Answer:
In 2000 more than 600 indigenous bands or tribes were officially recognized by Canada’s dominion government, and some 560 additional bands or tribes were officially recognized by the government of the United States.
Census data from 2006 indicated that people claiming aboriginal American ancestry numbered some 1.17 million in Canada or approximately 4 percent of the population; of these, some 975,000 individuals were officially recognized by the dominion as of First Nation, Métis, or Inuit heritage.
U.S. census figures from 2000 indicated that some 4.3 million people claimed Native American descent or 1–2 percent of the population; fewer than one million of these self-identified individuals were officially recognized as of native heritage, however.
Marrying outside the Native American community has also been a factor: in some places and times, those who out-married were required by law to be removed from tribal rolls; children of these unions have sometimes been closer to one side of the family than the other, thus retaining only one parent’s ethnic identity; and in some cases, the children of ethnically mixed marriages have been unable to document the degree of genetic relation necessary for official enrollment in a particular tribe.
Although life has changed drastically for many tribal members, several indicators, such as the proportion of students who complete secondary school, the level of unemployment, and the median household income, show that native people in the United States and Canada have had more difficulty in achieving economic success than non-Indians.
Questions of who or what have the ultimate authority over native nations and individuals, and under what circumstances, remain among the most important, albeit contentious and misunderstood, aspects of contemporary Native American life.
With nearly 1,200 officially recognized tribal governments and more than 60 regional governments extant in the United States and Canada at the turn of the 21st century, and with issues such as taxation and regulatory authority at stake, it is unsurprising that these various entities have been involved in a myriad of jurisdictional battles.
The Oliphant decision might lead one to presume that, as non-Indians may not be tried in tribal courts, Indians in the United States would not be subject to prosecution in state or federal courts.
In this case, the Supreme Court favored tribal sovereignty, finding that the judicial proceedings of an independent entity (in this case, the indigenous nation) stood separately from those of the states of the United States; a tribe was entitled to prosecute its members.
In so ruling, the court seems to have placed an extra burden on Native Americans: whereas the plaintiff in Oliphant gained immunity from tribal law, indigenous plaintiffs could indeed be tried for a single criminal act in both a tribal and a state or federal court.
