed by Native Americans, and was also the first feature to include an exclusive Native American cast.[265] At the annual Sundance Film Festival, Smoke Signals would win the Audience Award and its producer Chris Eyre, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, would win the Filmmaker's Trophy.[266] In 2009, We Shall Remain (2009), a television documentary by Ric Burns and part of the American Experience series, presented a five-episode series "from a Native American perspective". It represented "an unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers and involves Native advisors and scholars at all levels of the project".[267] The five episodes explore the impact of King Philip's War on the northeastern tribes, the "Native American confederacy" of Tecumseh's War, the U.S.-forced relocation of Southeastern tribes known as the Trail of Tears, the pursuit and capture of Geronimo and the Apache Wars, and concludes with the Wounded Knee incident, participation by the American Indian Movement, and the increasing resurgence of modern Native cultures since.
The most common of the modern terms to refer to Indigenous peoples of the United States are Indians, American Indians, and Native Americans. Up to the early to mid 18th century, the term Americans was not applied to people of European heritage in North America. Instead it was equivalent to the term Indians. As people of European heritage began using the term Americans to refer instead to themselves, the word Indians became historically the most often employed term.[268]
The term Indians, long laden with racist stereotypes, began to be widely replaced in the 1960s with the term Native Americans, which recognized the Indigeneity of the people who first made the Americas home. But as the term Native Americans became popular, the American Indian Movement saw pejorative connotations in the term native and reappropriated the term Indian, seeing it as witness to the history of violence against the many nations that lived in the Americas before European arrival.[269]
The term Native American was introduced in the United States in preference to the older term Indian to distinguish the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from the people of India. It may have been coined by Mohican Sachem John Wannuaucon Quinney, in an 1852 address to the US Congress where he argued against proposed resettlement.[270]
The term Amerindian, a portmanteau of "American Indian", was coined in 1902 by the American Anthropological Association. However, it has been controversial since its creation. It was immediately rejected by some leading members of the Association, and, while adopted by many, it was never universally accepted.[271] While never popular in Indigenous communities themselves, it remains a preferred term among some anthropologists, notably in some parts of Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean.[272][273][274][275]
During World War II, draft boards typically classified American Indians from Virginia as Negroes.[276][277]
In 1995, a plurality of Indigenous Americans, however, preferred the term American Indian[278] and many tribes include the word Indian in their formal title.
Criticism of the neologism Native American comes from diverse sources. Russell Means, an Oglala Lakota activist, opposed the term Native American because he believed it was imposed by the government without the consent of Native people.[279]
A 1995 U.S. Census Bureau survey found that more Native Americans in the United States preferred American Indian to Native American.[278] Most American Indians are comfortable with Indian, American Indian, and Native American.[280] That term is reflected in the name chosen for the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004 on the Mall in Washington, DC.
Other commonly used terms are First Americans, First Nations, and Native Peoples.[281]
Colonial ecological violence, defined by sociologist J. M. Bacon as the result of eco-social disruptions that "generate colonial ecological violence, a unique form of violence perpetrated by the settler-colonial state, private industry, and settler-colonial culture as a whole."[282] The relocation and displacement of Native peoples is a result of the colonizer mindset that land is a commodity. By removing these communities from their Native land, settlers are preventing the ways of life and the use of culture-affirming resources. Gilio-Whitaker, highlights some of the ways in which these practices are reinforced, with the concept of environmental deprivation – "historical processes of land and resource dispossession calculated to bring about the destruction of Indigenous lives and cultures." The reason these lands are so important to Native populations is because, “Since a strong component of many Indigenous cultures is a robust relationship to place, it serves to reason that forced removals, settler resource appropriation, and the ecological damage perpetuated by US settle colonial society contribute to significant "conflict" between "traditional cultural values" and "those of majority culture".[283]
The Karuk tribe in Klamath, California are one of the many victims to colonial ecological violence. One of the major ways of life to the Karuk tribe is the use of fires to maintain and regulate their environment. Sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard goes into detail about how colonialism disrupted these ways of life. These fires were also used to correct travel routes and optimized hunting, which is a major part of Karuk life. In 1905, the Klamath National Forest was established which prevented the burning of fires on Karuk land- "Fire exclusion, then, has simultaneously produced indigenous exclusion, erasure, and replacement." Norgaard explains that this land is one of the most economically wealthy spots due to the establishment of the forest, which only further demonstrates the ways in which settler-colonialism enables and continues to negatively impact the land that Indigenous people live(d) on.[284]
The Potawatomi tribe had long occupied the Great Lakes region of Northern America, up until they were displaced and spread out around the US. They had previously lived on 30 million acres of land, building cultural, familial, and other-than-human relationships for generations. (Whyte, 2016) Citizen Potawatomi environmental philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte highlights the ways in which this displacement has had violent and detrimental impacts on the tribe. “The consequences of capitalist economics, such as deforestation, water pollution, the clearing of land for large scale agriculture and urbanization, generate immediate disruptions on ecosystems "rapidly" rendering them very different from what they were like before, undermining Indigenous knowledge systems and Indigenous peoples' capacity to cultivate landscapes and adjust to environmental change.”[285]
The Miami tribe, which now occupies Oklahoma, once resided in Oxford, Ohio, where Miami University now is placed. Historian Jeffrey Ostler provides insight into the forced movement of the Miami tribe off their land. In 1818, the tribe agreed to give up a large amount of land to U.S. officials (enough to create twenty-two Indiana counties. It was not until 1826 that Lewis Cass informed them and nearby Potawatomi, "You must remove or perish."[24] This plan did not work, but the officials persisted and eventually the Miami tribe would be forced off their land in 1846. Miami University has a land acknowledgement document and a center dedicated to working with the Miami tribe of Oklahoma, though this is the only tribe from the original Miami tribe that is accredited by the U.S. government.[286]
Because Indian reservations have tribal sovereignty, states have limited ability to forbid gambling there, as codified by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. Tribes run casinos, bingo halls, and other gambling operations, and as of 2011, there were 460 such operations run by 240 tribes,[287] with a total annual revenue of $27 billion.[288]
Numerous tribes around the country have entered the financial services market including the Otoe-Missouria, Tunica-Biloxi, and the Rosebud Sioux. Because of the challenges involved in starting a financial services business from scratch, many tribes hire outside consultants and vendors to help them launch these businesses and manage the regulatory issues involved. Similar to the tribal sovereignty debates that occurred when tribes first entered the gaming industry, the tribes, states, and federal government are currently in disagreement regarding who possesses the authority to regulate these e-commerce business entities.[289]
Prosecution of serious crime, historically endemic on reservations,[290][291] was required by the 1885 Major Crimes Act,[292] 18 U.S.C. §§1153, 3242, and court decisions to be investigated by the federal government, usually the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and prosecuted by United States Attorneys of the United States federal judicial district in which the reservation lies.[293][294][295][296][297]
A December 13, 2009 New York Times article about growing gang violence on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation estimated that there were 39 gangs with 5,000 members on that reservation alone.[298] Navajo country recently reported 225 gangs in its territory.[299]
