Indian country

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the term the United States uses for Native self-governments and global sovereign nations. For the unorganized U.S. territory whose general borders were initially set by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834, see Indian Territory. For other uses, see Indian country (disambiguation).
BIA map of Indian Reservations in the Continental United States

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

Main article: Indian country jurisdiction

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

frontier of settlement
that were inhabited primarily by Native Americans. Colonists made treaties with Native Americans agreeing to offer services and protection indefinitely in exchange for peaceful transfer of Native American land.

Between the Appalachians and Mississippi

Main article: Indian Reserve (1763)

As the original

Kentucky County (an extension of Virginia) and the Northwest Territory
.

West of the Mississippi

Main article: Indian Territory

Most Indians in the area of the former Reserve were either killed or relocated further west under policies of

Indian Reservations
inside the boundaries of U.S. states.

In 2020, the

tribal sovereignty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act.[4][5]

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

References

  1. ^ "18 U.S.C. 1151". Law.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  2. ^ "What Is Indian Country?". Tribaljurisdiction.tripod.com. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  3. ISBN 978-0292738348
    .
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^
    S2CID 162479330
    . Retrieved Nov 23, 2020.
  7. ^ "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.
  8. ^ a b "The Saturated Jungle and The New York Times: Nature, Culture, and the Vietnam War". Department of History. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
  9. ISBN 978-1-84614-808-8
    .
  10. ^ 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

https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-10.pdf

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