Native people inhabited the land that would become the United States long before the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But it wasn’t until 1924, when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, that all Native Americans were granted sweeping access to American democracy.
Up until that point, Native people had limited access to civic participation. Some Native people were eager to participate in American politics, while others resisted citizenship because they saw it as yet another erosion of their Tribal independence. Still, many Native activists fought for years to have representation on their own land.
Citizenship: born or earned?
Before 1924, Indigenous people born in the continental United States were not automatically granted citizenship. This was because the U.S. government had signed approximately 368 treaties with Native nations that established Tribal lands as sovereign states. As a result, Tribes had some degree of self-governance, but Indigenous people were excluded from the rights that came with American citizenship, including voting. These Treaties – which are still legally binding documents today – notably did not fully protect Native communities. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the federal government routinely tried to undermine Tribal sovereignty and used the treaties to acquire Native land for expansion.
Are you registered to vote? Check your voter registration here.
One way the federal government worked to undermine treaties and Native life was through the 1887 Dawes Act, which broke up Tribal land reservations and offered ownership of allotments of land to individual Native people and families. The goal of the Act? To divide Tribal communities amongst themselves to cause economic and political divisions. This separation of individuals from the Tribe would, in the words of the Dawes Act, teach them the “habits of civilized life.”
Although Native Americans did not automatically receive citizenship, there were ways they could earn it. One was through the Dawes Act, which granted citizenship to Indigenous people who left their Tribes for an allotment of land. Another was through military service.Thousands of Native Americans fought in World War I, and, in the eyes of the federal government, serving in the military “proved” a contribution to the United States. Citizenship and the rights that came with it became a prize for those willing to disregard their Native roots and assimilate into white American life.
Taking citizenship to Congress
As the federal government attempted to assimilate Native people, white settlers increasingly populated Indigenous lands for resources. This created more friction and prompted the further removal of Tribal sovereignty over ancestral lands. In the early 20th century, Native communities in the Oklahoma territory fought for the creation of two states, one Native and one not, in an attempt to retain some control over their long-held region. Their attempts were unsuccessful, and the territory of Oklahoma became the 46th state in 1907.
Through a desire to represent the interests of his people in this shifting landscape, Charles Carter of the Chickasaw Nation was elected to represent Oklahoma’s newly formed Fourth District in the House of Representatives that same year. He was the second Native American ever elected to the House. As an active advocate for Native rights and issues, he held roles like Vice President for Legislation in the Society of American Indians and Chair of the House Committee for Indian Affairs.
In 1920, Carter advocated for Native citizenship in the House, highlighting conflicts between federal and state laws. Indigenous people may have certain rights in say, North Carolina, but if they cross into South Carolina, different laws would apply. A federal law was needed to settle the matter. Carter said that Indigenous citizenship was a “simple act of justice to render to the Indian that which has long been due him.” He proposed the “Carter Citizenship Bill” leveraging momentum from the passage of the bill that gave Native World War I veterans their citizenship six months prior.
News of the Carter Bill spread, and opinions on the bill were split over the idea of citizenship. Advocates for citizenship and voting rights, such as Zitkála-Šá, or “Red Bird,” of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, argued that voting rights were long overdue. Zitkála-Šá believed that Native Americans could balance both their heritage and desire for their rights through citizenship. She was an outspoken suffragette and used the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919 to urge white women to take up the cause for Native voting rights. Her manner of speaking on Native rights was matter of fact: “We are in America, and we have, each one of us, a right to express our views.”
But not everyone agreed with Carter and Zitkála-Šá. In The Albuquerque Morning Journal, a Pueblo man of the Isleta Tribe in New Mexico, Pablo Abeyta, remarked, “He [the Native American] lives a life in which politics and political or government issues are Greek to him … and yet they [Native Americans] are fully competent to govern themselves in the way which they have done for centuries.” Abeyta was firmly against the bill Carter proposed just months prior.
When the House Committee on Indian affairs traveled to New Mexico in May of 1920 for a set of public hearings, they were handed a signed petition from 15 Pueblo representatives asking Congress to “amend” any potential citizenship bill to exclude Pueblo Tribes. Additional cases of inequality were made by Pueblos to show the Committee that as long as economic inequity between Natives and whites persisted, ‘equality’ via citizenship was meaningless. For the Pueblo, having the power to fully express their Tribal sovereignty was the ‘justice’ they longed for. They were not interested in ‘shooting their last arrow’ – a ritual practiced in naturalization ceremonies – but rather wanted to free themselves of American influence and return to their pre-colonial way of living.
Back in Washington, the House applauded Carter’s work. Still, the bill itself was flawed. While it did provide suffrage, the proposition eliminated Tribal sovereignty, made a distinction between “half” and “full-blood Indians,” and appointed “competency commissions” to determine awards of land allotments. So while the bill passed the House, it died in the Senate. Advocacy for Native citizenship carried on.
One step forward, two steps back
Despite protests from Tribes like the Pueblo, Congress revived the defunct Carter Bill in February 1924, now as the “Indian Citizenship Act.” This time, the new bill did not eliminate Tribal sovereignty nor change land allotments. Additionally, Native people did not have to leave their Tribal land in order to gain citizenship, which had been a requirement under the earlier Dawes Act.
The Indian Citizenship Act quickly passed in the House and Senate while the Committee on Indian Affairs debated the legal implications. Some Tribes still resisted the Act. For example, New York’s Onondaga Nation believed it was another attempt at erasure and called it a “destructive and injurious weapon.” Meanwhile, President Coolidge – who signed the bill into law – called it an “epoch-making” shift in an address to the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
In reaction to Indigenous suffrage, Zitkála-Šá and her husband formed the National Council of American Indians in 1926. While access to voting had been secured, she believed that unless Native voters organized, “Indians will receive little attention from Congress.” The Council’s advocacy sought to “Help Indians help themselves” in becoming a united political force for equal justice.
Even after the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, those exercising their new rights were met with more barriers. While they now legally had the right to vote as citizens, voter suppression tactics were still alive and well in individual states. Some states refused to accept the citizenship status of Native groups living on reservations. Others employed arguments around Native people’s loyalty to America, the issue of taxation, and Tribal sovereignty. Five states – Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Washington – used the issue of “Native people’s status as non-taxed individuals ” as justification to refuse Native votes in 1940; although non-taxed whites in those states were not denied voting access.
While challenges to these interpretations of the law were slowly corrected, discriminatory practices such as literacy tests remained in place until they were finally outlawed in 1970.
And still, the fight continues. Today, many who live on reservations lack critical access to voting. Indigenous people living on reservations are often without physical addresses to register and may only have Tribe-issued identification, which is not recognized as valid by state election authorities. In addition, questions around Tribal sovereignty are still being brought up, with the Supreme Court hearing over half a dozen cases on the matter in the last five years.
As an effort to protect Native people’s suffrage, Native activists have created provisions for the Native American Voting Rights Act which has been spelled out in the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, but the bill is still sitting in the Senate subcommittee. One hundred years later, the fight continues.
This article was produced with Made By Us, a coalition of more than 400 history museums working to connect with today's youth. Sam McGirt is the staff assistant for the National Museum of the American Indian's Office of Outreach and Engagement Planning.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take
