Native American Citizenship

Calvin Coolidge with Miss Ruth Muskrat, a Cherokee Indian, and group of others of the Committee of 100 on Indian Affaires, on December 13, 1923.

On June 2, 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act (ICA); this granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States.  The act states, “[t]hat 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.”¹  This legislation was viewed as a compromise, but Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work was authorized to grant citizenship to “all Indians who requested it, if they were "individually prepared" for the responsibilities.”²

Both whites and Native Americans were on either side of the fence of the citizenship debate.  Many Native Americans did not want U.S. citizenship; they already considered themselves citizens of their own tribes and felt that they became U.S. citizens against their will.  It is undoubtedly true that there was a significant lack of Native American agency when it came to the citizenship question.  Citizenship also didn’t automatically equal the right to vote; this was left up to the individual states.  Even after the passing of the ICA, “most states continued to refuse to recognize Indians as citizens of the state in which they resided. Other states' officials devised laws to limit Indians' access to the ballot box. The unwillingness of states to allow Indians to vote was no surprise given the history of conflict and antagonism” between whites and Native Americans.³  In many states, voting eligibility could also depend on the level of assimilation a Native American had reached.  In his article that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Hubert Work agreed that “States should take over the administration of affairs of the Indians” once the ICA was enacted.⁴

Some tribes outright rejected citizenship.  The most prominent rejection was that of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, “who offered a written dissent after the passing of the ICA in 1924. Their Grand Council sent letters to the US president and Congress declining US citizenship, rejecting dual citizenship, and emphasizing that the act was passed without their consent.”⁵ Most rejections were rooted in the belief that making Native Americans U.S. citizens was a violation of Native sovereignty.  Citizenship was also viewed as another method to force assimilation and erase tribal identity.  As mentioned previously, bans of Native American cultural expression were not uncommon.  However, once they achieved citizenship status, many Native Americans argued that their rights were protected under the religious freedom provided in the First Amendment.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs and other government or legal entities generally didn’t accept this argument, although they were more wary of outright banning cultural and religious expression.⁶  In his Post article, published just two days before the ICA was enacted, Hubert Work said the government “is not attempting to supplant Indian religion with other forms of worship, but approves of efforts to modify its ordinances into harmony with the forms of Christian religion which civilization has approved, from which our rules of life are drafted and upon which our Government is founded.”⁷  In reference to the dances that were banned, which Work didn’t explicitly recognize, he wrote “the Indian no more than the white man can afford to contribute to his own spiritual and physical downfall by indulging in practices which appeal only to the animal instincts.”⁸

It shouldn’t be forgotten that many Native Americans celebrated their new citizenship status.  Obtaining citizenship did have some benefits that were recognized by many Native Americans, such as the reinforcement of their legal status.  Prior to the ICA, many Native Americans couldn’t argue their cases in United States courts, but their new status generally erased this uncertainty.⁹