"To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the U.S. who claim Native identity has exploded -- increasing 85 percent in just ten years -- the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are Tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe. Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity -- her own story of enrollment and the enrollment of her children -- she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today's Tribal identity policing. She faces the question that many Native people do: Who is Indian enough?" --

Language is at the heart of Diné identity, carrying with it stories, traditions, and a worldview deeply rooted in the land and history of the Navajo people. As Diné poets, educators, and language advocates work to sustain Diné Bizaad, many are embracing poetry, playwriting, and performance as tools for preservation and revitalization.Aresta Tsosie-Paddock is Naakaii Dine’é and born for Bįįh Bitoodnii. Her cheii is Tł’ízíłání and her nálí is Kinyaa’áanii.

In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision to return more than 3 million acres of land in Oklahoma to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The case, McGirt v. Oklahoma, has been described as one of the most significant Native American-related rulings in 100 years.The returned acreage in Oklahoma, including part of the city of Tulsa, is now recognized as “Indian Country,” as defined by federal law.

Tristan Ahtone of Grist magazine and K. Wayne Yang (a.k.a. la paperson) of the University of California San Diego will engage in an expansive dialogue on the...

On the test case that provoked the courts to decide whether the federal government had jurisdiction to exercise American criminal law over Native peoples on Native lands.

The word "squaw" was declared derogatory by the Department of Interior in 2021. Since then, hundreds of geographic features have been renamed with input from local tribes and Indigenous communities.

For decades, the ideas of equality, justice, and human rights have been the core pillars of Canada’s national identity. However, the reality embedded within our criminal justice system creates a significant obstacle to the actualization of those ideas. Overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black individuals in Canadian jails and prisons, and systemic racism in the criminal […]