As of 2012, a high incidence of rape continued to impact Native American women and Alaskan native women. According to the Department of Justice, 1 in 3 Native women have suffered rape or attempted rape, more than twice the national rate.[300] About 46 percent of Native American women have been raped, beaten, or stalked by an intimate partner, according to a 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control.[301] According to Professor N. Bruce Duthu, "More than 80 percent of Indian victims identify their attacker as non-Indian".[302][303]
Today, other than tribes successfully running casinos, many tribes struggle, as they are often located on reservations isolated from the main economic centers of the country. The estimated 2.1 million Native Americans are the most impoverished of all ethnic groups. According to the 2000 census, an estimated 400,000 Native Americans reside on reservation land. While some tribes have had success with gaming, only 40% of the 562 federally recognized tribes operate casinos.[304] According to a 2007 survey by the U.S. Small Business Administration, only 1% of Native Americans own and operate a business.[305]
The barriers to economic development on Native American reservations have been identified by Joseph Kalt[306] and Stephen Cornell[307] of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University, in their report: What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development (2008),[308] are summarized as follows:
A major barrier to development is the lack of entrepreneurial knowledge and experience within Indian reservations. "A general lack of education and experience about business is a significant challenge to prospective entrepreneurs", was the report on Native American entrepreneurship by the Northwest Area Foundation in 2004. "Native American communities that lack entrepreneurial traditions and recent experiences typically do not provide the support that entrepreneurs need to thrive. Consequently, experiential entrepreneurship education needs to be embedded into school curriculum and after-school and other community activities. This would allow students to learn the essential elements of entrepreneurship from a young age and encourage them to apply these elements throughout life".[310]
Some scholars argue that the existing theories and practices of economic development are not suitable for Native American communities—given the lifestyle, economic, and cultural differences, as well as the unique history of Native American-U.S. relations.[309] Little economic development research has been conducted on Native American communities. The federal government fails to consider place-based issues of American Indian poverty by generalizing the demographic.[309][311] In addition, the concept of economic development threatens to upend the multidimensionality of Native American culture.[309] The dominance of federal government involvement in Indigenous developmental activities perpetuates and exacerbates the salvage paradigm.[309]
Native land owned by individual Native Americans sometimes cannot be developed because of fractionalization. Fractionalization occurs when a landowner dies, and their land is inherited by their children, but not subdivided. This means that one parcel might be owned by 50 different individuals. A majority of those holding interest must agree to any proposal to develop the land, and establishing this consent is time-consuming, cumbersome, and sometimes impossible.
Another landownership issue on reservations is checkerboarding, where tribal land is interspersed with land owned by the federal government on behalf of Natives, individually owned plots, and land owned by non-Native individuals. This prevents Tribal governments from securing plots of land large enough for economic development or agricultural uses.[312] Because reservation land is owned "in trust" by the federal government, individuals living on reservations cannot build equity in their homes. This bars Native Americans from getting loans, as there is nothing that a bank can collect if the loan is not paid. Past efforts to encourage land ownership (such as the Dawes Act) resulted in a net loss of Tribal land. After they were familiarized with their smallholder status, Native American landowners were lifted of trust restrictions and their land would get transferred back to them, contingent on a transactional fee to the federal government. The transfer fee discouraged Native American land ownership, with 65% of tribal-owned land being sold to non-Native Americans by the 1920s.[313] Activists against property rights point to historical evidence of communal ownership of land and resources by tribes. They claim that because of this history, property rights are foreign to Natives and have no place in the modern reservation system. Those in favor of property rights cite examples of tribes negotiating with colonial communities or other tribes about fishing and hunting rights in an area.[314] Land ownership was also a challenge because of the different definitions of land that the Natives and the Europeans had.[315] Most Native American tribes thought of property rights more as "borrowing" the land, while those from Europe thought of land as individual property.[316]
State-level efforts such as the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act were attempts to contain tribal land in Native American hands. However, more bureaucratic decisions only expanded the bureaucracy. The knowledge disconnect between the decision-making bureaucracy and Native American stakeholders resulted in ineffective development efforts.[311][313]
Traditional Native American entrepreneurship does not prioritize profit maximization; rather, business transactions must align with Native American social and cultural values.[317] In response to Indigenous business philosophy, the federal government created policies that aimed to formalize their business practices, which undermined the Native American status quo.[313] Additionally, legal disputes interfered with tribal land leasing, which were settled with the verdict against tribal sovereignty.[318]
Often, bureaucratic overseers of development are far removed from Native American communities and lack the knowledge and understanding to develop plans or make resource allocation decisions.[311] The top-down heavy involvement in developmental operations, does not mitigate incentives for bureaucrats to act in their self-interest. Such instances include reports that exaggerate results.[311]
While Native American urban poverty is attributed to hiring and workplace discrimination in a heterogeneous setting,[246] reservation and trust land poverty rates are endogenous to deserted opportunities in isolated regions.[319]
Historical trauma is described as collective emotional and psychological damage throughout a person's lifetime and across multiple generations.[320] Examples of historical trauma can be seen through the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, where over 200 unarmed Lakota were killed,[321] and the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, when American Indians lost four-fifths of their land.[322]
American Indian youth have higher rates of substance and alcohol use deaths than the general population.[323] Many American Indians can trace the beginning of their substance and alcohol use to a traumatic event related to their offender's own substance use.[324] A person's substance use can be described as a defense mechanism against the user's emotions and trauma.[325] For American Indians alcoholism is a symptom of trauma passed from generation to generation and influenced by oppressive behaviors and policies by the dominant European-American society.[326] Boarding schools were made to "Kill the Indian, Save the man".[327] Shame among American Indians can be attributed to the hundreds of years of oppression and annihilation.[325]
.JPG/1280px-Native_food_demonstration,_table_filled_with_wooden_bowls_of_beans,_grains,_and_produce_(23de14d7-eb2b-439c-b06f-9338dcb79f75).JPG)
Studies are being conducted which show Native Americans often experience higher rates of food insecurity than other racial groups in the United States. The studies do not focus on the overall picture of Native American households, however, and tend to focus rather on smaller sample sizes in the available research.[328] In a study that evaluated the level of food insecurity among Indigenous Americans, White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian: it was reported that over the 10-year span of 2000–2010, Indigenous people were reported to be one of the highest at-risk groups from a lack of access to adequate food, reporting anywhere from 20% to 30% of households suffering from this type of insecurity. There are many reasons that contribute to the issue, but overall, the biggest lie in high food costs on or near reservations, lack of access to well-paying jobs, and predisposition to health issues relating to obesity and mental health.[329]
The culture of Pre-Columbian North America is usually defined by the concept of the culture area, namely a geographical region where shared cultural traits occur. The northwest culture area, for example, shared common traits such as salmon fishing, woodworking, and large villages or towns and a hierarchical social structure.[330] Ethnographers generally classify the Indigenous peoples of North America into ten cultural areas based on geographical region.
