• A tribe was defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1901 as, “By a Tribe we understand a body of Indians of the same or similar race, united in community under one leadership or government, and inhabiting a particular though sometimes ill-defined territory.”

• Before the federal government developed official definitions for an Indian tribe, the term was purely ethnologic. A tribe was a group of indigenous people, bound together by blood ties, who were socially, politically, and religiously organized according to the tenets of their own culture, who lived together, occupying a definite territory, and who spoke a common language or dialect.

• Each tribe has a formally established enrollment criteria. No single set of criteria exists which establishes tribal membership consistently across tribes. Most criteria requires 1/4 or more degree tribal blood (blood quantum), with some requiring that a parent be enrolled with the tribe plus the 1/4 degree tribal blood quantum. Other tribes may require only that an individual provide proof of decendency from historic roles to be eligible. A tribe may include degree of Indian blood from other tribes for a total of Indian blood, however, to be eligible for tribal enrollment, the individual must meet the requirements for that individual tribe based on the degree of tribal blood. Some tribes may base their enrollment on historical paternal or maternal lines and only enroll children based on the tribal lineage as determined by their particular cultural traditions being either matrilineal or patrilineal.

• American Indians are dual citizens of both the U.S. and a federally recognized tribe. Most tribes will not allow dual tribal enrollment. Thus, individuals cannot be enrolled in more than one tribe should they meet the eligibility requirements for more than one tribe. In the 19th century, the prevalent opinion was that an Indian could not be both a tribal member and a U.S. citizen. In 1924, with the passage of the one-sentence law entitled the Indian Citizenship Act, U.S. citizenship was granted to the Indian population. It read, “All non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States...are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States....” At the time the act was passed, perhaps one third of the U.S. Indian population did not have citizenship. Other laws and special considerations had created methods for certain tribal individuals and groups to be granted U.S. citizenship prior to the passage of the 1924 law.

• Currently there are approximately 250 Native languages - each tribe has their own culture and language that is distinct to them. Some tribes may have language programs that are being promoted in their education systems (Head Start, elementary schools, and tribally controlled colleges). Only 250 Native languages are viable due to the limited number of Native speakers. A number of Native languages disappeared due to the systematic elimination within the boarding schools and the transition from Native to the English language.

• Sovereign is defined as an entity which is independent and where supreme authority is vested (Black’s Law Dictionary, 1990). At the most basic level, the term refers to the inherent right or power to govern. Within the Europe of old, this right was vested in monarchs and was considered to be God-given. Under the U.S. constitutional system, the right is inherent in the people and is exercised through their representative local, state, and federal governments. This is somewhat comparable to the inherent sovereignty of Indian people in the tribal context (Canby 1981; Deloria and Lytle 1983).

• Tribal governments are considered to be Sovereign Nations. A sovereign people could be considered a political body, consisting of the entire number of citizens and qualified electors, who in their collective capacity, possess the powers of sovereignty and exercise them through their chosen representatives (Black’s Law Dictionary, 1990). Several issues have surfaced as a result of tribal sovereign status. Gaming and taxation (tribal and state) are two critical points of contention between tribes and state governments.

• Tribal sovereignty is inherent, and the self-governing powers of Indian tribes still survive unless divested by Congress. Tribal sovereignty includes the power of a tribe to adopt and operate under their own form of government, define conditions of tribal membership, regulate domestic relations of members, prescribe rules of inheritance, levy taxes, regulate property and to create laws and administer justice.

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