citizenship

What happened

The Fourteenth Amendment makes citizens of persons "born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." In Elk v. Wilkins (1884), the Supreme Court held that did not reach John Elk, who had left his tribe and lived in Omaha, Nebraska. The Court wrote that Indians born within the United States, "members of, and owing immediate allegiance to, one of the Indian tribes," were "no more 'born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof'" than the children of subjects of a foreign government born within that government's domain. Elk was refused the right to register to vote.

Congress changed the rule by statute. The Act of June 2, 1924 provided that "all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States." A proviso added that citizenship would not impair or affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.

The rule is now in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Today's 8 U.S.C. 1401(b) lists, among those who are citizens at birth, a person born in the United States to a member of an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe, with the same protection for tribal property.

American Indian citizenship is therefore separate from tribal citizenship, which each nation decides for itself. Nothing in the sources here describes how states responded to the 1924 Act.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error