The term “American Indian” refers to the indigenous people of North America. Neither the term nor the concept existed before Columbus landed in the Americas. Before European contact, indigenous people living in the Americas thought of themselves not as members of one large group, but rather as members of separate and distinct political units. Both a member of the Iroquois League (in New York State) and a member of the Passamaguady (a New England group) would have been amused by the idea that they had a common culture. Their societies differed as much as German does from Italian society. European settlers coined this collective term because they did not recognize or understand the differences among the indigenous groups. As first the colonies—and later the United States—grew, the tendency to see American Indian groups as homogenous and interchangeable intensified.

The US government often constructed American Indian policy without regard for the distinctive needs of a specific American Indian group’s history or culture. For example, in the middle to the late nineteenth century, federal policy was designed to force American Indians onto reservations. Although the policy was universally applied, each American Indian group responded differently to reservation life. The reservation experience was more disruptive to the nomadic Lakota (Sioux) groups of the Great Plains than it was to the sedentary Pueblos of the Southwest.

Despite the official lack of recognition of tribal distinctiveness, these differences and identities have survived among the nearly 2 million American Indians (1,959,000 according to the 1990 US census). Even today when American Indians from different reservations meet, the first question asked is usually: “What tribe are you from?” The answer is a specific tribe, and may include the more specific information of clan affiliation. Clans, the basic unit of American Indian tribes, are large interrelated familial and communal groups. This familial structure contrasts with the nuclear-family structure of mainstream American society. Some clans are patrilineal with membership descending through the father, while others are matrilineal with membership descending through the mother. Clan membership is determined at birth and only rarely altered through adoption. In traditional American Indian society a person’s primary allegiance is to the clan, and this forms the basis of a communal, clan-based identity. Because traditional American Indians consider marriage within clans to be incest, one parent does not share clan members with his or her biological children. This system tends to strengthen extended patrilineal or matrilineal bonds, while weakening those of the nuclear family.

Most American Indians still retain tribal and clan identities today. The communal nature of this identity has often been in conflict with mainstream society and governmental policy. Official attempts to undermine the communal clan identity began in colonial New England with the establishment of Praying Towns. Missionaries designed and oversaw these villages where American Indians could live away from their tribes in a European family structure and ultimately assimilate into European culture. The missionaries believed that in order to convert American Indians to Christianity it was first necessary for them to abandon their clan identities to develop an individual relationship with God.

Official attempts to weaken the communal nature of American Indian identity have continued into the twenty-first century. The goal of the federal government’s policy of relocation in the 1950s was the destruction of the communal identity and the clan system.

American Indian nuclear families were moved from reservations to major cities in order to assimilate them into mainstream society. To discourage them from returning to their reservations, the nuclear families were moved as far as possible from their tribes. Despite these precautions about one-third of relocated families returned to their reservations within a year.

Even among the two-thirds of American Indians who stayed in the cities, the urban experience did not eliminate the communal identity The social conditions that American Indians faced in these cities reinforced their communal identity Many of these urban immigrants found themselves unemployed or in low-paying jobs because their reservation-based skills were often useless in the urban job market. Their lack of marketable skills plus the racism they experienced forced them to congregate in crowded, poor neighborhoods. American Indian communities developed in relocation cities like Chicago, IL and Minneapolis, MN, where these neighborhoods became known as “Red Ghettos.” The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in one such neighborhood in Minneapolis. AIM taught that the tribes had survived because they were communal in nature. AIM’s revitalization movement of the 1960s and 1970s created a renewed sense of pride in tribal culture. The current demand by many American Indian tribes for increased sovereignty has its roots in the revitalization movement fostered by AIM.

Demand for sovereignty manifests itself in different ways among different tribes. For example, many tribes are currently suing states for acknowledgement of off-reservation hunting and fishing rights. Many states held tribal members to local hunting and fishing laws despite treaties guaranteeing these rights. American Indian tribes in the state of Washington were the first tribes to challenge the state’s jurisdiction over American Indian hunting and fishing. In 1974 federal District Court Judge George Boldt ruled that tribes in Washington had retained the right to hunt, fish and gather on the lands they had previously owned. The crux of the fishing rights controversy was communal identity versus individual rights. The tribes argued that the fishing rights, guaranteed in the treaties, belonged communally to the tribe. These rights could not be sold, abrogated or exercised by individual tribal members, but only by the tribes as a whole. The Washington experience inspired other tribes to challenge state authority over them. The Ojibwa of Wisconsin have also insisted that off-reservation hunting and fishing rights are collectively held. Many tribes believe that the collective exercise of treaty rights and the maintenance of a communal identity are essential to their continued survival.