Native American civil rights

Proportion of Indigenous Americans in each county of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico as of the 2020 United States Census

Native American civil rights are the civil rights of Native Americans in the United States. Native Americans are citizens of their respective Native nations as well as of the United States, and those nations are characterized under United States law as "domestic dependent nations", a special relationship that creates a tension between rights retained via tribal sovereignty and rights that individual Natives have as U.S. citizens. This status creates tension today but was far more extreme before Native people were uniformly granted U.S. citizenship in 1924. Assorted laws and policies of the United States government, some tracing to the pre-Revolutionary colonial period, denied basic human rights—particularly in the areas of cultural expression and travel—to indigenous people.

Although the many tribes and peoples indigenous to the United States have varying civil rights priorities, there are some rights that nearly all Native Americans are actively pursuing. These include the protection of voting rights and resistance to the cultural assimilation of Native Americans. Many tribes that live on Indian reservations are currently facing the destruction of surrounding environments and water sources, depressed economies, sexual violence against women, and substance abuse.

Precontact with Europeans

The Americas were populated thousands of years before Europeans arrived in North and South America. As a consequence of this long-term existence in the continent, Native American cultures, origins, religions, and languages became vastly diverse. Agriculture and written language had developed independently in the Americas before European contact, with the domestication and cultivation of beans, squash, maize had been particularly important.

Religious practices

Traditional religious practices among Natives range from individual prayers, rituals, and offerings to large intertribal ceremonies. Precontact religion was often closely tied to the land and the environment. These concerns include the omnipresent, invisible universal force, and "the three 'life crises' of birth, puberty, and death", spiritual beings, revelations, human intercessors into the spirit world, and ceremonies that renew communities.

1585–1786: Initial meetings

In 1585, an American Indian tribe on the eastern coast of North America made contact with English explorer Richard Grenville, who set up a settlement called Roanoke Colony. The Native people proved hospitable and receptive to Grenville, however, when a small silver cup was stolen from him, Grenville and his men sacked and burned down an entire village in revenge. By 1586, the English settlement had been abandoned. Grenville returned to England with a Native American captive called Raleigh.

In 1607, decades after the interaction between the tribe's folk and Grenville, Captain John Smith established the colony of Jamestown in the middle of the Powhatan confederacy in what is now Virginia. Powhatan, the leader of his tribe, refrained from attacking the colonists as they established their settlement. Despite this, conflicts quickly broke out between the colonists and the Powhatan. Chief Powhatan wrote in a letter to John Smith:

I have seen two generations of my people die...I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country... Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that is it much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them and to lie cold in the wood, feed on acorns, roots, and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep... Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner.

In the winter of 1609 through 1610, the residents of Jamestown had little food or effective shelter as they experienced the Starving Time. In December 1609, John Ratcliffe, who succeeded Smith as president of the colony, and around 50 colonists went to meet with a group of Powhatan Indians to bargain for food. However, they were ambushed and only 16 survived. Ratcliffe was captured and later tortured to death. This marked the beginning of First Anglo-Powhatan War. The Powhatan tribe integrated and cared for some of the colonists who deserted Jamestown to live with them, as they were much more prepared for the harsh winter. In the summer of 1610, when the governor of Virginia Colony, Lord De la Warr requested that Powhatan return the runaways, the Powhatan chief showed no intention to bring them back. In response, the colonists raided and sacked the Paspahegh capital, which was a tributary tribe to the Powhatan, killing at least 15 Natives, and kidnapping the wife of the village chief and their children. The war lasted until 1614, however, conflict resumed in 1622, when the Powhatan massacred Jamestown in March 1622, killing around a third of the inhabitants, 347 colonists. This caused second Anglo-Powhatan War that would last until 1632.

Christianization and assimilation

Many European missionaries believed that it was their sacred duty and calling from God to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Spaniards practiced Christianization in the New World using Pope Alexander VI's papal bull, Inter caetera. This allowed rulers to assert control over [non-Christian] countries and islands "discovered" by Columbus, including their residents and inhabitants, and convert them to Catholicism.

English missionaries developed "praying towns" to create "orderly Christian communities filled with model converts who were living and working under the watchful eye of a priest or pastor". Within these communities, converts to the Christian faith would be placed in a separate area from the remainder of the tribe in order to prevent regression back to their native beliefs. Missionaries such as John Eliot, a Puritan, and Isaac McCoy, a Baptist, led the way in the spread of their beliefs within these types of towns and among the natives. These towns led the way to the future separation of the natives from the remainder of society in Native American reservations.

1787–1899: Creating the Constitution

See the Indian Appropriations Acts.

The 1851 Indian Appropriations Act allocated funds to move Western tribes onto Indian reservations where they would be protected and enclosed by the United States government. According to the federal government at that time, reservations were to be created in order to protect the Indians from increasing numbers of White Americans moving to the West.