Though cultural features, language, clothing, and customs vary enormously from one tribe to another, there are certain elements which are encountered frequently and shared by many tribes. Early European American scholars described the Native Americans as having a society dominated by clans.[331]
European colonization of the Americas had a major impact on Native American cultures through what is known as the Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, which was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas and Eurasia (the Old World) in the 15th and 16th centuries, following Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage.[332] The Columbian exchange generally had a destructive impact on Native American cultures through disease, and a 'clash of cultures',[333] whereby European values of private land ownership, the family, and division of labor, led to conflict, appropriation of traditional communal lands and changed how the Indigenous tribes practiced slavery.[333]
The impact of the Columbian exchange was not entirely negative, however. For example, the re-introduction of the horse to North America allowed the Plains Indians to revolutionize their ways of life by making hunting, trading, and warfare far more effective, and to greatly improve their ability to transport possessions and move their settlements.[334]
The Great Plains tribes were still hunting the bison when they first encountered the Europeans. The Spanish reintroduction of the horse to North America in the 17th century and Native Americans' learning to use them greatly altered the Native Americans' cultures, including changing the way in which they hunted large game. Horses became such a valuable, central element of Native lives that they were counted as a measure of wealth by many tribes.
In the early years, as Native peoples encountered European explorers and settlers and engaged in trade, they exchanged food, crafts, and furs for blankets, iron and steel implements, horses, trinkets, firearms, and alcoholic beverages.
The Na-Dené, Algic, and Uto-Aztecan families are the largest in terms of the number of languages. Uto-Aztecan has the most speakers (1.95 million) if the languages in Mexico are considered (mostly due to 1.5 million speakers of Nahuatl); Na-Dené comes in second with approximately 200,000 speakers (nearly 180,000 of these are speakers of Navajo), and Algic in third with about 180,000 speakers (mainly Cree and Ojibwe). Na-Dené and Algic have the widest geographic distributions: Algic currently spans from northeastern Canada across much of the continent down to northeastern Mexico (due to later migrations of the Kickapoo) with two outliers in California (Yurok and Wiyot); Na-Dené spans from Alaska and western Canada through Washington, Oregon, and California to the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico (with one outlier in the Plains). Several families consist of only 2 or 3 languages. Demonstrating genetic relationships has proved difficult due to the great linguistic diversity present in North America. Two large (super-) family proposals, Penutian and Hokan have potential. However, even after decades of research, a large number of families remain.[citation needed]
Words used in English have been derived from Native American languages.
To counteract a shift to English, some Native American tribes have initiated language immersion schools for children, where an Indigenous American language is the medium of instruction. For example, the Cherokee Nation initiated a 10-year language preservation plan that involved raising new fluent speakers of the Cherokee language from childhood on up through school immersion programs as well as a collaborative community effort to continue to use the language at home.[335] This plan was part of an ambitious goal that, in 50 years, will result in 80% or more of the Cherokee people being fluent in the language.[336] The Cherokee Preservation Foundation has invested $3 million in opening schools, training teachers, and developing curricula for language education, as well as initiating community gatherings where the language can be actively used.[336] Formed in 2006, the Kituwah Preservation & Education Program (KPEP) on the Qualla Boundary focuses on language immersion programs for children from birth to fifth grade, developing cultural resources for the general public and community language programs to foster the Cherokee language among adults.[337]
There is also a Cherokee language immersion school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, that educates students from pre-school through eighth grade.[338] Because Oklahoma's official language is English, Cherokee immersion students are hindered when taking state-mandated tests because they have little competence in English.[339] The Department of Education of Oklahoma said that in 2012 state tests: 11% of the school's sixth-graders showed proficiency in math, and 25% showed proficiency in reading; 31% of the seventh-graders showed proficiency in math, and 87% showed proficiency in reading; 50% of the eighth-graders showed proficiency in math, and 78% showed proficiency in reading.[339] The Oklahoma Department of Education listed the charter school as a Targeted Intervention school, meaning the school was identified as a low-performing school but has not so that it was a Priority School.[339] Ultimately, the school made a C, or a 2.33 grade point average on the state's A-F report card system.[339] The report card shows the school getting an F in mathematics achievement and mathematics growth, a C in social studies achievement, a D in reading achievement, and an A in reading growth and student attendance.[339] "The C we made is tremendous", said school principal Holly Davis, "[t]here is no English instruction in our school's younger grades, and we gave them this test in English."[339] She said she had anticipated the low grade because it was the school's first year as a state-funded charter school, and many students had difficulty with English.[339] Eighth graders who graduate from the Tahlequah immersion school are fluent speakers of the language, and they usually go on to attend Sequoyah High School where classes are taught in both English and Cherokee.
Historical diets of Native Americans differed dramatically from region to region. Different peoples might have relied more heavily on agriculture, horticulture, hunting, fishing, or gathering wild plants and fungi. Tribes developed diets best suited to their environments.
Iñupiat, Yupiit, Unangan, and fellow Alaska Natives fished, hunted, and harvested wild plants, but did not rely on agriculture. Coastal peoples relied more heavily on sea mammals, fish, and fish eggs, while inland peoples hunted caribou and moose.[340] Alaskan Natives prepared and preserved dried and smoked meat and fish.
Pacific Northwest tribes crafted seafaring dugout canoes 40–50 feet (12–15 m) long for fishing. In the Eastern Woodlands, early peoples independently invented agricultural and by 1800 BCE developed the crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, which include squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera), sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus), goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri), and marsh elder (Iva annua var. macrocarpa).[341][342]
The Sonoran desert region including parts of Arizona and California, part of a region known as Aridoamerica, relied heavily on the tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius) as a staple crop. This and other desert crops, mesquite bead pods, tunas (prickly pear fruit), cholla buds, saguaro cactus fruit, and acorns are being actively promoted today by Tohono O'odham Community Action.[343] In the Southwest, some communities developed irrigation techniques while others, such as the Hopi dry-farmed. They filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent droughts.
Maize or corn, first cultivated in what is now Mexico was traded north into Aridoamerica and Oasisamerica, southwest. From there, maize cultivation spread throughout the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands by 200 CE. Native farmers practiced polycropping maize, beans, and squash; these crops are known as the Three Sisters. The beans would replace the nitrogen, which the maize leached from the ground, as well as using corn stalks for support for climbing. The deficiencies of a diet heavily dependent on maize were mitigated by the common practice among Native Americans of converting maize kernels into hominy in a process called Nixtamalization.[344]
The agriculture gender roles of the Native Americans varied from region to region. In the Southwest area, men prepared the soil with hoes. The women were in charge of planting, weeding, and harvesting the crops. In most other regions, the women were in charge of most agriculture, including clearing the land. Clearing the land was an immense chore since the Native Americans rotated fields.
