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Native American Communities

In the United States, Native American communities are a particular type of association, like those of other racial and ethnic communities based primarily on a common identity such as African American, or Arab American, and so forth. However, unlike other communities of kinship, national origin, and voluntary association, Native American communities include those communities more rigidly defined by federal and state governments as Indian tribes, a term whose meaning has evolved from cultural connotations to jurisprudential canon. However, the reality and diversity of Native American communities is that whatever their history, geographical location, social organization, cultural traditions, and social institutions, they are interrelated and linked in multiple ways.

Terminology

The terms Native American and American Indian, whether used in reference to groups or individuals, are used interchangeably to describe descendents of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America within the political boundaries of the United States. The terms are most frequently applied to individuals and groups in the forty-eight coterminous states and Alaska's three ethnological groups—American Indians, Eskimos (Inuit), and Aleuts. However, despite the tendency to use the terms interchangeably, there is an important conceptual distinction between the two terms. Within U.S. polity, American Indian has a specific meaning based on the political relationship between the United States and Indian tribes as sovereign nations.

The unique political status of Indian tribes is a legacy of an earlier period when colonial powers, including France, Britain, Denmark, and the United States, recognized Indian tribes as sovereign political entities with the inherent (rather than delegated) power of self-government. This was later modified in 1831 when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that despite being “distinct political communities,” under U.S. domination, Indian tribes were no longer foreign nations, but “domestic dependent nations” whose relationship to the federal government was that of a “ward to his guardian” (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 1831). Despite its diminution by the Supreme Court, the status of Indian tribes retains a measure of sovereignty with relationship to their members, like that of other nation-states to their citizens.

History

In 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in North America, he found what he believed to be a vast, open, and uninhabited continent. Believing he had discovered a trade route to the East Indies, when Columbus encountered the indigenous inhabitants, he labeled hundreds of highly diverse, sociopolitically, linguistically, and culturally distinct peoples as los indios. In the five centuries since, successive waves of disease, warfare, and policies of ethnocide at dispossessing aboriginal peoples of their lands, cultures, and traditions have led to the near decimation of the population.

To the extent that indigenous groups encountered non-natives at various times and under various circumstances, each experienced a greater or lesser degree of aggression. During this period, Indian groups under-went dramatic transformations in social organization, settlement, and language that have dramatically transformed the lives of their descendants.

Demographic Dimensions

In 2000, the Census Bureau's snapshot of the nation showed between 2.4 and 4.1 million American Indians. This range reflects recent changes in census enumeration that, for the first time in 2000, permitted Americans to identify themselves as belonging to more than one race. By single race alone, there are about 2.4 million American Indians, a 26 percent increase over the previous decade. But when compared to those identifying as American Indian alone and in combination with at least one other race, the population jumps to 4.1 million, a 110 percent increase since 1990.

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