American Indians Today - An overview - Population

Let's look at the NDN population in the US.

Just because a tribe has a lot of land doesn't mean their population is equally sized. In the 2000 census, the biggest number of Americans identified themselves as Cherokee (Tsalagi) but this group lost most of it's ancestral land in the 1830's when they were moved (Trail of Tears, etc) to Oklahoma from the Eastern states. The 8th largest tribe, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, has no rez at all, and is ineligible for BIA services.

There are 121 tribes with more than 1000 members.

The 5 largest tribes - the first number is the number of people who claim ONLY that blood, and the second number is the number of people claiming Native and at least one other race.
Cherokee - with 281,069/390,902
Navajo - with 269,202/ 19,491
Native Hawaiians - 140,652 - we only have that number for them
Sioux - 108,272/35,179
Chippewa - 105,907/38,635

Census data may be different from data collected by the tribal governments or the BIA, though, although it is probably close. The cool thing about the 2000 census was that for the first time, it allowed people to choose more than one race or tribe. So the numbers changed majorly from those in past years.

There are about 2.5 million people reported as indian, with another 1.6 million claiming NDN and at least one other race. So about 4.1 million, or 1.5 percent of the US population considers themselves at least part Native. And that number isn't even counting the Hawaiians.

The numbers are growing, too, because the birth rate among indians has been very high in recent years.

In all, there are more than 627,ooo people of NDN blood/descent in California, or 1.9 percent of the total California population. Oklahoma has almost 392,000, or 11.4 percent of the population.

10.5 percent of the New Mexico population claims native blood/descent, and 19 percent of Alaskans, 9 percent of South Dakotans, and 7.4 percent of Montanans are indian, or mixed indian.

About half, overall, of the NDN population lives on or right next to a rez. But a lot have moved out, too. 3.4 percent of the total NDN population lives in either New York or Los Angeles. Generally speaking, urban NDNs are outside the body of NDN law, which mostly handles tribal government, jurisdiction in NDN country, NDN lands and resources. But their status is no less important - "between two cultures" they raise a lot of issues about assimilation and policy towards ALL native peoples.