Native Americans couldn’t be U.S. citizens when the country ratified its Constitution in 1788, and wouldn’t win the right to be for 136 years. When black Americans won citizenship with the 14th Amendment in 1868, the government specifically interpreted the law so it didn’t apply to Native people.
“I am not yet prepared to pass a sweeping act of naturalization by which all the Indian savages, wild or tame, belonging to a tribal relation, are to become my fellow-citizens and go to the polls and vote with me,” argued Michigan Senator Jacob Howard at the time, according to the Native American Voting Rights Coalition.
Some Native people who didn’t want U.S. citizenship since they were already part of their own sovereign nations. However, these nations still found their land and the lives of their people subject to the whims of a country that would not recognize them as citizens.
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