When Native Americans were finally welcomed: 100 years ago today

Tomorrow marks the 100^th anniversary of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. What does it mean for us today?

Land acknowledgement – the ritual of showing respect to original inhabitants – is a relatively new tradition. People have mixed feelings on the ritual – something we can explore on another day. A more immediate question is, What happened to these peoples that we are to acknowledge?

Much of the treatment of Indigenous Americans in the past 500 years is not good. There was a turning point a century ago this month, when on June 2, 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act was passed.

A relatively recent immigrant to Oregon, I arrived only in the 21^st century. It wasn’t hard to find out which Native Americans had lived on the land when European Americans arrived in the Willamette Valley. The Kalapuya called this place Chemeketa, which translates to “gathering place” or “place of peace.” Appropriately, the current name is Salem – also meaning peace – and it is the state capital.

I discovered a great resource on the “what happened” question in the book Oregon Indians: Voices from Two Centuries. This primary source book is a woeful tail of Indigenous Peoples being rounded up and slaughtered like cattle by U.S. army personnel and self-deputized pioneers over a mere couple of decades. What disturbed me most is that, while there were heroic exceptions, Christians too often led the charge.

Today some of the descendants of these original peoples remain either on tribal lands or living in the larger community. While the tribal lands are a poor replacement for previous verdant and well-watered Indigenous territory, there is a bustling casino business wherein Native Peoples “tax” some of the dominant whites for harm done by their pioneer ancestors.

When I was growing up in South Jersey, I knew that the Lenape had lived there long before. Unlike the fiery exchange between European frontiersmen and the Native peoples in 19^th century Oregon, the Lenape had disappeared well before Captain Joseph Buck, an American Revolutionary War veteran, laid out Millville, my hometown, in 1795.

It has taken a lot more digging to discover much detail about a people who left little trace. While only a handful of Lenape remain in New Jersey, their descendants, the Delaware, are scattered as far as Ontario, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.

There are, most certainly, many different takes on the fate of the original peoples of North America. But we can agree on the following:

1. They were a diverse group of nations who jostled for territory with each other, just like peoples anywhere else on the globe.
2. They covered the continent with their presence.
3. Through conquest, crowding, and disease, they were pushed out and decimated by the European and Euro-Americans.
4. They became a people without a country.

This last point is most pertinent on this 100^th anniversary of the Indian Citizenship Act.

A short history

The U.S. was founded in 1776 and its current Constitution came into force on March 4, 1789. Even so, citizenship for much of the population remained ambiguous for the next century and a half. For Black Americans, that ambiguity was finally addressed with the 14^th Amendment, which defined a citizen as any person born in the U.S. But for many other peoples of color, particularly Asians and Native Americans, the Supreme Court made it clear that the amendment did not apply to them.

That changed for the indigenous population when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. What stirred Congress to act was the recognition that thousands of Native Americans had served in the armed forces during the First World War.

Choctaws who trained in World War 1 for coded radio and telephone transmissions.

The Act itself reflects the complicated situation of Native Americans at the time. Indigenous peoples born within the territorial limits of the U.S. were declared citizens, so long as doing so did not “impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.” Therein lay the conflict – did they who had been here all along have to let go of their identity and tribal unity to gain legal status from those who had come after?

You, of course, can look all this up on your own, thanks to the internet. But to save you time, let me summarize. Indigenous tribes were considered separate nations, with citizenship and treaty rights, never mind that these treaties were almost universally ignored or violated by the U.S. government and its citizenry.

Here’s a short history of the question of Native American citizenship:

1831 – The Choctaw of Mississippi were given the option of becoming citizens, but they had to stay out of Native American territory, and they had to stay on designated lands for five years.

1857 – The infamous Dred Scott decision said Native Americans could become citizens only through naturalization, meaning the same way immigrants do.

1870 – The Senate Judiciary Committee clarified that the 14^th Amendment’s birth citizenship clause did not apply to Indian tribes.

1884 – In Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court affirmed that Native persons had to go through a naturalization process.

Native Americans could either 1) be a member of a sovereign nation or they could 2) be a citizen of the United States. However, national sovereignty for Native American peoples had long been losing all meaning. They were subjugated nations, meaning they were not truly independent and were forced to make huge cultural, legal, and territorial adjustments, as the Dawes Act of 1887 and the tale of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories made clear.

In essence, they were becoming peoples without nationhood and without rights.