1900–1945

Criticizing colonialism

Native peoples have been active in educating nonnatives on the cultures, histories, and experiences of their tribes since the beginning of colonization. Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow Nation in Montana and Alfred Kiyana of the Meskwaki Settlement in Iowa spoke to historians, anthropologists, and journalists through translators to criticize the idea of "American progress" and to express pride and faith in the identities of their own cultures.

Charles Eastman, a Mdewakanton and Wahpeton Sioux and physician, published books and articles in English for American people to show that it is not savage that Native people celebrate what Mourning Dove called the "ancient way". In 1902, Gertrude Bonnin told the Atlantic Monthly that the traditions of her tribe, the Yankton Dakota Sioux, were not only equal to European Americans, but that their values were superior.

Involvement with United States politics

In 1903, Charles Eastman, a Santee Dakotan and Native representative, was requested by Theodore Roosevelt to help Sioux people choose English names in order to protect their lands from being taken. Lands registered with the birth and natural names of Natives were often lost due to confusion the United States government employees had with filling paperwork.

The United States government has a strong history making deals with Native Americans and not keeping them. Thomas Bishop, a Snohomish man, recorded his elders' memories of U.S. promises and compared them to the actual texts in treaties. He published a piece based on these discrepancies in 1915 titled "An Appeal to the Government to Fulfill Sacred Promises Made 61 Years Ago". Following this, he and other citizens of Pacific Northwest tribes organized all the Tulalip agency reservations and several off-reservation communities into the Northwestern Federation of American Indians with the goal of redeeming promises made in treaties.

Post World War II: 1946–1959

Many Native Americans aided the United States in World War II. Veterans came back from serving, only to find that the U.S. government and American people would not recognize their contributions to the war effort. This encouraged Natives to begin moving towards activism that was more focused on tribal sovereignty and self-determination.

Advocacy groups, such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), which was founded in 1944, began representing tribal interests to the public and to Congress. The NCAI's founding members came from a wide variety of professionals including veterans, anthropologists, lawyers, elected state and federal officials, and a professional baseball player, George Eastman, and half of them had previously served on Indian Rights Association-chartered tribal councils. At least four of them were also members of the Society of American Indians.

Civil rights movement era: 1960–1968

See also: Red Power movement

In 1961, the National Indian Youth Council formed in pursuit of "a greater Indian America". The organization members were young and had grown out of a summer program that brought students from all around the U.S. to Boulder, Colorado, and introduced to the Southwest Regional Indian Youth Council so that they could learn about the Native state of affairs. The organizations' members, people such as Clyde Warrior, Melvin Thom, Vine Deloria Jr., and Hank Adams, rejected beliefs that Natives were unable to help themselves or that they needed to adopt American society as their own. They were seen as an upset to norms in the Native community, as they were much younger than other recognized leaders of Native civil rights movements. They emphasized direct protest action and pursued federal recognition of several then-unrecognized Native nations. They also organized the first conference where unrecognized Native community members, tribal chiefs, and U.S. chairpersons shared a public stage.

Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968

With the law of the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) at the time, also called the Indian Bill of Rights, the indigenous people were guaranteed many civil rights they had been fighting for. The ICRA supports the following:

• Right to free speech, press, and assembly
• Protection from unreasonable invasion of homes
• Right of criminal defendant to a speedy trial, to be advised of the charges, and to confront any adverse witnesses
• Right to hire an attorney in a criminal case
• Protection against self incrimination
• Protection against cruel and unusual punishment, excessive bail, incarceration of more than one year and/or a fine in excess of $5,000 for any one offense
• Protection from double jeopardy or ex post facto laws
• Right to a jury trial for offenses punishable by imprisonment
• Equal law protection due process

Other civil rights such as sovereignty, hunting and fishing, and voting are still issues facing Native people today.

Contemporary movements (1969–present)

There has been increased dialogue around the controversy of using Native American symbols such as for school or team mascots. Concerns are that the use of the symbols distort Native American history and culture and often stereotype in offensive ways. In 2020, the Washington Redskins retired their name and logo (which depicted a side profile of a Native American man), following public outcry that the team's branding was offensive to Native Americans. In a statement, the Navajo Nation said the decision marked a "historic day for all Indigenous peoples around the world as the NFL Washington-based team officially announced the retirement of the racist and disparaging 'Redskins' team name and logo".

There has been significant controversy, including a number of protests, around oil pipelines that run near tribal territory, particularly the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL Pipeline. Many Native American tribes and people believe the pipelines threaten their water supply, could damage cultural and religious sites, and violate treaties guaranteeing "undisturbed use and occupation" of tribal land.

After years of lack of schooling for Natives Americans, the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) was created to give equal education to Natives in 1969.

In April 2023, Native American advocates, such as the Native American Journalist Association, went to the United Nations to seek legal recognition of Indigenous people's rights to own their own media on an equal footing with other media outlets, and for the prosecution of those who persecuted their journalists.