Europeans in the eastern part of the continent observed that Native Americans cleared large areas for cropland. Their fields in New England sometimes covered hundreds of acres. Colonists in Virginia noted thousands of acres under cultivation by Native Americans.[345]
Early farmers commonly used tools such as the hoe, maul, and dibber. The hoe was the main tool used to till the land and prepare it for planting; then it was used for weeding. The first versions were made out of wood and stone. When the settlers brought iron, Native Americans switched to iron hoes and hatchets. The dibber was a digging stick, used to plant the seed. Once the plants were harvested, women prepared the produce for eating. They used the maul to grind the corn into a mash. It was cooked and eaten that way or baked as cornbread.[346]
Native American religious practices, beliefs, and philosophies differ widely across tribes. These spiritualities, practices, beliefs, and philosophies may accompany adherence to another faith or can represent a person's primary religious, faith, spiritual or philosophical identity. Much Native American spirituality exists in a tribal-cultural continuum, and as such cannot be easily separated from tribal identity itself.
Cultural spiritual, philosophical, and faith ways differ from tribe to tribe and person to person. Some tribes include the use of sacred leaves and herbs such as tobacco, sweetgrass or sage. Many Plains tribes have sweatlodge ceremonies, though the specifics of the ceremony vary among tribes. Fasting, singing and prayer in the ancient languages of their people, and sometimes drumming are common.[347]
_-_interior,_statue_of_Saint_Kateri_Tekakwitha.jpg/1280px-Saint_John_Neumann_Catholic_Church_(Sunbury,_Ohio)_-_interior,_statue_of_Saint_Kateri_Tekakwitha.jpg)
The Midewiwin Lodge is a medicine society inspired by the oral history and prophesies of the Ojibwa (Chippewa) and related tribes.
Another significant religious body among Native peoples is known as the Native American Church. It is a syncretistic church incorporating elements of Native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from Christianity. Its main rite is the peyote ceremony. Prior to 1890, traditional religious beliefs included Wakan Tanka. In the American Southwest, especially New Mexico, a syncretism between the Catholicism brought by Spanish missionaries and the native religion is common; the religious drums, chants, and dances of the Pueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral.[348] Native American-Catholic syncretism is also found elsewhere in the United States. (e.g., the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, New York, and the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York). Some Native American tribes who practice Christianity, including the Lumbee, organized denominations, such as the Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist Church.[349]
The eagle feather law (Title 50 Part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations) stipulates that only individuals of certifiable Native American ancestry enrolled in a federally recognized tribe are legally authorized to obtain eagle feathers for religious or spiritual use. The law does not allow Native Americans to give eagle feathers to non-Native Americans.[350]
Gender roles are differentiated in many Native American tribes. Many Natives have retained traditional expectations of sexuality and gender and continue to do so in contemporary life despite continued and on-going colonial pressures.[351]
Whether a particular tribe is predominantly matrilineal or patrilineal, often both sexes have some degree of decision-making power within the tribe. Many Nations, such as the Haudenosaunee Five Nations and the Southeast Muskogean tribes, have matrilineal or Clan Mother systems, in which property and hereditary leadership are controlled by and passed through the maternal lines.[352] In these Nations, the children are considered to belong to the mother's clan. In Cherokee culture, women own the family property. When traditional young women marry, their husbands may join them in their mother's household.
Matrilineal structures enable young women to have assistance in childbirth and rearing and protect them in case of conflicts between the couple. If a couple separates or the man dies, the woman has her family to assist her. In matrilineal cultures the mother's brothers are usually the leading male figures in her children's lives; fathers have no standing in their wife and children's clan, as they still belong to their own mother's clan. Hereditary clan chief positions pass through the mother's line and chiefs have historically been selected on the recommendations of women elders, who could also disapprove of a chief.[352]
In the patrilineal tribes, such as the Omaha, Osage, Ponca, and Lakota, hereditary leadership passes through the male line, and children are considered to belong to the father and his clan. In patrilineal tribes, if a woman marries a non-Native, she is no longer considered part of the tribe, and her children are considered to share the ethnicity and culture of their father.[353]
In patriarchal tribes, gender roles tend to be rigid. Men have historically hunted, traded and made war while, as life-givers, women have primary responsibility for the survival and welfare of the families (and future of the tribe). Women usually gather and cultivate plants, use plants and herbs to treat illnesses, care for the young and the elderly, make all the clothing and instruments, and process and cure meat and skins from the game. Some mothers use cradleboards to carry an infant while working or traveling.[354] In matriarchal and egalitarian nations, the gender roles are usually not so clear-cut and are even less so in the modern era.[351]
At least several dozen tribes allowed polygyny to sisters, with procedural and economic limits.[331]
Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota girls are encouraged to learn to ride, hunt and fight.[355] Though fighting in war has mostly been left to the boys and men, occasionally women have fought as well, both in battles and in defense of the home, especially if the tribe was severely threatened.[356]
As of 2020[update] 90% of Native American school-aged children attend public schools operated by school districts.[357] Tribally-operated schools under contracts/grants with the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and direct BIE-operated schools take about 8% of Native American students,[358] including students who live in very rural remote areas.[357]
In 1978, 215,000 (78%) of Native Americans attended school district-operated public schools, 47,000 (17%) attended schools directly operated by the BIA, 2,500 (1%) attended tribal or other schools that contracted with the BIA, and the remaining 9,000 (3%) attended missionary schools for Native American children or other private schools.[359]
Native American leisure time led to competitive individual and team sports. Jim Thorpe, Lewis Tewanima, Joe Hipp, Notah Begay III, Chris Wondolowski, Jacoby Ellsbury, Joba Chamberlain, Kyle Lohse, Sam Bradford, Jack Brisco, Tommy Morrison, Billy Mills, Angel Goodrich, Shoni Schimmel, and Kyrie Irving are well known professional athletes.
Native American ball sports, sometimes referred to as lacrosse, stickball, or baggataway, were often used to settle disputes, rather than going to war, as a civil way to settle potential conflict. The Choctaw called it isitoboli ("Little Brother of War");[360] the Onondaga name was dehuntshigwa'es ("men hit a rounded object"). There are three basic versions, classified as Great Lakes, Iroquoian, and Southern.[361]
The game is played with one or two rackets or sticks and one ball. The object of the game is to land the ball in the opposing team's goal (either a single post or net) to score and to prevent the opposing team from scoring on your goal. The game involves as few as 20 or as many as 300 players with no height or weight restrictions and no protective gear. The goals could be from around 200 feet (61 m) apart to about 2 miles (3.2 km); in lacrosse the field is 110 yards (100 m).
Chunkey was a game that consisted of a stone-shaped disk that was about 1–2 inches in diameter. The disk was thrown down a 200-foot (61 m) corridor so that it could roll past the players at great speed. The disk would roll down the corridor, and players would throw wooden shafts at the moving disk. The object of the game was to strike the disk or prevent your opponents from hitting it.
