The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. Its definition is contested, in part due to conflicting theoretical understandings of social and kinship structures, and also reflecting the problematic application of this concept to extremely diverse human societies. The concept is often contrasted by anthropologists with other social and kinship groups, being hierarchically larger than a lineage or clan, but smaller than a chiefdom, ethnicity, nation or state. These terms are similarly disputed. In some cases tribes have legal recognition and some degree of political autonomy from national or federal government, but this legalistic usage of the term may conflict with anthropological definitions.
The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of June 18, 1934, or the Wheeler–Howard Act, was U.S. federal legislation that dealt with the status of American Indians in the United States. It was the centerpiece of what has been often called the "Indian New Deal".
The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an American Indian grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against American Indians. AIM soon widened its focus from urban issues to many Indigenous Tribal issues that American Indian groups have faced due to settler colonialism in the Americas. These issues have included treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, the lack of American Indian subjects in education, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.
Ella Cara Deloria, also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, was a Yankton Dakota (Sioux) educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist. She recorded Native American oral history and contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on Dakota/Lakota/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote the novel Waterlily, which was published in 1988 and republished in 2009.
Vine Victor Deloria Jr. was an author, theologian, historian, and activist for Native American rights. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), which helped attract national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. From 1964 to 1967, he served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, increasing its membership of tribes from 19 to 156. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which now has buildings in both New York City and in Washington, DC, on the Mall.
Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, also Tigua Pueblo, is a Native American Pueblo and federally recognized tribe in the Ysleta section of El Paso, Texas. Its members are Southern Tiwa people who had been displaced from Spanish New Mexico from 1680 to 1681 during the Pueblo Revolt against the Spaniards.
The Trail of Broken Treaties was a 1972 cross-country caravan of American Indian and First Nations organizations that started on the West Coast of the United States and ended at the Department of Interior headquarters building at the US capital of Washington, D.C. Participants called for the restoration of tribes’ treaty-making authority, the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and federal investment in jobs, housing, and education.
The Red Power movement was a social movement which was led by Native American youth who demanded self-determination for Native Americans in the United States. Organizations that were part of the Red Power Movement include the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). This movement advocated the belief that Native Americans should have the right to implement their own policies and programs along with the belief that Native Americans should maintain and control their own land and resources. The Red Power movement took a confrontational and civil disobedience approach in an attempt to incite changes in Native American affairs in the United States compared to using negotiations and settlements, which national Native American groups such as National Congress of American Indians had before. Red Power centered around mass action, militant action, and unified action.
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is an American Indian and Alaska Native rights organization. It was founded in 1944 to represent the tribes and resist U.S. federal government pressure for termination of tribal rights and assimilation of their people. These were in contradiction of their treaty rights and status as sovereign entities. The organization continues to be an association of federally recognized and state-recognized Indian tribes.
Native American self-determination refers to the social movements, legislation and beliefs by which the Native American tribes in the United States exercise self-governance and decision-making on issues that affect their own people.
Philip Joseph Deloria is a Yankton Dakota Native American author who specializes in Native American, Western American, and environmental history. He is the son of scholar Vine Deloria, Jr., and the great nephew of ethnologist Ella Deloria. Deloria is the author of the award-winning books Playing Indian (1998) and Indians in Unexpected Places (2004), among others. Deloria received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and currently teaches in the Department of History at Harvard University. In 2021 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Custer, also known as The Legend of Custer, is a 17-episode military-Western television series which ran on ABC from September 6 to December 27, 1967, with Wayne Maunder in the starring role of then Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Criticizing the series as "glamorizing Custer," a concerted protest headed by the Tribal Indians Land Rights Association successfully halted broadcast of the series under the FCC fairness doctrine.
The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 was a United States law intended to create a "a program of vocational training" for Native Americans in the United States. Critics characterize the law as an attempt to encourage Native Americans to leave Indian reservations and their traditional lands, to assimilate into the general population in urban areas, and to weaken community and tribal ties. Critics also characterize the law as part of the Indian termination policy between 1940 and 1960, which terminated the tribal status of numerous groups and cut off previous assistance to tribal citizens. The Indian Relocation Act encouraged and forced Native Americans to move to cities for job opportunities. It also played a significant role in increasing the population of urban Native Americans in succeeding decades.
Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U.S. 556 (1883), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that followed the death of one member of a Native American tribe at the hands of another on reservation land. Crow Dog was a member of the Brulé band of the Lakota Sioux. On August 5, 1881 he shot and killed Spotted Tail, a Lakota chief; there are different accounts of the background to the killing. The tribal council dealt with the incident according to Sioux tradition, and Crow Dog paid restitution to the dead man's family. However, the U.S. authorities then prosecuted Crow Dog for murder in a federal court. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
Seymour v. Superintendent of Wash. State Penitentiary, 368 U.S. 351 (1962), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States that the state of Washington did not have jurisdiction to try an Indian for a crime committed within the boundaries of the Colville Indian Reservation, even if the crime was committed on land now owned by a non-Indian.
Jacqueline Keeler is a Native American writer and activist, enrolled in the Navajo Nation and of Yankton Dakota descent, who co-founded Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry (EONM), which seeks to end the use of Native American racial groups as mascots.
The Choctaw Youth Movement (CYM) was a Choctaw nationalist grassroots movement born in the late 1960s in response to efforts by the federal government to terminate the Choctaw Nation. It was formed, in part, as a tribal-centric movement to counter the Pan-Indianism of other Native rights groups, such as the American Indian Movement. As opposed to AIM, the Choctaw Youth Movement practiced non-confrontational, peaceful activism, and advocated cultural revitalization and the re-adoption of tribal language, and taking pride in the distinctness of being Choctaw. The defense of the tribal culture and history took precedence over maintaining inter-tribal alliances.
Helen Peterson was a Cheyenne-Lakota activist and lobbyist. She was the first director of the Denver Commission on Human Relations. She was the second Native American woman to become director of the National Congress of American Indians at a time when the government wanted to discharge their treaty obligations to the tribes by eliminating their tribal governments through the Indian termination policy and forcing the tribe members to assimilate into the mainstream culture. She authored a resolution on Native American education, which was ratified at the second Inter-American Indian Conference, held in Cuzco, Peru. In 1986, Peterson was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame and the following year, her papers were donated to the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives and they are now held at the National Museum of the American Indian.
David E. Wilkins, a citizen of the Lumbee Nation, is a political scientist specializing in federal Indian policy and law. He is the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies in the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies and professor emeritus of the University of Minnesota. He studies Indigenous politics, governance, and legal systems, with a particular focus on Native American sovereignty, self-determination, and diplomacy. Wilkins was a student and friend of Vine Deloria Jr., coauthoring two books with Deloria and producing three books about his intellectual impact.
