Native Americans in the United States

Introduction to Native Americans

Native Americans History

Native Americans is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Native Americans have populated the Americas for 20,000 to 30,000 years. It is believed that they came to America from Asia, across a land bridge over the Bering Sound during the last Ice Age. Relics of Native American cultures date to 15,000 years ago. The Native American or Indians, so named by Christopher Columbus, lived a relatively stable life until the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. Tribes occasionally warred among themselves but intermarried at an extremely high rate and coexisted fairly well. The arrival of Europeans resulted in disease, conflict, and near-annihilation of many Native Americans and their cultures. Some early Native American groups and their cultures are now extinct. Today, approximately 560 Native American tribes are recognized as “sovereign” by the U.S. government. Further, according to the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 3 million Native Americans were residing in the United States at the time of the census.

Native Americans: Culture, Identity, and the Criminal Justice System

Native Americans: Culture, Identity, and the Criminal Justice System is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (2), beginning with: Historically, the fate of American Indians has been in the hands of others: politicians, the military, and varying justice jurisdictions at the federal, state, and local levels. Simultaneously, Native Peoples’ success was dependent upon functioning in a European-based sociocultural environment that was diametrically opposed to their own social and cultural foundations. The entry reviews the experience of the Native Peoples and the adaptations they have had to make in order to survive. It also examines their perception of and relationship to the U.S. criminal justice system. Unlike ethnic minorities that have migrated to the United States, American Indians were indigenous First Peoples. At the time Europeans “discovered” the New World, Native Peoples had developed a remarkable diversity of languages, politics, religious expression, and other cultural patterns. First contact with Europeans brought with it diseases to which tribes had no resistance and no immunity. (2)

The Native American Movement

In the 1950s, Native Americans struggled with the government’s policy of moving them off reservations and into cities where they might assimilate into mainstream America. Not only did they face the loss of land; many of the uprooted Indians often had difficulties adjusting to urban life. In 1961 when the policy was discontinued, the United States Commission on Civil Rights noted that for Indians, “poverty and deprivation are common.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, watching both the development of Third World nationalism and the progress of the civil rights movement, Native Americans became more aggressive in pressing for their own rights. A new generation of leaders went to court to protect what was left of tribal lands or to recover that which had been taken, often illegally, in previous times. In state after state, they challenged treaty violations, and in 1967 won the first of many victories guaranteeing long-abused land and water rights. The American Indian Movement (AIM), founded in 1968, helped channel government funds to Indian-controlled organizations and assisted neglected Indians in the cities.

Confrontations became common. In 1969 a landing party of 78 Native Americans seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and held it until federal officials removed them in 1971. In 1973 AIM took over the South Dakota village of Wounded Knee, where soldiers in the late 19th century had massacred a Sioux encampment. Militants hoped to dramatize miserable conditions in the reservation surrounding the town, where half of the families were on welfare and alcoholism was widespread. The episode ended, after one Indian was killed and another wounded, with a government agreement to re-examine treaty rights, although little was subsequently done.

Still, Indian activism brought results. Other Americans became more aware of Native American needs. Officials in all branches of government had to respond to pressure for equal treatment that was long overdue. The Senate’s first Native American member, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, was elected in 1992. (3)

Finding the law: Native Americans in the U.S. Code

A collection of general and permanent laws relating to native americans, passed by the United States Congress, are organized by subject matter arrangements in the United States Code (U.S.C.; this label examines native americans topics), to make them easy to use (usually, organized by legal areas into Titles, Chapters and Sections). The platform provides introductory material to the U.S. Code, and cross references to case law. View the U.S. Code’s table of contents here.

Resources

Notes and References

Entry about Native Americans in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime
Entry about Native Americans: Culture, Identity, and the Criminal Justice System in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime
”An Outline of American History”(1994), a publication of the United States Information Agency (USIA). Editor: Howard Cincotta

Native Americans