As it was, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 was divisive within the Native American communities, kind of like which less-than-adequate option do you want? While it secured a long-standing political identity, it also meant the loss of tribal identity and sovereignty. The question was, How do you integrate into the dominant society without losing your “Native Americanness”? And there was also the question of how far to trust a government that had betrayed them over and over again.

On this century anniversary I find much food for thought – some of it bitter. Let me serve up three points:

1. Notion of divine right

Europeans coming and settling the Americas was seen as a divine right. In short, divine right means that my actions are ordained by God. In the case of the Americas, we Europeans had a right to this land – take that, you Firstlings! 

My own ancestors arrived in the New World not too many years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. For many European immigrants, there was the sense that this land was theirs, thanks be to God. I am grateful my ancestors followed Roger Williams, who left the theocratic Massachusetts Bay Colony to found Rhode Island (largely due to religious persecution). One of Williams’ guiding principles was fair dealing with Native Americans. New arrivals are to ask for land and, if granted, pay fairly for it. Then live peaceably with the indigenous neighbors.

But Williams and others like him have been the exception. From sea to shining sea, the default has often been far less shining.

Much of the decimation of the New World’s Indigenous Peoples came from disease – smallpox, measles, and the like, for which the Native population had no immunity. Disease spread so rapidly that populations were nearly wiped out before a European person was even sighted by interior peoples.

While it is impossible to fix blame for disease dissemination (think COVID), there is fault to place at the feet of the new arrivals – taking land by force or deceit, for example. Even if God may have called our ancestors to move here, did he truly ordain us to push out those who were already here?

2. Obligations of this present generation

Reparations is a fighting word. As is the broader sense that we are somehow responsible for the sins of our ancestors. Saving the questions of reparations and inherited guilt for another day, let’s define actions we should be able to agree on.

First, we can stop hiding the facts. What history we generally choose to remember is selective. Case in point is the long and heated discussion about Confederate memorials. Whether or not we do land acknowledgement, we can at least work to understand history – all of it and through a thoroughly vetted lens. Anything short of that is disingenuous at best.

Second, we can acknowledge wrongdoing. One thing I love about the Bible is that it neither hides nor excuses the sins of those it mentions, including Israel’s and the New Testament Church’s greatest heroes – all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly. And so should we do likewise. No need hiding the sins of our Fathers and Mothers.

It’s difficult assigning wrongdoing to those who benefit from the misdeeds of others. But there is something to be said about acknowledging pain and harm passed down. Regardless of who did what, we can recognize that much bad happened to Native Americans and this bad has had transgenerational impact.

Third, God wants to bring healing, including healing to and through us. There is no quid pro quo in the Good News, QPQ meaning gaining favor in an exchange of something offered. Repentance, making things right, is in response to justification (being made right) – an act of God, not of us. Both repentance and justification include acknowledging wrong. Our ancestors may not have acknowledged their sins, but we can do much good by doing what they didn’t do. “My forebears made a mess at your forebears’ expense, and I am very sorry” – straightforward as that.

We can bring healing, not as Great White Saviors, but as fellow servants called by God to share God’s love with those who are hurting. And maybe healing will come to us as well.

3. Biblical recognition of Peoplehood

One of the most glorious concepts in Scripture is found in Revelation 7, not the murky reference to 144,000 in the opening verses, but the passage on the “Great Multitude in White Robes” that follows in verse 9.

“There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

And again, just a few paragraphs earlier (5:9-10):

“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”

The grand vision of God for all humanity is that all nations, all peoples, all tribes, all languages will be represented before the throne of God. The Gospel declares that the curse of Babel has been turned into blessing – that the amazing diversity of the human race is something God glories in. And no one people group is to be left out.

Short of the eschaton (end times), that means that all peoples are of great value to God in the here and now. And that includes the Lenapi/Delaware and the Kalapuya.

Next Steps

So, what does it mean to:

1. Stop hiding the facts?
2. Acknowledge wrongdoing?
3. Bring healing?

For me, I think this post helps me fulfill in a small way #1 and #2, and by doing so, I hope, #3. This three-fold task is something I hope to keep doing. For what I’ve learned about the Good News is that these processes are to be ongoing as long as God gives us breath.

For you? Well, that’s for you to decide. All I will tell you is that God has called you, like me, to be an agent of reconciliation. But you process that for yourself.

I encourage you to reflect on what I’ve written here and what that means for you going forward. I also invite you to comment below or if you prefer a more private approach, you can message me on the contact page. For those of you living in Oregon or in the Delaware Valley, check my resource page for resources on historical perspectives of Native Americans in your areas.