Indian country
Indian country is any of the many self-governing Native American/American Indian communities throughout the United States. As a legal category, it includes "all land within the limits of any Indian reservation", "all dependent Indian communities within the borders of the United States", and "all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished."[1][2]
The American military has since applied the term to sovereign land outside its control, including land in Vietnam.
Legal classification
This legal classification defines American Indian tribal and individual land holdings as part of a reservation, an allotment, or a public domain allotment. All federal trust lands held for Native American tribes is Indian country. Federal, state, and local governments use this category in their legal processes. Today, however, according to the U.S. Census of 2010, over 78% of all Native Americans live off reservations. Indian country now spans thousands of rural areas, towns and cities where Indian people live.
This convention is followed generally in colloquial speech and is reflected in publications such as the Native American newspaper Indian Country Today
Related and historical meanings
Historically, Indian country was considered the areas, regions, territories or countries beyond the
Between the Appalachians and Mississippi
As the original
West of the Mississippi
Most Indians in the area of the former Reserve were either killed or relocated further west under policies of
In 2020, the
Usage in Vietnam
During the Vietnam War circa 1968, the American military and pilots referred to free-fire zones under South Vietnamese control as "Indian Country."[6][7][8] American military personnel also used the term "savage" and "uncivilized" to refer to its inhabitants.[8][6]
During a 1971 congressional hearing, American airborne ranger Robert Bowie Johnson Jr. defined the term to politician John F. Seiberling:
...it means different things to different people. It is like there are savages out there, there are gooks out there. In the same way we slaughtered the Indian's buffalo, we would slaughter the water buffalo in Vietnam.[9][6]
In 1989, Tom Holm claimed Vietnam War usage of this term was "in obvious mimicry of the old Cavalry versus Indian films".[10]
21st century usage
As of 2008, the term "Indian country" is used by "soldiers, military strategists, reporters, and World Wide Web users to refer to hostile, unsecured, and dangerous territory in Iraq and Afghanistan."[6]
See also
- Aboriginal title in the United States
- Indian country jurisdiction
- Native American reservation politics
- Off-reservation trust land
- Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area
- Tribal sovereignty in the United States
- Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations
References
- ^ "18 U.S.C. 1151". Law.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
- ^ "What Is Indian Country?". Tribaljurisdiction.tripod.com. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
- ISBN 978-0292738348.
- ^ Higgins, Tucker; Mangan, Dan (July 9, 2020). "Supreme Court says eastern half of Oklahoma is Native American land". CNBC. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
- ^ Liptak, Adam; Healy, Jack (July 9, 2020). "Supreme Court Rules Nearly Half of Oklahoma Is Indian Reservation". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
- ^ S2CID 162479330. Retrieved Nov 23, 2020.
- ^ "Vietnam Powwow: The Vietnam War as Remembered by Native American Veterans [a machine-readable transcription]". 2021-05-01. Archived from the original on 2021-05-01. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
- ^ a b "The Saturated Jungle and The New York Times: Nature, Culture, and the Vietnam War". Department of History. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
- ISBN 978-1-84614-808-8.
- ^ Holm, Tom. Forgotten Warriors: American Indian Service Men in Vietnam. Archived from the original on March 10, 2024. Retrieved March 9, 2024.
- N. Bruce Duthu, American Indians and the Law (NY: Penguin Library -Viking - 2008)
- David H. Getches, Charles F. Wilkinson, and Robert A. Williams, jr., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law, 4th Ed. (St. Paul: West Pub., 1998)
- Imre Sutton, ed., "The Political Geography of Indian Country." American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 15(02) 1991