Native American reservations explained

this episode is brought to you by incogni hey again everybody how you doing art is uh making me dog sit so tarchy says hi anything you want to say tarchy no okay oh and yes you can get geography now merge like this geography now drawstring bag at geographnow.com not selling out if it's your brand so this is going to be a special video it's going to served as like a reference to the USA episode why because this topic is so complex and it has so many layers to it that I could not fit it in the USA episode it needed to have an entire episode all to itself what is the topic well of course when it comes to the USA we have a very unique trait to our nation in that although the country has evolved so much since its Inception on paper nearly 300 years ago the truest original chapter to this country started with the Native Americans first of all the title is that even the correct Collective term that you should call them as a group Native Americans well as you guys know I've traveled to quite a few reservations mostly in the southwest and I actually asked this question to some of the people in these reservations and honestly I've gotten a lot of different answers some people have said the term Native American is fine some people said that some people in the younger generation might just prefer the term native or indigenous but then it's like how would you distinguish yourself apart from the Native and indigenous people of other countries like Australia so then it gets a little more complicated I heard one guy say we don't mind the term indian in fact in a lot of areas you'll still see the word Indian being used and he said they like it because they were called Indians before India was even a country and I'm like well India was a land mass composed of small kingdoms and principalities prior to it actually becoming the country known of as India so I guess that makes sense I mean the dude made a point in the end the safest bet is to just address the Native American by whatever tribe they are from first and then of course obviously you got to follow up with an offensive Pocahontas joke because clearly they love that stuff sarcasm just play it safe call them by the tribe anywho archaeological evidence suggests that the Native Americans are descended from the peoples that migrated from Eastern Eurasia the exact time of arrival for these people is debated amongst historians but generally most of them will say that it was at some time at the end of the last ice age when woolly mammoths still existed and the icebridge connected what is now Russia and Alaska since then the peoples dispersed throughout all the Americas and eventually formed all the vast people groups languages and tribes and cultures ranging from the Arctic Inuits to the yagan people all the way in South America for the USA tribal Affairs are often an interesting subset of legislative confusion there are four sub-federal levels of government that are recognized City County State and tribal this is how I do four whatever in article one section 8 of the U.S Constitution it recognizes Native American tribal areas on the same interactive level as Nations Congress shall regulate commerce and enter into treaties with foreign Nations and Indian tribes first let's break down the numbers today there are 574 federally recognized tribes and as for land allotment 325 reservations exist throughout the lower 48 states this means that they have a legal relationship with the United States Bound by things like treaties and executive orders these reservations technically fall under federal land however the tribes are given a degree of autonomy and not all federal laws apply to them otherwise in much of the Eastern parts of the Mississippi there are a bunch of aisas or American Indian Statistical areas which are delineated lands used for recording native populations these chunks of land do not have the same legal or governmental status as Federal Indian reservations but they are still set apart as a recognized Community also keep in mind in 2020 in the mcgirt versus Oklahoma case the Supreme Court ruled that a significant portion of Eastern Oklahoma fell within the boundaries of the Muskogee Creek Nation plus a bunch of other tribes and so it was redesignated as a statistical area now although the United States holds legal title to these lands the tribes or individuals in the tribe hold the beneficial title or the right to use and benefit from the land this is why some of them prefer to call themselves Nations rather than reservations like Navajo and Hopi this also means they hold rights like being able to elect their own leaders have their own police forces courts they pay U.S federal taxes but not necessarily state or state sales tax depending on the reservation they make their own laws like some reservations don't sell alcohol others do they can Levy their own taxes to their own people however they want within their own reservation under the igra or Indian gaming regulatory act they are allowed to set up casinos and set up the procedures for said casinos and although it is not required many tribal peoples often apply for a cdib or a certificate of degree of Indian blood or a tribal enrollment card which is used for various purposes such as accessing tribal services and benefits they are typically issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs or Bia you can even go to the website now how is one recognized as a tribal member well it depends on the tribe usually it's through a series of proving your bloodline to the tribe through ancestry however there is no single universally accepted standard or percentage they all have their own different set of criteria some of the reservations receive government funds distributed to its members like a trust fund based on things like treaty obligations or resource extractions and so forth most of the reservations apply to a single distinct tribe whereas some reservations are shared by two or more tribes and some reservations are actually empty as in all the tribal members either left or passed away and or their descendants don't want to live on the land it's every reservation has a story and keep in mind for Alaska and Hawaii it's a little different Alaska has the native Village statistical areas divided into 13 Regional corporations that split government money allotted to whoever Falls within the populated block but the whole block in itself is not a reservation it's just a general area and Hawaii has the Homeland program in which large chunks of land are set aside for qualified individuals that can prove Hawaiian ancestry and also the island of nihau is a privately owned Island that is almost completely inhabited by native Hawaiians and access to the island is restricted and finally it's a little different for the native chamoro peoples in Guam and the Mariana Islands and the Samoans in American Samoa since the islands are considered unincorporated territories they operate slightly different each territory gives the natives the right to maintain and teach their culture language and traditions and has some kind of customary land tenure system that recognizes ancestral land rights to the natives but like everything else in this video it's kind of complicated but you get the gist of it so anyway back to the lower 48 the tribes generally fall within about 18 or so main parent language groups that historically dominated certain areas of the country before the reservations were created some of the most notable