Indian country

Self-governing Native American community in the United States

This article is about the term the United States uses for Native self-governments and global sovereign nations. For the unorganized U.S. territory whose general borders were initially set by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834, see Indian Territory. For other uses, see Indian country (disambiguation).

BIA map of Indian Reservations in the Continental United States

Indian country is any of the many self-governing Native American/American Indian communities throughout the United States. As a legal category, it includes "all land within the limits of any Indian reservation", "all dependent Indian communities within the borders of the United States", and "all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished."[1][2]

The American military has since applied the term to sovereign land outside its control, including land in Vietnam.

## Legal classification

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Main article: Indian country jurisdiction

This legal classification defines American Indian tribal and individual land holdings as part of a reservation, an allotment, or a public domain allotment. All federal trust lands held for Native American tribes are Indian country. Federal, state, and local governments use this category in their legal processes. Today, however, according to the U.S. Census of 2010, over 78% of all Native Americans live off reservations. Indian country now spans thousands of rural areas, towns and cities where Indian people live.

This convention is followed generally in colloquial speech and is reflected in publications such as the Native American newspaper Indian Country Today

## Related and historical meanings

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Historically, Indian country was considered the areas, regions, territories or countries beyond the frontier of settlement that were inhabited primarily by Native Americans. Colonists made treaties with Native Americans, agreeing to offer services and protection indefinitely in exchange for peaceful transfer of Native American land. Many of these treaties were arranged and signed through coercion, and many treaty agreements were violated or ignored.

### Between the Appalachians and Mississippi

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Main article: Indian Reserve (1763)

As the original 13 colonies grew and treaties were made, the de facto boundary between settled territory and Indian country during the 18th century was roughly the crest of the Appalachian Mountains, a boundary set into law by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Confederation Congress Proclamation of 1783, and later by the Nonintercourse Act.[3] The Indian Reserve was gradually settled by European Americans and divided into territories and states, starting with Kentucky County (an extension of Virginia) and the Northwest Territory.

### West of the Mississippi

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Main article: Indian Territory

Most Indians in the area of the former Reserve were either killed or relocated further west under policies of Indian Removal. After the Louisiana Purchase, the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 created the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River as a destination. It too was gradually divided into territories and states for European American settlement, leaving only modern Indian Reservations inside the boundaries of U.S. states.

In 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the tribal statistical area (and former reservation) of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation remains under the tribal sovereignty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act.[4][5]

### Usage in Vietnam

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During the Vietnam War circa 1968, the American military and pilots referred to free-fire zones under South Vietnamese control as "Indian Country."[6][7][8] American military personnel also used the term "savage" and "uncivilized" to refer to its inhabitants.[8][6]

During a 1971 congressional hearing, American airborne ranger Robert Bowie Johnson Jr. defined the term to politician John F. Seiberling:

> ...it means different things to different people. It is like there are savages out there, there are gooks out there. In the same way we slaughtered the Indian's buffalo, we would slaughter the water buffalo in Vietnam.[9][6]

In 1989, Tom Holm claimed Vietnam War usage of this term was "in obvious mimicry of the old Cavalry versus Indian films".[10]

### 21st century usage

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As of 2008, the term "Indian country" is used by "soldiers, military strategists, reporters, and World Wide Web users to refer to hostile, unsecured, and dangerous territory in Iraq and Afghanistan."[6]

## See also

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* Aboriginal title in the United States
* Indian country jurisdiction
* Native American reservation politics
* Off-reservation trust land
* Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area
* Tribal sovereignty in the United States
* Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations

## References

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1. ^ "18 U.S.C. 1151". Law.cornell.edu. Retrieved June 8, 2012.
2. ^ "What Is Indian Country?". Tribaljurisdiction.tripod.com. Retrieved June 8, 2012.
3. ^ Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle (1983). "Indian Country". American Indians, American Justice. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0292738348.
4. ^ Higgins, Tucker; Mangan, Dan (July 9, 2020). "Supreme Court says eastern half of Oklahoma is Native American land". CNBC. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
5. ^ Liptak, Adam; Healy, Jack (July 9, 2020). "Supreme Court Rules Nearly Half of Oklahoma Is Indian Reservation". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
6. ^ a b c d Silliman, Stephen W. (June 2008). "The "Old West" in the Middle East: U.S. Military Metaphors in Real and Imagined Indian Country". American Anthropologist. 110 (2): 237–247. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00029.x. JSTOR 27563986. S2CID 162479330. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
7. ^ "Vietnam Powwow: The Vietnam War as Remembered by Native American Veterans [a machine-readable transcription]". May 1, 2021. Archived from the original on May 1, 2021. Retrieved March 10, 2024.
8. ^ a b "The Saturated Jungle and The New York Times: Nature, Culture, and the Vietnam War". Department of History. Retrieved March 10, 2024.
9. ^ King, J. C. H. (August 25, 2016). Blood and Land: The Story of Native North America. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-1-84614-808-8.
10. ^ Holm, Tom. Forgotten Warriors: American Indian Service Men in Vietnam. Archived from the original on March 10, 2024. Retrieved March 9, 2024.

* N. Bruce Duthu, American Indians and the Law (NY: Penguin Library -Viking - 2008)
* David H. Getches, Charles F. Wilkinson, and Robert A. Williams, jr., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law, 4th Ed. (St. Paul: West Pub., 1998)
* Imre Sutton, ed., "The Political Geography of Indian Country." American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 15(02) 1991

https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-10.pdf

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