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.
Kalyn Free is an American attorney, former political candidate, and a tribal citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
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 Native American Music Awards are an awards program presented annually by Elbel Productions, Inc., The Native American Music Awards Inc., and The Native American Music Association, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated in 1998, which recognizes outstanding musical achievement in styles associated with Native Americans, predominantly in the United States and Canada.
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.
Heather Rae is an American film and television producer and director. She has worked on documentary and narrative film projects, specializing in those with Native American themes, and is best known for Frozen River, Trudell and Tallulah.
Owl Goingback is an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.
The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians is a state-recognized tribe, located in southwest Alabama, with a population largely based in southern Washington County and some membership in northern Mobile County.
Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist. Smith's work has primarily focused on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is also a co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.
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 Native Writers' Circle of the Americas (NWCA) is an organization of writers who identify as being Native American, First Nations, or of Native American ancestry.
Native American cultures across the 574 current Federally recognized tribes in the United States, can vary considerably by language, beliefs, customs, practices, laws, art forms, traditional clothing, and other facets of culture. Yet along with this diversity, there are certain elements which are encountered frequently and shared by many tribal nations.
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.
Jeanne Rorex-Bridges is painter and illustrator based in Oklahoma. She is a member of the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama, a state-recognized tribe.
Pretendian is a pejorative colloquialism used to call out a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by professing to be a citizen of a Native American or Indigenous Canadian tribal nation, or to be descended from Native American or Indigenous Canadian ancestors. As a practice, being a pretendian is considered an extreme form of cultural appropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities from which they do not originate. It is sometimes also referred to as a form of fraud, ethnic fraud or race shifting.
The Cherokee delegate to the United States House of Representatives is an office established via the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. The office was intended to represent the Cherokee people and was instrumental in negotiations of land transfer and sovereignty in the Treaty. The office went vacant until 2019, with the appointment of Kimberly Teehee of the Cherokee Nation. Teehee and tribal leadership attempted to get her seated in the 116th and 117th United States Congresses. In 2021, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians designated their own delegate, lawyer Victoria Holland.
The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) is an American non-profit organization dedicated to exposing individuals and organizations that have falsely claimed to be American Indian, as well as to educating the public on the harms to American Indian sovereignty caused by identity fraud. The organization employs certified experts in American Indian genealogy to conduct genealogical investigations of individuals who have profited from fraudulent claims of American Indian heritage.