groups being the penuchin and Salish groups in the Pacific Northwest the yuto as Tekken tanoan groups in the Great Basin the na Dene or at the Baskin groups in the southwest the suing troops and the plains the Algonquin based groups by the great lakes and East Coast the Iroquois groups in the East and the muskogean and Chickasaw based groups in the South collectively all the reservations make up about 88 000 square miles or about the same size as the entire state of Idaho and out of the entire native population of the US only about a third of them actually live on reservations size wise the Navajo reservation is the largest one followed by the Uintah and URI reservation in Utah or odam follows at number three and the Pine Ridge in South Dakota follows in at number four by population the largest tribe is the Cherokee at somewhere around 370 000 people in membership Navajo comes in at number two Choctaw and then the Sioux at number four so let's back up a little bit and explain how did all these reservations form well this is where the story takes a little bit of an acknowledged dark twist as much of it was done by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in which most of the tribes east of the Mississippi River were forcibly relocated to either what is now Oklahoma or Kansas this is why on the map you see almost No Reservations in the eastern half of the United States despite many tribes having historically inhabited them generally the tribes get along they have a lot of inter-tribal meetings and festivals historically some of them were enemies and fought each other sometimes colonists would fight the tribe sometimes tribes would use the colonists to join forces with them against other tribes like the Pawnee joined forces with the US Army to fight against the Sioux the Algonquins joined the French to fight against the Iroquois and the Beaver Wars a lot of fighting a lot of crazy history ultimately in the end the ever-growing population of Colonials in addition to the enslaved Africans that were brought over outnumbered the native tribes and expansion was kind of inevitable I'm not going to dismiss the fact that yes lots of Bloodshed occurred in the process lots of atrocities committed by our government and it took years for them to acknowledge it it eventually led to the Trail of Tears I remember they actually taught me this when I was in school when I was like 12 years old old and all the textbooks have this painting by Robert Lindo essentially it's kind of like the aftermath scenario that many nations across the world deal with after they have like a huge conflict era riddled with war and killing it's kind of like okay how do we move forward with all the survivors kind of like that quote by Bertrand Russell like War does not determine the winner but just rather who is left it was a really weird awkward transition period And even afterwards things like access to amenities and supplies were an issue in fact that's how fry bread even became a staple of many Native American communities because the ingredients were provided by the US government as rations during the relocation period so they wouldn't starve and then they just kind of stuck with it and shared the idea with other tribes not gonna lie I kind of freaking love fry bread it's really good but yeah even when treaties were made some of them were broken a lot of complicated things happened but in the end it's a very complicated topic and when you go to these reservations and talk to the people you hear a lot of different stories and a lot of different perspectives on how the whole situation went down and I'm not one claiming to speak authoritatively on their behalf I would say go to a reservation talk to them ask them questions there have been instances in which our heads of state have tried to kind of like address it and apologize but the thing is like none of these really got a lot of attention and neither president made any kind of like public speech about it but okay enough about all that let's just culturally they have so many traditions and Customs it would take forever to explain actually one of you guys gave me this book The Element Encyclopedia of Native Americans I would really recommend this book whoever gave this to me on flag fan day let me know I totally forgot who it was write your name in the comments I want to give you recognition thank you for sending this one other thing that a lot of these tribes take huge pride in are there native languages in fact Cherokee and Osage are the only tribes in the United States that have their own distinct actively used non-latin writing systems I think the Blackfoot tribe also has their own alphabet but it isn't really used a lot the Cherokee and Osage actually like put it in street signs one major event you can go to is the Gathering of Nations held every year in Albuquerque it's one of the largest powwows in the country many people representing numerous tribes go to it and have it's like a huge festival with lots of performances food and activities speaking of which when I was in Hopi reservation they really wanted to make sure that I mentioned that the Navajo were not originally from the American southwest but migrated south from Canada and they also wanted me to tell you guys that the Kachina dolls were originally Hopi but some tribes like the Apache and Navajo they like to sell them in their souvenir shops so it's like eh come on guys we're all supposed to be one people but you know at least let the people know where those things come from when you sell them I don't know the people of Hopi reservation wanted me to say that so I'm just relaying the message Kachina dolls Hopi don't forget it in any case uh that's a lot of information but I think that's basically the surface level outline of what you probably should know about Native American reservations and peoples in the USA and with that just want to give a quick little shout out to our sponsor thank you so much incogni for working with us now to make this video I had to do a lot of research and I had to do a lot of searching and downloading and this might apply to some of you guys but if you work online if you do a project or if you shop online or download or upload something like an app or music then somehow you are flooded with Spam calls and emails from unknown senders it's crazy it's annoying unfortunately we live in a time where data Brokers scrape the internet and scan public records to sell your information it happens so much I'm pretty sure you probably have dealt with it before trying to get rid of all these annoying things individually on your own can take a grueling long time and it's frustrating it's crazy process thankfully Incognito can do everything for you you sign up you tell them you want them to remove all your personal data they will contact the data Brokers directly and get your information removed if this is something you feel might help you and Cockney has partnered with us and is offering the first 100 people to use the code Geo now at the link below to get 60 off of their services save your data and go Incognito with incogni thank you incogni so there you go uh just hope you guys like this video hope you learned something and as usual stay cool stay tuned [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Geography Now

Views: 571,125

Keywords: Geography, facts, info, cool, education, learning, countries, history, class, lesson, funny, travel

Id: z57SX9fDDY4

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2023