The Cherokee people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama consisting of around 40,000 square miles.
The Sac and Fox Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) Indian peoples. Originally from the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan area, they were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s and are predominantly Sauk. The Sac and Fox Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area (OTSA) is the land base in Oklahoma governed by the tribe.
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was a Native American activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, she lived on her family's allotment in Adair County, Oklahoma, until the age of 11, when her family relocated to San Francisco as part of a federal government program to urbanize Indigenous Americans. After high school, she married a well-to-do Ecuadorian and raised two daughters. Inspired by the social and political movements of the 1960s, Mankiller became involved in the Occupation of Alcatraz and later participated in the land and compensation struggles with the Pit River Tribe. For five years in the early 1970s, she was employed as a social worker, focusing mainly on children's issues.
The Dawes Rolls were created by the United States Dawes Commission. The commission was authorized by United States Congress in 1893 to execute the General Allotment Act of 1887.
Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws in the United States that define Native American status by fractions of Native American ancestry. These laws were enacted by the federal government and state governments as a way to establish legally defined racial population groups. By contrast, many tribes do not include blood quantum as part of their own enrollment criteria. Blood quantum laws were first imposed by white settlers in the 18th century. Blood Quantum (BQ) continues to be a controversial topic.
The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe of Cherokee Native Americans headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. According to the UKB website, its members are mostly descendants of "Old Settlers" or "Western Cherokees," those Cherokees who migrated from the Southeast to present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma around 1817. Some reports estimate that Old Settlers began migrating west by 1800, before the forced relocation of Cherokees by the United States in the late 1830s under the Indian Removal Act.
Black Indians are Native American people – defined as Native American due to being affiliated with Native American communities and being culturally Native American – who also have significant African American heritage.
The Cherokee Nation, formerly known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Cherokees in the United States. It includes people descended from members of the Old Cherokee Nation who relocated, due to increasing pressure, from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes descendants of Cherokee Freedmen and Natchez Nation. As of 2024, over 466,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.
The Cherokee Freedmen controversy was a political and tribal dispute between the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen regarding the issue of tribal membership. The controversy had resulted in several legal proceedings between the two parties from the late 20th century to August 2017.
David Cornsilk is a professional genealogist and served as the managing editor of the Cherokee Observer, an online news website founded in 1992. He founded of the grassroots Cherokee National Party in the 1990s, seeking to create a movement to promote the Nation as a political entity. While working as a full-time store clerk at Petsmart, he "took on America’s second-largest Indian tribe, the Cherokee Nation, in what led to a landmark tribal decision. Cornsilk served as a lay advocate, which permits non-lawyers to try cases before the Cherokee Nation’s highest court." Cornsilk had worked for the nation as a tribal enrollment research analyst and for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a genealogical researcher. He also has his own genealogical firm. He ran in the 2023 Cherokee Nation principal chief election. He lost the election to incumbent principal chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.
Cherokee heritage groups are associations, societies and other organizations located primarily in the United States. Such groups consist of persons who do not qualify for enrollment in any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. As the Cherokee Nation enrolls all people who can prove descent from a Cherokee ancestor, many of these groups consist of those who claim Cherokee ancestry but have no documentation to prove this alleged heritage. Some have had their claims of ancestry checked and proven to be false. A total of 819,105 Americans claimed Cherokee heritage in the 2010 Census, more than any other named tribe in the Census.
Native American identity in the United States is a community identity, determined by the tribal nation the individual or group belongs to. While it is common for non-Natives to consider it a racial or ethnic identity, for Native Americans in the United States it is considered to be a political identity, based on citizenship and immediate family relationships. 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.
Native American recognition in the United States, for tribes, usually means being recognized by the United States federal government as a community of Indigenous people that has been in continual existence since prior to European contact, and which has a sovereign, government-to-government relationship with the Federal government of the United States. In the United States, the Native American tribe is a fundamental unit of sovereign tribal government. This recognition comes with various rights and responsibilities. The United States recognizes the right of these tribes to self-government and supports their tribal sovereignty and self-determination. These tribes possess the right to establish the legal requirements for membership. They may form their own government, enforce laws, tax, license and regulate activities, zone, and exclude people 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.
The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 is a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts products within the United States. It is illegal to offer or display for sale or sell any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian Tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization, resident within the United States. For a first time violation of the Act, an individual can face civil or criminal penalties up to a $250,000 fine or a five-year prison term, or both. If a business violates the Act, it can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000.
The Alabama–Quassarte Tribal Town is both a federally recognized Native American tribe and a traditional township of Muskogean-speaking Alabama and Coushatta peoples. Their traditional languages include Alabama, Koasati, and Mvskoke. As of 2014, the tribe includes 369 enrolled members, who live within the state of Oklahoma as well as Texas, Louisiana, and Arizona.
The Delaware Tribe of Indians, formerly known as the Cherokee Delaware or the Eastern Delaware, based in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is one of three federally recognized tribes of the Lenape people in the United States. The others are the Delaware Nation based in Anadarko, Oklahoma, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community of Wisconsin. More Lenape or Delaware people live in Canada.
The Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama is a state-recognized tribe in Alabama and Cherokee heritage group. It is based in northern Alabama and gained state-recognition under the Davis-Strong Act in 1984.
The Cherokee Tribe of Northeast Alabama (CTNEAL), formerly the Cherokees of Jackson County, is a state-recognized tribe in Alabama. They have about 3,000 members. The tribe has a representative on the Alabama Indian Affairs Commission and the Inter-Tribal Council of Alabama. They are not federally recognized as a Native American tribe.
In the United States, tribal disenrollment is a process by which a Native American individual loses citizenship or the right to belong within a Native American tribe.
Cherokee descent, "being of Cherokee descent", or "being a Cherokee descendant" are all terms for individuals with some degree of documented Cherokee ancestry but do not meet the criteria for tribal citizenship. The terms are also used by non-Native individuals who self-identify as Cherokee despite lacking documentation or community recognition.
