Who Are American Indians?

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American Indians are citizens of federally recognized Tribal Nations and their documented descendants who are eligible to receive services from the federal government that possess a unique political status unconnected to racial categories. This unique political status is codified in federal laws and engrained in the United States trust responsibilities which only apply to American Indian Nation’s/people. That trust responsibility is a legally enforceable fiduciary obligation on the part of the United States to protect tribal treaty rights, lands, assets and resources, as well as a duty to carry out the mandates of federal law with respect to American Indian sovereignty. Self identification as an American Indian person does not exist without the familial connections and explicit recognition by those federally recognized communities as belonging to it. 

CFT specifically chooses to use the term American Indians when speaking collectively about American Indian people/nations of the United States because that is the legal term used in the US code of Federal Regulations to describe this political class of people.  We will not engage in the latest fad of using the term “Indigenous” when specifically describing American Indians collectively.  That is because every human being is “Indigenous” to somewhere on the earth, and this murky term is specifically used in cases where someone is trying to obfuscate the fact that they are not actually an American Indian with actual ties to any specific Tribal Nation.  

This concept is extremely important to the work that CFT does in representing actual American Indian people with relevance to the US, and specifically, the Ohio River Valley Region.