The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.
The Chippewa Cree Tribe is a federally recognized tribe on the Rocky Boy Reservation in Montana who are descendants of Cree who migrated south from Canada and Chippewa (Ojibwe) who moved west from the Turtle Mountains in North Dakota in the late nineteenth century. The two different peoples spoke related but distinct Algonquian languages.
The Nooksack are a federally recognized Native American tribe near the Pacific Northwest Coast. They are a sovereign nation, located in the mainland northwest corner of Washington state in the United States along the Nooksack River near the small town of Deming, and 12 miles south of the Canadian border. As of 2008, they had more than 1,800 enrolled members. Their terms for citizenship include descent from persons listed in a 1942 tribal census.
The Chitimacha are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans who live in the U.S. state of Louisiana, mainly on their reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charenton on Bayou Teche. They are the only Indigenous people in the state who still control some of their original land, where they have long occupied areas of the Atchafalaya Basin, "one of the richest inland estuaries on the continent." In 2011 they numbered about 1100 people.
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.
The Black Seminoles, or Afro-Seminoles, are an ethnic group of mixed Native American and African origin associated with the Seminole people in Florida and Oklahoma. They are mostly blood descendants of the Seminole people, free Africans, and escaped former slaves, who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida. Many have Seminole lineage, but due to the stigma of having mixed origin, they have all been categorized as slaves or freedmen in the past.
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, also known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes 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 Cherokee who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes descendants of Cherokee Freedmen, Absentee Shawnee, and Natchez Nation. As of 2023, over 450,000 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.
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 Choctaw freedmen are former enslaved African Americans who were emancipated and granted citizenship in the Choctaw Nation after the Civil War, according to the tribe's new peace treaty with the United States. The term also applies to their contemporary descendants.
The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the largest of the three federally recognized Seminole governments, which include the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Its citizens are descendants of the approximately 3,000 Seminoles who were forcibly removed from Florida to Indian Territory, along with 800 Black Seminoles, after the Second Seminole War. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is headquartered in Wewoka within Seminole County, Oklahoma. Of 18,800 enrolled tribal citizens, 13,533 live in Oklahoma. The tribe began to revive its government in 1936 under the Indian Reorganization Act. While its reservation was originally larger, today the tribal reservation and jurisdictional area covers Seminole County, Oklahoma, within which it has a variety of properties.
Creek Freedmen is a term for emancipated Creeks of African descent who were slaves of Muscogee Creek tribal members before 1866. They were emancipated under the tribe's 1866 treaty with the United States following the American Civil War, during which the Creek Nation had allied with the Confederate States of America. Freedmen who wished to stay in the Creek Nation in Indian Territory, with whom they often had blood relatives, were to be granted full citizenship in the Creek Nation. Many of the African Americans had removed with the Creek from the American Southeast in the 1830s, and lived and worked the land since then in Indian Territory.
The Pechanga Band of Indians is a federally recognized tribe of Luiseño Indians based in Riverside County, California, where their reservation is located. As of 2006, there were 1,370 members of the nation. The tribe owns the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula and the naming rights to the San Diego sports arena now known as the Pechanga Arena.
The Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians of California is a federally recognized tribe of indigenous people of California, affiliated with the Chukchansi subgroup of the Foothills Yokuts. The Picayune Rancheria, founded in 1912 and located in Coarsegold, California, covers 160 acres (1 km2) in Madera County and serves as the tribal land.
Luwana Quitiquit was a Native American administrator, activist, and basket weaver. During the Occupation of Alcatraz she worked as one of the cooks who provided food to those living on the island. Her career was as an administrator for various California Indian organizations. Subsequently, she became a well-known doll maker, basketweaver, jeweler, and teacher of Pomo handicrafts. In 2008, she and her family were disenrolled from the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. She fought the action claiming it was politically motivated until her death. Posthumously, in 2017, her membership, as well as for her other family members, was reinstated in the first known case where a tribe reversed its decision on membership termination without a court ruling.
The Northern Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island is an unrecognized tribe in Rhode Island, founded by formerly enrolled members of the federally recognized Narragansett Tribe, who were removed from the tribal rolls in the group removals of 1993 and 2006. The tribe acquired 501(c)(3) status in 2010.