Jim Thorpe, a Sauk and Fox Native American, was an all-around athlete playing football and baseball in the early 20th century. Future President Dwight Eisenhower injured his knee while trying to tackle the young Thorpe. In a 1961 speech, Eisenhower recalled Thorpe: "Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw."[362]
In the 1912 Olympics, Thorpe could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat, the 220 in 21.8 seconds, the 440 in 51.8 seconds, the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35, the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds, and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds.[363] He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in.[363] He could pole vault 11 feet (3.4 m), put the shot 47 ft 9 in (14.55 m), throw the javelin 163 feet (50 m), and throw the discus 136 feet (41 m).[363] Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for the pentathlon and the decathlon.
Louis Tewanima, Hopi people, was an American two-time Olympic distance runner and silver medalist in the 10,000-meter run in 1912. He ran for the Carlisle Indian School where he was a teammate of Jim Thorpe. His silver medal in 1912 remained the best U.S. achievement in this event until another Indian, Billy Mills, won the gold medal in 1964. Tewanima also competed at the 1908 Olympics, where he finished in ninth place in the marathon.[1]
Ellison Brown, of the Narragansett people from Rhode Island, better known as "Tarzan" Brown, won two Boston Marathons (1936, 1939) and competed on the United States Olympic team in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, but did not finish due to injury. He qualified for the 1940 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, but the games were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II.
Billy Mills, a Lakota and USMC officer, won the gold medal in the 10,000-meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He was the only American ever to win the Olympic gold in this event. An unknown before the Olympics, Mills finished second in the U.S. Olympic trials.
Billy Kidd, part Abenaki from Vermont, became the first American male to medal in alpine skiing in the Olympics, taking silver at age 20 in the slalom in the 1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria. Six years later at the 1970 World Championships, Kidd won the gold medal in the combined event and took the bronze medal in the slalom.
Ashton Locklear (Lumbee), an uneven bars specialist was an alternate for the 2016 Summer Olympics U.S. gymnastics team, the Final Five.[364] In 2016, Kyrie Irving (Sioux) also helped Team USA win the gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics. With the win, he became just the fourth member of Team USA to capture the NBA championship and an Olympic gold medal in the same year, joining LeBron James, Michael Jordan, and Scottie Pippen.[365]
Native American literature, composed of both oral literature and written literature, has a long history. Relevantly, it is considered a series of literatures reflecting the varied traditions and histories of different tribes. Modern authors cover a wide range of genres and include Tommy Orange, Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, Stephen Graham Jones, Rebecca Roanhorse, Tommy Pico, and many more.
Traditional Native American music is almost entirely monophonic, but there are notable exceptions. Native American music often includes drumming or the playing of rattles or other percussion instruments but little other instrumentation. Flutes and whistles made of wood, cane, or bone are also played, generally by individuals, but in former times also by large ensembles (as noted by Spanish conquistador de Soto). The tuning of modern flutes is typically pentatonic.
Performers with Native American parentage have occasionally appeared in American popular music such as Rita Coolidge, Wayne Newton, Gene Clark, Blackfoot, and Redbone (members are also of Mexican descent). Some, such as John Trudell, have used music to comment on life in Native America. Other musicians such as R. Carlos Nakai, Joanne Shenandoah and Robert "Tree" Cody integrate traditional sounds with modern sounds in instrumental recordings, whereas the music by artist Charles Littleleaf is derived from ancestral heritage as well as nature. A variety of small and medium-sized recording companies offer an abundance of recent music by Native American performers young and old, ranging from pow-wow drum music to hard-driving rock-and-roll and rap. In the International world of ballet dancing Maria Tallchief was considered America's first major prima ballerina,[366] and was the first person of Native American descent to hold the rank.[367] along with her sister Marjorie Tallchief both became star ballerinas.
The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans in the United States is that of the pow-wow. At pow-wows, such as the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, members of drum groups sit in a circle around a large drum. Drum groups play in unison while they sing in a native language and dancers in colorful regalia dance clockwise around the drum groups in the center. Familiar pow-wow songs include honor songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. Most Indigenous communities in the United States also maintain traditional songs and ceremonies, some of which are shared and practiced exclusively within the community.[368]
The Iroquois, living around the Great Lakes and extending east and north, used strings or belts called wampum that served a dual function: the knots and beaded designs mnemonically chronicled tribal stories and legends, and further served as a medium of exchange and a unit of measure. The keepers of the articles were seen as tribal dignitaries.[369]
Pueblo peoples crafted impressive items associated with their religious ceremonies. Kachina dancers wore elaborately painted and decorated masks as they ritually impersonated various ancestral spirits.[370] Pueblo people are particularly noted for their traditional high-quality pottery, often with geometric designs and floral, animal and bird motifs.[371] Sculpture was not highly developed, but carved stone and wood fetishes were made for religious use. Superior weaving, embroidered decorations, and rich dyes characterized the textile arts. Both turquoise and shell jewelry were created, as were formalized pictorial arts.[372]
Navajo spirituality focused on the maintenance of a harmonious relationship with the spirit world, often achieved by ceremonial acts, usually incorporating sandpainting. For the Navajo, the sand painting is not merely a representational object, but a dynamic spiritual entity with a life of its own, which helped the patient at the center of the ceremony re-establish a connection with the life force. These vivid, intricate, and colorful sand creations were erased at the end of the healing ceremony.[373]
It has been estimated that the Native American arts and crafts industry brings in more than a billion USD in gross sales annually, nationwide.[374]
Native American art comprises a major category in the world art collection. Native American contributions include pottery, paintings, jewellery, weavings, sculpture, basketry, and carvings. Franklin Gritts was a Cherokee artist who taught students from many tribes at Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University) in the 1940s, the Golden Age of Native American painters. The integrity of certain Native American artworks is protected by the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, which prohibits the representation of art as Native American when it is not the product of an enrolled Native American artist. Attorney Gail Sheffield and others claim that this law has had "the unintended consequence of sanctioning discrimination against Native Americans whose tribal affiliation was not officially recognized".[375] Native artists such as Jeanne Rorex Bridges (Echota Cherokee) who was not enrolled ran the risk of fines or imprisonment if they continued to sell their art while affirming their Indian heritage.[376][377][378]
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Interracial relations between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans is a complex issue that has been mostly neglected with "few in-depth studies on interracial relationships".[379][380]
European impact was immediate, widespread, and profound already during the early years of colonization and the creation of the countries which currently exist in the Americas. Europeans living among Native Americans were often called "white indians". They "lived in native communities for years, learned native languages fluently, attended native councils, and often fought alongside their native companions".[381]
Early contact was often charged with tension and emotion, but also had moments of friendship, cooperation, and intimacy.[382] Marriages took place in English, French, Russian and Spanish colonies between Native Americans and Europeans though Native American women were also the victims of rape.[383]
There was fear on both sides, as the different peoples realized how different their societies were.[382] Many whites regarded Native people as "savages" because the Native people were not Protestant or Roman Catholic and therefore the Native people were not considered to be human beings.[382] The Native American author, Andrew J. Blackbird, wrote in his History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan (1897), that white settlers introduced some immoralities into Native American tribes. Many Native Americans suffered because the Europeans introduced alcohol. Many Native people do not break down alcohol in the same way as people of Eurasian background. Many Native people were learning what their body could tolerate of this new substance and died as a result of imbibing too much.[382]
Blackbird wrote:
The Ottawas and Chippewas were quite virtuous in their primitive state, as there were no illegitimate children reported in our old traditions. But very lately this evil came to exist among the Ottawas-so lately that the second case among the Ottawas of 'Arbor Croche' is yet living in 1897. And from that time this evil came to be quite frequent, for immorality has been introduced among these people by evil white persons who bring their vices into the tribes.[382]
