The Indian Arts and Crafts Board (IACB) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior whose mission is to "promote the economic development of American Indians and Alaska Natives through the expansion of the Indian arts and crafts market." [1] It was established by Congress in 1935. It is headquartered at the Main Interior Building in Washington, DC.
The board provides advice and promotional activities and oversees the implementation of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, a truth-in-advertising law attempting to stop non-Native-made artworks from being sold as Native-made.
The IACB also operates three museums:
The IACB also publishes informative consumer education publications which are available for free download via its website. [2] These publications include: the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, How to Buy Authentic Navajo (Diné) Weavings, and Alaska Native Ivory, among many others.
The Board publishes the online "Source Directory of American Indian and Alaska Native Owned and Operated Arts and Crafts Businesses," which lists more than 400 artists and businesses. These businesses include American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts enterprises; businesses and galleries privately owned and operated by American Indian or Alaska Native people; individual artists who are enrolled citizens of federally recognized tribes; and a few nonprofit organizations that develop and market art and craft products and that are managed by enrolled citizens of federally recognized tribes. [3] Some of the businesses listed in the Source Directory maintain retail shops or open studios; others sell by appointment or mail order only. [3]
Native Americans, sometimes called First Americans, or Indigenous Americans, are the Indigenous peoples of the land that the United States is located on. At its core, it includes peoples indigenous to the lower 48 states plus Alaska; it may 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", which 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." 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.
The Indian Health Service (IHS) is an operating division (OPDIV) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). IHS is responsible for providing direct medical and public health services to members of federally recognized Native American Tribes and Alaska Native people. IHS is the principal federal health care provider and health advocate for American Indian people.
State-recognized tribes in the United States are organizations that identify as Native American tribes or heritage groups that do not meet the criteria for federally recognized Indian tribes but have been recognized by a process established under assorted state government laws for varying purposes or by governor's executive orders. State recognition does not dictate whether or not they are recognized as Native American tribes by continually existing tribal nations.
Citizen Potawatomi Nation is a federally recognized tribe of Potawatomi people located in Oklahoma. The Potawatomi are traditionally an Algonquian-speaking Eastern Woodlands tribe. They have 29,155 enrolled tribal members, of whom 10,312 live in the state of Oklahoma.
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 United Remnant Band of the Shawnee Nation, also called the Shawnee Nation, United Remnant Band (URB), is an organization that self-identifies as a Native American tribe in Ohio. Its members identify as descendants of Shawnee people. In 2016, the organization incorporated as a church.
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.
Tommy Wayne Cannon was an important Native American artist of the 20th century. He was popularly known as T. C. Cannon. He was an enrolled member of the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma and had Caddo and French ancestry.
The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation is shared by two Native American tribes, the A'aninin and the Nakoda (Assiniboine). The reservation covers 1,014 sq mi (2,630 km2), and is located in north-central Montana. The total area includes the main portion of their homeland and off-reservation trust land. The tribes reported 2,851 enrolled members in 2010. The capital and largest community is Fort Belknap Agency, at the reservation's north end, just south of the city of Harlem, Montana, across the Milk River.
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 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.
American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Native American children and youth into Anglo-American culture. In the process, these schools denigrated Native American culture and made children give up their languages and religion. At the same time the schools provided a basic Western education. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations. The missionaries were often approved by the federal government to start both missions and schools on reservations, especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries especially, the government paid Church denominations to provide basic education to Native American children on reservations, and later established its own schools on reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) also founded additional off-reservation boarding schools. Similarly to schools that taught speakers of immigrant languages, the curriculum was rooted in linguistic imperialism, the English only movement, and forced assimilation enforced by corporal punishment. These sometimes drew children from a variety of tribes. In addition, religious orders established off-reservation schools. In October 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an official apology on behalf of the federal government for the abuse suffered in these boarding schools.
The Southeastern Indian Artists Association (SEIAA) is an intertribal Native American nonprofit arts organization headquartered in northeastern Oklahoma.
Rosita Kaaháni Worl is an American anthropologist and Alaska Native cultural, business and political leader. She is president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, a Juneau-based nonprofit organization that preserves and advances the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Native cultures of Southeast Alaska, and has held that position since 1997. She also served on the board of directors of the Sealaska regional Native corporation for 30 years, beginning in 1987, including as board vice president. The corporation, with more than 22,000 shareholders, founded the heritage institute and provides substantial funding.
Southern Plains Indian Museum is a Native American museum located in Anadarko, Oklahoma. It was opened in 1948 under a cooperative governing effort by the United States Department of the Interior and the Oklahoma state government. The museum features cultural and artistic works from Oklahoma tribal peoples of the Southern Plains region, including the Caddo, Chiricahua Apache, Comanche, Delaware Nation, Kiowa, Plains Apache, Southern Arapaho, Southern Cheyenne, and Wichita.
Joyce Lee "Doc" Tate Nevaquaya was a Comanche flute player and painter from Apache, Oklahoma. He is known for his contribution to the Native American flute music. His efforts in learning how to make Comanche flutes and play as well as compose contemporary Comanche flute music is considered to have saved the declining art from being lost completely. However, he said he considered himself a painter first, and painting was his primary art throughout his life.
Most cultural policy in the United States is enacted at the local and state level, though federal programs also exist to carry out cultural policy. These promote the culture of the United States, including visual art, performing arts, heritage, language, museums, libraries, and sports.
The Cherokee Nation Truth in Advertising for Native Art is a legislative act unanimously passed by the Council of the Cherokee Nation on January 14, 2008, and signed into law a week later on January 21, 2008. A truth-in-advertising law, the act requires vendors who market themselves as American Indians on Cherokee Nation property to provide proof of citizenship in a federally recognized American Indian tribe or face expulsion.
Indian arts and crafts laws are federal, state, and tribal truth-in-advertising laws in the United States that prohibit misrepresentation in marketing of American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts products. The federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA) defines an American Indian as a member of a federally or state-recognized tribe, while state and tribal Indian arts and crafts laws typically restrict the definition of an American Indian to members of federally recognized tribes only. Twelve states and four federally recognized American Indian tribes have passed Indian arts and crafts laws.
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