Native Americans are the original inhabitants of North America, home to hundreds of distinct nations with their own languages, governments, and cultures long before contact with Europeans. As of the 2020 Census, 9.7 million Americans identify as Native American or Alaska Native, and there are 575 federally recognized tribes.
Tribes occupy a unique legal status in the US: They're recognized as sovereign nations with the right to self-governance, yet subject to federal authority. This relationship—established over two centuries through treaties, legislation, and Supreme Court decisions—gives tribal governments the power to make laws and operate courts, while managing their own affairs within reservation boundaries.
This legal framework emerged from a long, often violent history of displacement and broken treaties that dramatically reduced Native populations and land. Throughout the 20th century, tribes regained legal ground through legislation and court rulings affirming tribal sovereignty. Today, Native nations manage their own schools, healthcare systems, law enforcement, and economies—including a nearly $44B tribal gaming industry.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
Tribal governments are sovereign, with authority to pass laws, run courts, and levy taxes on their lands. Unlike cities or counties, they are not created by states. Their sovereignty predates the United States itself and is recognized in the Constitution, treaties, and federal law.
Federal law designates Native nations as "domestic dependent nations"—a legal category that recognizes limited tribal sovereignty while subordinating tribes to federal authority. This ambiguous status, introduced by Chief Justice John Marshall's 1831 opinion in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, has shaped conflicts over land and governance ever since.
Reservation-based courts handle civil and criminal cases, but federal law sharply limits their authority over non-tribal members. As a result, non-Native individuals who commit crimes on reservations often fall outside tribal jurisdiction, creating potential gaps in accountability.
Native Americans and Alaska Natives face significant health disparities linked to chronic underinvestment in reservation health infrastructure, poverty, and multigenerational psychological harm—often called historical or inherited trauma.
Centuries before the US existed, six Indigenous nations—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora—united under a shared constitution known as the Great Law of Peace. Some historians argue that the framework of federalism and representative councils influenced the American founders.
During the first two centuries of American history, the government frequently banned Native ceremonial dances, took sacred sites, and enrolled children in boarding schools where they were prevented from practicing their faith. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 committed the federal government to safeguarding Native spiritual practices.
In McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Muscogee Nation's reservation was never legally dissolved, thereby stripping Oklahoma of authority to prosecute tribal members for crimes committed on that land. Season One of the "This Land" podcast further explores how reservation court systems operate.
The Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the US, more than 130 years after the Constitution's ratification. Even then, some states continued to deny Native Americans the right to vote for decades.
After Western contact, epidemic diseases devastated Indigenous communities. By 1920, the Native American population of the US had fallen to roughly 270,000, compared with an estimated 1.2 to 18 million at the time of European arrival.
After the French and Indian War, a coalition of Indigenous nations—led by Odawa leader Pontiac—launched a major uprising against British forts. In response, Britain issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which reserved lands west of the Appalachian Mountains for Native peoples.
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