The U.S. government had two purposes when making land agreements with Native Americans: to open up more land for white settlement,[382] and to "ease tensions" (in other words assimilate Native people to Eurasian social ways) between whites and Native Americans by forcing the Native Americans to use the land in the same way as did the whites—for subsistence farms.[382] The government used a variety of strategies to achieve these goals; many treaties required Native Americans to become farmers in order to keep their land.[382] Government officials often did not translate the documents which Native Americans were forced to sign, and native chiefs often had little or no idea what they were signing.[382]
For a Native American man to marry a white woman, he had to get consent of her parents, as long as "he can prove to support her as a white woman in a good home".[386] In the early 19th century, the Shawnee Tecumseh and blonde hair, blue-eyed Rebecca Galloway had an interracial affair. In the late 19th century, three European American middle-class women teachers at Hampton Institute married Native American men whom they had met as students.[387]
As European American women started working independently at missions and Indian schools in the western states, there were more opportunities for their meeting and developing relationships with Native American men. For instance, Charles Eastman, a man of European and Lakota origin whose father sent both his sons to Dartmouth College, got his medical degree at Boston University and returned to the West to practice. He married Elaine Goodale, whom he met in South Dakota. He was the grandson of Seth Eastman, a military officer from Maine, and a chief's daughter. Goodale was a young European American teacher from Massachusetts and a reformer, who was appointed as the U.S. superintendent of Native American education for the reservations in the Dakota Territory. They had six children together.
The majority of Native American tribes did practice some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America, but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. Most Native American tribes did not barter captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved individuals with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for their own members.[388] When Europeans arrived as colonists in North America, Native Americans changed their practice of slavery dramatically. Native Americans began selling war captives to Europeans rather than integrating them into their own societies as they had done before. As the demand for labor in the West Indies grew with the cultivation of sugar cane, Europeans enslaved Native Americans for the Thirteen Colonies, and some were exported to the "sugar islands". The British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, purchased or captured Native Americans to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. Accurate records of the numbers enslaved do not exist because vital statistics and census reports were at best infrequent.[389] Scholars estimate tens to hundreds of thousands of Native Americans may have been enslaved by the Europeans, being sold by Native Americans themselves or Europeans.[390][391]
In Colonial America, slavery soon became racialized, with those enslaved by the institution consisting of ethnic groups (non-Christian Native Americans and Africans) who were foreign to the Christian, European colonists. The House of Burgesses define the terms of slavery in Virginia in 1705:
All servants imported and brought into the Country ... who were not Christians in their native Country ... shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion ... shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master ... correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction ... the master shall be free of all punishment ... as if such accident never happened.
— Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705[392]
The slave trade of Native Americans lasted only until around 1750. It gave rise to a series of devastating wars among the tribes, including the Yamasee War. The Indian Wars of the early 18th century, combined with the increasing importation of African slaves, effectively ended the Native American slave trade by 1750. Colonists found that Native American slaves could easily escape, as they knew the country. The wars cost the lives of numerous colonial slave traders and disrupted their early societies. The remaining Native American groups banded together to face the Europeans from a position of strength. Many surviving Native American peoples of the southeast strengthened their loose coalitions of language groups and joined confederacies such as the Choctaw, the Creek, and the Catawba for protection. Even after the Indian Slave Trade ended in 1750, the enslavement of Native Americans continued (mostly through kidnappings) in the west and in the Southern states.[393][394] Both Native American and African enslaved women suffered rape and sexual harassment by male slaveholders and other white men.[383]
African- and Native- Americans have interacted for centuries. The earliest record of Native American and African contact occurred in April 1502, when Spanish colonists transported the first Africans to Hispaniola to serve as slaves.[395]
Sometimes Native Americans resented the presence of African Americans.[396] The "Catawaba tribe in 1752 showed great anger and bitter resentment when an African American came among them as a trader".[396] To gain favor with Europeans, the Cherokee exhibited the strongest color prejudice of all Native Americans.[396] Because of European fears of a unified revolt of Native Americans and African Americans, the colonists tried to encourage hostility between the ethnic groups: "Whites sought to convince Native Americans that African Americans worked against their best interests."[397] In 1751, South Carolina law stated:
The carrying of Negroes among the Indians has all along been thought detrimental, as an intimacy ought to be avoided.[398]
In addition, in 1758 the governor of South Carolina James Glen wrote:
it has always been the policy of this government to create an aversion in them [Indians] to Negroes.[399]
Europeans considered both races inferior and made efforts to make both Native Americans and Africans enemies. Native Americans were rewarded if they returned escaped slaves, and African Americans were rewarded for fighting in the late 19th-century Indian Wars.[400][401][402]
According to the National Park Service, "Native Americans, during the transitional period of Africans becoming the primary race enslaved, were enslaved at the same time and shared a common experience of enslavement. They worked together, lived together in communal quarters, produced collective recipes for food, shared herbal remedies, myths and legends, and in the end they intermarried."[403][404] Because of a shortage of men due to warfare, many tribes encouraged marriage between the two groups, to create stronger, healthier children from the unions.[405]
In the 18th century, many Native American women married freed or runaway African men due to a decrease in the population of men in Native American villages.[400] Records show that many Native American women bought African men but, unknown to the European sellers, the women freed and married the men into their tribe.[400] When African men married or had children by a Native American woman, their children were born free, because the mother was free (according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which the colonists incorporated into law).[400]
While numerous tribes used captive enemies as servants and slaves, they also often adopted younger captives into their tribes to replace members who had died. In the Southeast, a few Native American tribes began to adopt a slavery system similar to that of the American colonists, buying African American slaves, especially the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek. Though less than 3% of Native Americans owned slaves, divisions grew among the Native Americans over slavery.[406] Among the Cherokee, records show that slaveholders in the tribe were largely the children of European men who had shown their children the economics of slavery.[401] As European colonists took slaves into frontier areas, there were more opportunities for relationships between African and Native American peoples.[400]
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Native American identity is determined by the tribal community that the individual or group is seeking to identify with.[407][408] While it is common for non-Natives to consider it a racial or ethnic identity, it is considered by Native Americans in the United States to be a political identity, based on citizenship and immediate family relationships.[407][408] As culture can vary widely between the 574 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.[407]
In the 2010 Census, nearly 3 million people indicated that their "race" was Native American (including Alaska Native).[409] Of these, more than 27% specifically indicated "Cherokee" as their ethnic origin.[410][411] Many of the First Families of Virginia claim descent from Pocahontas or some other "Indian princess". This phenomenon has been dubbed the "Cherokee Syndrome".[412] Across the US, numerous individuals cultivate an opportunistic ethnic identity as Native American, sometimes through Cherokee heritage groups or Indian Wedding Blessings.[413]
Some tribes (particularly some in the Eastern United States) are primarily made up of individuals with an unambiguous Native American identity, despite having a large number of mixed-race citizens with prominent non-Native ancestry. More than 75% of those enrolled in the Cherokee Nation have less than one-quarter Cherokee blood,[414] and the former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Bill John Baker, is 1/32 Cherokee, amounting to about 3%.
