Native Americans

Racial Definitions

Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century, the Native peoples of both North and South America identified themselves primarily in relation to the particular people to whom they culturally belonged. European colonizers viewed Native peoples collectively as belonging to a single, inferior “race,” based on the ideology that European cultures represented the pinnacle of social evolution. Particularly long-lasting effects resulted from racial definitions of “Indianness” that argued that the more “Indian blood” or blood quantum a person contained, the more “savage” or “uncivilized” he or she was.

Beginning in early U.S. colonial history, Indian blood quantum became a way of differentiating and excluding Native people from social, political, and economic participation in European American society. By the second half of the 19th century, this ideology was buttressed by a growing international body of social and biological sciences that claimed that this inferiority was scientifically demonstrable. This biological racism heavily influenced 19th-century U.S. policies toward Native peoples and its formal adoption into federal Indian policy with the passing of the General Allotment Act in 1887.

It was also during this time that the U.S. Census began to count Indians as a separate racial category (beginning in 1870). At that time, it was left up to census takers to determine whether an individual fit into the racial category of Indian. Today, assignment of individuals to the racial categories of American Indian or Alaska Native is based completely on self-identification at the time of filling out the census form. According to the 2000 census, the number of people who self-reported as only American Indian or Alaska Native was estimated at 2,475,956 people, or 0.9% of the total U.S. population. An additional 1,643,345 people self-reported as American Indian or Alaska Native in combination with one or more other races. Census self-identification is problematic since people can claim American Indian heritage regardless of whether they or their ancestors have ever actively practiced the cultures or been a part of the communities to which they claim their ancestry.

These estimates of the number of Native Americans are subject to variation. The 2004 American Community Survey placed the total number of self-reported American Indians or Alaska Natives at 2,151,322. The list of the largest tribal groups is shown in Table 1. While this represents a large difference from the 2000 census data, the table nonetheless offers a fairly accurate presentation of the larger tribal groups, led by the Cherokee and Navajo, both with over 200,000.

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