Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans
Proportion of Native Americans in each county as of the 2020 US census
Total population
Alone (one race)
Increase 3,727,135 (2020 census)[1]
Increase 1.12% of the total US population

In combination (multiracial)
Increase 5,938,923 (2020 census)[1]
Increase 1.79% of the total US population

Alone or in combination
Increase 9,666,058 (2020 census)[1]
Increase 2.92% of the total US population
Regions with significant populations
Predominantly in Alaska, the Western and Midwestern United States
California California631,016[1]
Oklahoma Oklahoma332,791[1]
Arizona Arizona319,512[1]
Texas Texas278,948[1]
New Mexico New Mexico212,241[1]
Languages
English
Native American languages
(including Navajo, Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Tlingit, Haida, Dakota, Seneca, Lakota, Western Apache, Keres, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Kiowa, Comanche, Osage, Zuni, Pawnee, Shawnee, Winnebago, Ojibwe, Cree, O'odham[2])
Spanish
Native Pidgin (extinct)
French
Religion
Related ethnic groups
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Comanche Indians Chasing Buffalo with Lances and Bows, a mid-19th century portrait depicting the Comanche tribe by George Catlin, now on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Native Americans (also called American Indians, First Americans, or Indigenous Americans) are the Indigenous peoples of the United States of America, particularly of the lower 48 states and Alaska. They may also include any Americans whose origins lie in any of the indigenous peoples of North or South America. The United States Census Bureau publishes data about "American Indians and Alaska Natives", whom it defines as anyone "having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America ... and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment".[3] The census does not, however, enumerate "Native Americans" as such, noting that the latter term can encompass a broader set of groups, e.g. Native Hawaiians, which it tabulates separately.[4]

The European colonization of the Americas from 1492 resulted in a precipitous decline in the size of the Native American population because of newly introduced diseases, including weaponized diseases and biological warfare by colonizers,[5][6][7][8][9] wars, ethnic cleansing, and enslavement. Numerous scholars have classified elements of the colonization process as comprising genocide against Native Americans. As part of a policy of white settler colonialism, European settlers continued to wage war and perpetrated massacres against Native American peoples, removed them from their ancestral lands, and subjected them to one-sided government treaties and discriminatory government policies. Into the 20th century, these policies focused on forced assimilation.[10][11][12]

When the United States was established, Native American tribes were considered semi-independent nations, because they generally lived in communities which were separate from communities of white settlers. The federal government signed treaties at a government-to-government level until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 ended recognition of independent Native nations, and started treating them as "domestic dependent nations" subject to applicable federal laws. This law did preserve rights and privileges, including a large degree of tribal sovereignty. For this reason, many Native American reservations are still independent of state law and the actions of tribal citizens on these reservations are subject only to tribal courts and federal law. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted US citizenship to all Native Americans born in the US who had not yet obtained it. This emptied the "Indians not taxed" category established by the United States Constitution, allowed Natives to vote in elections, and extended the Fourteenth Amendment protections granted to people "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. However, some states continued to deny Native Americans voting rights for decades. Titles II through VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applies to Native American tribes and makes many but not all of the guarantees of the U.S. Bill of Rights applicable within the tribes.[13]

Since the 1960s, Native American self-determination movements have resulted in positive changes to the lives of many Native Americans, though there are still many contemporary issues faced by them. Today, there are over five million Native Americans in the US, about 80% of whom live outside reservations. The states with the highest percentage of Native Americans are Alaska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Dakota, Montana, and North Dakota.[14][15]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Race and Ethnicity in the United States". United States Census Bureau. August 12, 2021. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
  2. ^ Siebens, J & T Julian. Native North American Languages Spoken at Home in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2006–2010. United States Census Bureau. December 2011.
  3. ^ "About the Topic of Race". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
  4. ^ "U.S. Census Bureau History: American Indians and Alaska Natives". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved July 30, 2023.
  5. ^ Alibek, Ken (2004). "Smallpox: a disease and a weapon". International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 8. Elsevier BV: 3–8. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2004.09.004. ISSN 1201-9712. PMID 15491869.
  6. ^ Colonial Williamsburg, CW Journal (Spring 2004), "Colonial Germ Warfare"
  7. ^ Fenn, Elizabeth A. (2001). Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (1st ed.). Hill and Wang. pp. 88–89, 275–276. ISBN 080907821X.
  8. ^ Fenn, Elizabeth A (March 2000). "Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst". Journal of American History. 86 (4): 1553. doi:10.2307/2567577. ISSN 0021-8723. JSTOR 2567577.
  9. ^ Robertson, Roland G. (2001). Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian (1st ed.). University of Nebraska Press. pp. 119, 124. ISBN 0870044192.
  10. ^ Wolfe, Patrick (December 1, 2006). "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native". Journal of Genocide Research. 8 (4): 387–409. doi:10.1080/14623520601056240. ISSN 1462-3528. S2CID 143873621.
  11. ^ Hixson, W. (December 5, 2013). American Settler Colonialism: A History. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-37426-4 – via Google Books.
  12. ^ Whitt, Laurelyn; Clarke, Alan W. (2019). North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-42550-6 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ ""Civil Rights Act of 1968" full text" (PDF). U.S. Government Publishing Office. November 14, 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 8, 2020. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  14. ^ "Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 Census and 2020 Census". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved August 15, 2021.
  15. ^ "2020 Census: Native population increased by 86.5 percent". ICT News. August 13, 2021. Retrieved November 24, 2022.