A precolonization map of the Northeast, showing Abenaki homeland, at the Musee des Abenakis.

Review of Records Fails to Support Local Leaders’ Claims of Abenaki Ancestry

Questions are swirling in New Hampshire around attempts by two local groups to gain tribal recognition.

Goodbye to Good Earth

A Louisiana tribe’s long fight against the American tide.

From the ‘Pocahontas Exception’ to a ‘Historical Wrong'

The hidden cost of formal recognition for American Indian tribes.
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., left, announcing that he is nominating Kimberly Teehee, right, as a Cherokee Nation delegate to the US House of Representatives

One of the Oldest Broken Promises to Indigenous Peoples Is for a Voice in Congress

A treaty commitment to seat a delegate representing the Cherokee Nation in the House has gone unmet for two centuries.
Clyde Warrior and others displaying the Red Power sign at the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) parade, 1966.

"Let's Raise Some Hell": Clyde Warrior and the Red Power Movement

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Siege of Wounded Knee, the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee by American Indian Movement (AIM) activists.
A family photograph in front of a blood quantum chart, where each person's face has been removed and replaced by the chart.

Blood-Quantum Laws Are Splintering My Tribe

The rules were supposed to preserve my community. Instead they are slowly cutting people out of it.
Demonstrators stand outside the Supreme Court in November as the court hears arguments over the Indian Child Welfare Act.
partner

The Supreme Court Stopped the Latest Assault on Native American Sovereignty

A long history of disrespect, dispossession and mass slaughter is crucial to understanding the case.
Protestors gathered at Wounded Knee in 2022, waving the flag of the American Indian Movement and an upside down United States of America flag. (Photograph by Eunice Straight Head)

The Siege of Wounded Knee Was Not an End but a Beginning

Fifty years ago, the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization invited the American Indian Movement to Pine Ridge and reignited a resistance that has not left.
American Indians hold rifles during the standoff at Wounded Knee in 1973.

A Return to the Wounded Knee Occupation, 50 Years Later

The new era of social consciousness and racial activism in the 1970s would play a pivotal role in the events leading up to the 71-day occupation.
Flag of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs

The Supreme Court Case That Could Break Native American Sovereignty

Haaland v. Brackeen could have major consequences for tribes’ right to exist as political entities.
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. with Kimberly Teehee

Cherokee Nation Is Fighting for a Seat in Congress

Thanks to an 1835 treaty, they’re pushing Democrats to approve a nonvoting delegate.

This Land Is Whose Land? Indian Country and the Shortcomings of Settler Protest

As a Native person, I believe “This Land Is Your Land” falls flat.
Drawing of two laborers in a vast agricultural field with a farmhouse in the background.

A Family From High Plains

Sappony tobacco farmers across generations, and across state borders, when North Carolina and Virginia law diverged on tribal recognition, education, and segregation.
A Native American man wearing a cowboy hat.

Abbot Appointee Slams Brakes On American Indian/Native Studies Course

The course was getting a first read after years of review. Then, the Texas Board of Education needed more time to assess it without “drama or controversy.”
Two Pueblo people hold an American flag at the Ceremonial Cave of the Frijoles Canyon in New Mexico.

Without Indigenous History, There Is No U.S. History

It is impossible to understand the U.S. without understanding its Indigenous history, writes Ned Blackhawk.
Detail of faces on a family tree.

The Pocahontas Exception: America’s Ancestor Obsession

The ‘methods and collections’ of genealogists are political because they have a great deal in common with genealogy as a way of doing history.
Five globes shaped like human faces, connected by threads.

It’s Time to Rethink the Idea of the “Indigenous”

Many groups who identify as Indigenous don’t claim to be first peoples; many who came first don’t claim to be Indigenous. Can the idea escape its colonial past?
Illustration of an archaeologist digging through artifacts.

The Bodies in the Cave

Native people have lived in the Big Bend region of west Texas for thousands of years. Who should claim their remains?
Collage of a contemporary man encircled by layers of an old map, looking at 19th-century men walking past him.

Those Who Know

On Raoul Peck's "Exterminate all the Brutes" and the limits of rewriting the narrative.
Occupation of Alcatraz; sign reads "Indians Welcome"

The Past and Future of Native California

A new book explores California’s history through the experience of its Native peoples.