Cherokee

The Cherokee make up the largest of the 563 federally recognized American Indian tribes in the United States, with a total population of 729,533 (including over 250,000 enrolled tribal members). Despite the impact of colonization and the long history of formal policies and attempts by the U.S. government to assimilate the Cherokee, they remain a distinct political, cultural, and linguistic group within the United States. Unlike other cultures around the world that were colonized and then regained their independence, the Cherokee and other American Indian nations within the United States remained subsumed under the United States, while at the same time having legal recognition as sovereign political entities and as U.S. citizens. Cherokee identity can be understood by examining the ways in which the culture and its people have adapted to wide-sweeping change and colonization.

The ancestral homeland of the Cherokee is in the Allegheny region of the Southeast, in modern-day Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia and West Virginia, and North and South Carolina. They are believed to be the descendants of the Mississippian mound-building culture. Due to forced removal from their ancestral homeland in 1838, the Cherokee are divided into the Western Band in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band in North Carolina.

The political and legal status of federally recognized tribes is perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic vis-à-vis other ethnic groups in the United States. Currently, there are three federally recognized Cherokee nations or tribes: (1) the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma; (2) the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina, headquartered in Cherokee, North Carolina; and (3) the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. In addition, there are over 300 nonfederally recognized Cherokee groups.