Religious rights

Religion after Euro-American contact

Over the last five centuries, "Christianity has made enormous inroads into Native society." Many religious Native Americans today voluntarily practice Christianity, both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, or even both altogether. There was both voluntary and forced conversion; however, not all tribes embraced Christianity, nor did all members of tribes.

"Euro-American contact and interactions contributed much to Indian marginality and the disruption and destruction of traditional customs and even the aboriginal use of psychoactive substances. This process was noted in the 1976 Final Report to the American Indian Policy Review Commission, Task Force Eleven: Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

The American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed in 1978. It allowed freedom of religion except for some restrictions on use of ceremonial items as the eagle feathers or bones (a protected species) or peyote (considered a restricted drug by the federal government); however, other laws provide for ceremonial use of these by Native American religious practitioners.

One example of Christianity's influence on Native American religion is the prominence of the figure of Jesus Christ in peyote ceremonies of the Native American Church, which is a syncretic religion.

Many indigenous religions arose in response to colonization. These include the Longhouse Religion, which arose at the end of the 18th century, and the Ghost Dance, Four Mothers Society, Indian Shaker Church, Kuksu religion, and others in the 19th century.

Suppression during the Progressive Era

During the Progressive Era from the 1890s to the 1920s, a "quasi-theocracy" reigned in what federal policymakers called "Indian Country"; they worked hand-in-hand with churches to impose Christianity upon Native Americans "as part of the government's civilizing project". Keeping in the vein of the colonialists before them, Progressive-Era policymakers found no need to separate religious endeavors concerning Native Americans from Native political policy. The government provided various religious groups with funds to accomplish Native American conversion. It was during this time that the government "discouraged or imposed bans on many forms of traditional religious practices, including the Sun Dance, use of peyote in ceremonial settings and observance of potlatch rituals." The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), or the "Indian Office", as it was then called, played a role in the Christianization of Native Americans. Their boarding schools, often staffed by missionaries, removed Native children from the tribe and away from the influence of their cultures.

In order to pacify Christians, "some tribal religious practitioners modified elements of their traditional practices". In the case of the Sun Dance, "a ceremony of renewal and spiritual reaffirmation", some tribes "omit[ted] the element of self-sacrifice (many participants observed the ritual of skin piercing), reduced the number of days for the ceremony from eight to two and otherwise emphasized the ceremony's social, rather than religious, features". In the past, tribes have also moved religious days to coincide with national U.S. holidays.

Until 1935, Native American people could be fined and sent to prison for practicing certain traditional religious beliefs.

Contemporary Native American religious issues

Established in 1918, the Native American Church "emphasiz[ed] the importance of monogamy, sobriety, and hard work". Today, it serves as an intertribal, multilingual network. The Native American Church has had a long struggle with the government of America due to their ancient and deeply spiritual religious practice using peyote. This psychoactive substance is found on a cactus and is used for healing practices and in religious ceremonies. The use of this substance is highly debated due to the outbreaks of drug use among Americans today. Leaders of the Native American Church argue that the use of peyote allows for a direct connection with gods and that peyote is not taken simply for its psychoactive effects. It is taken in the manner that one might take the sacraments of Christianity. "Peyote is not habit forming and 'in the controlled ambiance of a peyote meeting it is in no way harmful.'" Rather it is considered a unifying influence on the Native American life because it provides the "basis for Indian friendships, rituals, social gatherings, travel, marriage, and more. It has been a source of healing and means of expression for a troubled people. And it has resulted in one of the strongest pan-Indian movements among American Indians".

For years the government has been debating the subject of peyote use. In 1949 peyote use was condemned by the American Medical Association because findings in their study led them to believe that it was a habit-forming drug. Congress then attempted to regulate the use of peyote in 1963 with little success, but under the Drug Abuse Control Act in 1965 it was on the list of forbidden psychedelic drugs. Under this act, it did not place this on Native American peyotists who were using it for religious practice, though some suffered still under the hands of the state governments for having it in their possession. State laws differed from the United States government standards with states outlawing the use of peyote. "By 1970, of the seventeen states that still had anti-peyote laws, only five did not provide exemptions for Indians to use peyote ritually." These were amended under the pressure from the Native American Church member if the members showed proof that they were at least 25 percent Native American. The states laws were generally similar to those of South Dakota, which says that "when used as a sacrament in services of the Native American Church in a natural state which is unaltered except for drying or curing or slicing", peyote use is permitted. In 1978 the American Indian Religious Freedom Act there was mention of protection for peyote users, but this did not change the fact that they could still be charged. Because it is an "established religion of many centuries' history...not a 20th century cult nor a fad subject to extinction at a whim", it continues to be somewhat protected under the law.

Sovereignty

Main article: Tribal sovereignty in the United States

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