Historically, numerous Native Americans assimilated into colonial and later American society, e.g. through adopting English and converting to Christianity. In many cases, this process occurred through forced assimilation of children sent off to American Indian boarding schools far from their families. Those who could eventually pass for white gained the advantage of white privilege, yet often paid for it with the loss of community connections.[413] With the enforcement of blood quantum laws, Indian blood could be diluted over generations through intermarrying with non-Native populations, as well as intermarrying with members of tribes that also required high blood-quantum, solely from one tribe.[415] "Kill the Indian, save the man" was a mantra of nineteenth-century U.S. assimilation policies.[416]
Native Americans are more likely than any other racial group to practice interracial or intertribal marriage among the different tribes and non-Natives, resulting in an ever-declining proportion of Indigenous blood among those who claim a Native American identity (tribes often count only the Indian blood from their own tribal background in the enrollment process, disregarding intertribal heritages).[417] Some tribes disenroll those with low blood quantum. Disenrollment has become a contentious issue in Native American reservation politics.[418][419]
Requirements for tribal citizenship vary by tribe, but are generally based on who one's parents and grandparents are, as known and documented by community members and tribal records. Among the tribal nations, qualification for enrolling those who were not logged at birth by their parents may be based upon a required percentage of Native American "blood" (or the "blood quantum") of an individual, or upon documented lineal descent from an ancestor on a specific census or register.
Tribal rules regarding the recognition of members who have heritage from multiple tribes also vary, but most do not allow citizenship in multiple tribes at once. For those that do, usually citizens consider one of their citizenships primary, and their other heritage to be "descent". Federally recognized tribes do not accept genetic ethnicity percentages results as appropriate evidence of Native American identity, as they cannot indicate specific tribe, or even whether or not someone is Native American. Unless requested for a paternity test, they do not advise applicants to submit such things.[416]
To receive tribal services, a Native American must be a citizen of (or enrolled in) a federally recognized tribe. While each tribal government makes its own rules for the eligibility of citizens, the federal government has its own qualifications for federally-funded services. Federal scholarships for Native Americans require the student to be enrolled in a federally recognized tribe and to be of at least one-quarter Native American blood quantum, as attested to by a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) card issued by the federal government.
Tribal membership conflicts have led to a number of legal disputes, court cases, and the formation of activist groups. One example of this is the Cherokee Freedmen. The Cherokee Nation requires documented direct genealogical descent from a Cherokee person listed in the early 1906 Dawes Rolls. The Freedmen are descendants of African Americans once enslaved by the Cherokees, who were granted, by federal treaty, citizenship in the historic Cherokee Nation as freedmen after the Civil War. The modern Cherokee Nation, in the early 1980s, passed a law to require that all members must prove descent from a Cherokee Native American (not Cherokee Freedmen) listed on the Dawes Rolls, resulting in the exclusion of some individuals and families who had been active in Cherokee culture for years.
Since the 2000 census, people may identify as being of more than one race.[188] Since the 1960s, the number of people claiming Native American ancestry has grown significantly and, by the 2000 census, the number had more than doubled. Sociologists attribute this dramatic change to "ethnic shifting" or "ethnic shopping"; they believe that it reflects a willingness of people to question their birth identities and adopt new ethnicities which they find more compatible.
The author Jack Hitt writes:
The reaction from lifelong Indians runs the gamut. It is easy to find Native Americans who denounce many of these new Indians as members of the wannabe tribe. But it is also easy to find Indians like Clem Iron Wing, an elder among the Lakota, who sees this flood of new ethnic claims as magnificent, a surge of Indians 'trying to come home.' Those Indians who ridicule Iron Wing's lax sense of tribal membership have retrofitted the old genocidal system of blood quantum—measuring racial purity by blood—into the new standard for real Indianness, a choice rich with paradox.[194]
Journalist Mary Annette Pember (Ojibwe) writes that non-Natives identifying with Native American identity may be a result of a person's increased interest in genealogy, the romanticization of what they believe the cultures to be, and family lore of Native American ancestors in the distant past. However, there are different issues if a person wants to pursue enrollment as a citizen of a tribal nation. Different tribes have different requirements for citizenship. Often those who live as non-Natives, yet claim distant heritage, say they are simply reluctant to enroll, arguing that it is a method of control initiated by the federal government. However, it is the tribes that set their own enrollment criteria, and "the various enrollment requirements are often a hurdle that ethnic shoppers are unable to clear." Says Grayson Noley, (Choctaw), of the University of Oklahoma, "If you have to search for proof of your heritage, it probably isn't there."[420] In other cases, there are some individuals who are 100% Native American but, if all of their recent ancestors are from different tribes, blood quantum laws could result in them not meeting the citizenship criteria for any one of those individual tribes. Pember concludes:
The subjects of genuine American Indian blood, cultural connection and recognition by the community are extremely contentious issues, hotly debated throughout Indian country and beyond. The whole situation, some say, is ripe for misinterpretation, confusion and, ultimately, exploitation.[420]
Intertribal marriage is historically common among many Native American tribes, both prior to European contact and in the present. Historically, tribal conflicts might result in the eventual adoption of, or marriages with, captives taken in warfare, with former foes becoming full members of the community. Individuals often have ancestry from more than one tribe, and this became increasingly common after so many tribes lost family members to colonial invasions bringing disease, war and massacres.[80] Bands or entire tribes were often reduced to very small numbers, and at times split or merged to form stronger communities in reaction to these pressures.[422]
Tribes with long trading histories with Europeans show a higher rate of European admixture, reflecting admixture events between Native American women and European men.[423][422]
The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism has also said that haplogroup testing is not a valid means of determining Native American ancestry, and that the concept of using genetic testing to determine who is or is not Native American threatens tribal sovereignty.[424][425] Author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, Kim TallBear (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), agrees, stating that not only is there no DNA test that can indicate a tribe, but "there is no DNA-test to prove you're Native American."[426][427] Tallbear writes in Native American DNA that while a DNA test may bring up some markers associated with some Indigenous or Asian populations, the science in these cases is problematic,[426] as Indigenous identity is not about one distant (and possibly nonexistent) ancestor, but rather political citizenship, culture, kinship, and daily, lived experience as part of an Indigenous community.[427] She adds that a person, "… could have up to two Native American grandparents and show no sign of Native American ancestry. For example, a genetic male could have a maternal grandfather (from whom he did not inherit his Y chromosome) and a paternal grandmother (from whom he did not inherit his mtDNA) who were descended from Native American founders, but mtDNA and Y-chromosome analyses would not detect them."[416]
Given all these factors, DNA testing is not sufficient to qualify a person for specific tribal membership, as the ethnicity admixture tests cannot distinguish among Native American tribes. They cannot even reliably indicate Native American ancestry:[428]
"Native American markers" are not found solely among Native Americans. While they occur more frequently among Native Americans, they are also found in people in other parts of the world.[428]
The only use of DNA testing by legitimate tribes is that some, such as the Meskwaki, may use DNA for paternity tests, or similar confirmation that an applicant who was not enrolled at birth is the biological child of an enrolled tribal member. It is solely about confirming or ruling out biological paternity, and has no relationship to race or ethnicity.[429][430]
DNA testing and research has provided some data about the extent of Native American ancestry among African Americans, which varies in the general population. Based on the work of geneticists, Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. hosted a popular, and at times controversial, PBS series, African American Lives, in which geneticists said DNA evidence shows that Native American ancestry is far less common among African Americans than previously believed.[431][432] Their conclusions were that while almost all African Americans are racially mixed, and many have family stories of Native heritage, usually these stories turn out to be inaccurate,[431][432] with only 5 percent of African American people showing more than 2 percent Native American ancestry.[431]
Gates summarized these statistics to mean that, "If you have 2 percent Native American ancestry, you had one such ancestor on your family tree five to nine generations back (150 to 270 years ago)."[431] Their findings also concluded that the most common "non-Black" mix among African Americans is English and Scots-Irish. Some critics thought the PBS series did not sufficiently explain the limitations of DNA testing for assessment of heritage.[433] Another study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, also indicated that, despite how common these family stories are, relatively few African Americans who have these stories actually turned out to have detectable Native American ancestry.[434] A study reported in the American Journal of Human Genetics stated, "We analyzed the European genetic contribution to 10 populations of African descent in the United States (Maywood, Illinois; Detroit; New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Baltimore; Charleston, South Carolina; New Orleans; and Houston) ... mtDNA haplogroups analysis shows no evidence of a significant maternal Amerindian contribution to any of the 10 populations."[435] Despite this, some still insist that most African Americans have at least some Native American heritage.[436]
An autosomal study from 2019 found small but detectable amounts of Native American ancestry among African-Americans, ranging from an average of 1.2% in the West South Central region, to 1.9% on the West Coast. The median amount of Native ancestry in African-Americans was found to be 1% nationwide.[437]
An autosomal DNA study published in 2019 found evidence of minimal Native American ancestry among non-Hispanic White Americans, ranging from an average of 0.18% in the Mid-Atlantic region to 0.93% in the Pacific region. However, the majority of White Americans were found to have no detectable Native American ancestry, with the median amount of European ancestry being 99.8% in White participants.[438]
Hispanic Americans, on the other hand, were found to have a large and varying amount of Native American ancestry, with a median of 38% nationwide. This ancestry was the highest among Hispanics from the West South Central Region (Texas and Oklahoma) at 43.2%, and the West Coast, at 42.6%, reflecting the predominant Mexican-American population in these regions. Hispanics from the Mid-Atlantic, on the other hand, averaged only 11.1% Native American ancestry, reflecting the predominant Puerto Rican and Dominican-American populations among Hispanics from that region.[439]
The genetic history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas primarily focuses on human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups and human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. "Y-DNA" is passed solely along the patrilineal line, from father to son, while "mtDNA" is passed down the matrilineal line, from mother to offspring of both sexes. Neither recombines, and thus Y-DNA and mtDNA change only by chance mutation at each generation with no intermixture between parents' genetic material.[440] Autosomal "atDNA" markers are also used, but differ from mtDNA or Y-DNA in that they overlap significantly.[441] Autosomal DNA is generally used to measure the average continent-of-ancestry genetic admixture in the entire human genome and related isolated populations.[441] Within mtDNA, genetic scientists have found specific nucleotide sequences that they have classified as "Native American markers" because the sequences are understood to have been inherited through the generations of genetic females within populations first found in the "New World". There are five primary Native American mtDNA haplogroups in which there are clusters of closely linked markers inherited together. All five haplogroups have been identified by researchers as "prehistoric Native North American samples", and it is commonly asserted that the majority of living Native Americans possess one of the common five mtDNA haplogroup markers.[416]
The genetic pattern indicates Indigenous Americans experienced two very distinctive genetic episodes; first with the initial-peopling of the Americas, and secondly with European colonization of the Americas.[442][443][444] The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages, zygosity mutations and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous American populations.[443]
The most popular theory is that human settlement of the Americas occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with an initial 15,000 to 20,000-year layover on Beringia for the small founding population.[442][445][446] The micro-satellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region.[447] The Na-Dené, Inuit and Indigenous Alaskan populations exhibit haplogroup Q-M242 (Y-DNA) mutations, however, that are distinct from other Indigenous Amerindians, and that have various mtDNA and atDNA mutations.[448][449][450] This suggests that the paleo-Indian migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland were descended from a later, independent migrant population.[451][452]
Genetic analyses of HLA I and HLA II genes as well as HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 gene frequencies links the Ainu people of northern Japan and southeastern Russia to some Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially to populations on the Pacific Northwest Coast such as Tlingit. Scientists suggest that the main ancestor of the Ainu and of some Native American groups can be traced back to Paleolithic groups in Southern Siberia.[453]
Over time, Native American has been expanded[...]some in Alaska.- The absence of Hawaiian and other Alaskan groups implies that it does not include them.
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Worldwide studies show that the fatality rates to people never before exposed to smallpox are at least 30 percent of the entire population and sometimes as high as 50 to 70 percent.
PROVIDED, That hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of September 2024 (link)It has been long recognized that Native Americans are dying of diabetes, alcoholism, tuberculosis, suicide, and other health conditions at shocking rates.
A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains a tribal affiliation or community attachment.
The Native American population is the only group in American that tends to experience systematic fraudulent behavior. Claiming to be Native American has become such a common and accepted practice that recently, the American Bar Association began to require verification of the identity of Native American applicants.
If a Native American is raped or assaulted by a non-Indian, she must plead for justice to already overburdened United States attorneys who are often hundreds of miles away.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of September 2024 (link). Burden of Proof. (b) To meet its burden to establish paternity, an applicant must submit a DNA test which uses a twelve- (12) marker protocol, or certified test results from another DNA company which has a degree of accuracy which is as great as or greater than that provided by a DNA test which uses a 12-marker protocol, certified by a competent court, and which establishes paternity necessary for membership. The cost of the paternity test shall be borne by the Tribe.
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