Indigenous Peoples’ Day has always been an act of celebration, resistance, and truth. When we gather and organize for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we affirm that we are still here. It is a reminder that our stories did not begin with Columbus, and they do not end with the myth of American exceptionalism and conquest. But today, it carries an urgency we can’t ignore. In the current political climate, that affirmation takes on new meaning as questions about the legitimacy of our U.S. citizenship are raised in efforts to end birthright citizenship and erase the political existence of Native nations.
On October 9, 2025, Trump issued the 2025 Columbus Day Proclamation, declaring Christopher Columbus “a visionary who paved the way for the founding of our great Nation.” He urged Americans to honor “the values of courage, faith, and discovery that built Western civilization.”
In the proclamation, Trump made no mention of Indigenous people, unless you count the mention of a “vicious and merciless campaign to erase our history, slander our heroes, and attack our heritage.” The wording of Trump’s phrase echoes a similar line in the Declaration of Independence, which accuses King George III of acting against the colonists who opposed British rule by colluding with “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.” Instead of taking the opportunity to acknowledge Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Trump doubled down on a myth of discovery that glorifies genocide and rebrands colonization as destiny.
This same worldview underpins Trump’s renewed effort to end birthright citizenship, a move that threatens not only immigrants but also the very foundation of Native existence. In one of the administration’s own legal arguments, officials claimed, “The United States’ connection with the children of illegal aliens and temporary visitors is weaker than its connection with members of Indian tribes. If the latter link is insufficient for birthright citizenship, the former certainly is.”
This suggests that tribal citizenship, the political relationship that predates the United States itself, is somehow incompatible with being American. It echoes the logic used to justify centuries of termination policies, removal, and forced dependency.
The Trump administration’s attacks on birthright citizenship do not just threaten immigrant communities. They strike at the very heart of Indigenous sovereignty. They threaten to bring back an era of termination and removal, creating the conditions for Native people to once again be treated as wards of the state, stripped of rights, and relocated to lands or countries we have never set foot in.
Recent reports from the Oregon Capital Chronicle describe how Navajo citizens were detained in immigration sweeps across border states, raising alarm among tribal leaders who warn that racial profiling and the refusal to recognize tribal identification put Indigenous people in the same danger as undocumented immigrants.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day has never been just a celebration. It is a call to action against the ongoing assault on our sovereignty and existence
The American Immigration Council has also warned that the Supreme Court’s refusal to restrict racial profiling in immigration raids has encouraged law enforcement to target anyone who looks “foreign,” a pattern that puts Indigenous people at particular risk because our identities and documents are not consistently recognized or treated as valid government documents.
Tribal Nations have alerted their citizens to this threat, suggesting they carry their tribal IDs, Certificate of Indian Blood (CIB), passports, and other photo IDs to help reduce the risk of detainment in the event of ICE raids.
The Indian Law Resource Center also reminds us that many of those being deported are Indigenous people themselves. The center has raised concern over the planned deportation of more than 600 Guatemalan children, at least 90 percent of whom are Maya, stressing that these children are Indigenous and have rights under both U.S. and international law.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day has never been just a celebration. It is a call to action against the ongoing assault on our sovereignty and existence — and an assertion that, despite these threats, we will not be erased, silenced, or eradicated.
Sovereignty and Citizenship
Indigenous Peoples’ Day stands in defiance of a nation that has always treated Native sovereignty as an obstacle to overcome in upholding the myth of Manifest Destiny. In 1871, the Indian Appropriations Act ended the recognition of tribes as sovereign nations. With that single act, Congress declared that no tribe would be acknowledged as an independent power capable of making treaties. Our nations were reduced to wards of the state, entirely dependent on the same government that had stolen our lands.
The Dawes Act of 1887 went further. It divided tribal lands into individual allotments and stripped millions of acres from Native control. It was designed to assimilate Natives into mainstream society and dismantle tribal sovereignty, breaking apart communities and leaving many Natives impoverished and landless. The act also tied land allotments to U.S. citizenship, granting it to those who accepted allotments, severed their tribal affiliations, and left reservations, making citizenship a tool of assimilation rather than recognition of rights.
With the 1934 passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, tribes regained a measure of sovereignty. The Indian Reorganization Act allowed tribes to re-establish governments and manage their own lands, but the recognition came with heavy federal oversight. Yet even within those restrictions, our nations rebuilt and strengthened the scope and boundaries of our sovereignty.
Dual Citizenship
As Native peoples, we are citizens of the United States, but we are also citizens of our tribal nations. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 extended U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans without requiring them to sever their tribal affiliations, as was previously necessary. The Act created a dual framework, where we not only have the right to self-determination but also hold rights and responsibilities in two nations simultaneously.
This reality is fragile, and not all Native nations share the same protection. As Teen Vogue reported, nearly 400 tribes in the United States lack federal recognition, which means they do not share the same nation-to-nation relationship that federally recognized tribes have with the U.S. government. This also leaves their people without the legal rights, resources, or protections guaranteed to federally recognized tribes. For these communities, the lack of recognition means they exist in a legal limbo when federal policy turns hostile.
As Dina Gilio-Whitaker, author and professor of American Indian studies and lecturer at the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center, explained to Truthout:
Tribal sovereignty as a legal principle and self-determination as tribal autonomy has always been what’s at stake for tribal nations. Throughout U.S. history it has never been unassailable in U.S. law because of underlying logics of Euro-Christian superiority; that is what the doctrine of discovery is.
History has shown that while our sovereignty is an organic, inalienable right, it is not a fixed or guaranteed right in relation to the U.S. government. Indigenous nations must continually nurture the nation-to-nation relationship that we have and defend our sovereignty against political systems designed to limit or erase it.
If tribal sovereignty were ever dissolved as it was in 1871 with the Indian Appropriations Act, recognition of our tribal citizenship would disappear with it. If our U.S. citizenship were also revoked, we would be left stateless in our own homelands. That is the depth of what is at stake when sovereignty is undermined. Native identity, rights, and futures are tied to the recognition of both forms of citizenship, to the survival of our nations as sovereign powers, and to the protection of the land and water that sustain us.
Contemporary Threats to Citizenship and Sovereignty
The Trump administration’s attacks on Native sovereignty and citizenship are not isolated incidents. They are part of a consistent effort to undermine the rights of tribal nations and the people who belong to them. Treaty obligations are dismissed whenever they conflict with corporate interests. Sacred lands such as Bears Ears and Oak Flat are stripped of federal protection and opened to mining and drilling. Pipelines are forced through Native territories without consultation or consent. Federal funding for housing, health care, and education — already limited in many communities — is repeatedly threatened, further weakening the foundations of Native life.
Native children face a direct threat to their connection to their nations through attacks on the Indian Child Welfare Act, which has been challenged in multiple cases in state and federal courts. Native tribes and organizations successfully defended and even expanded this law.
Passed in 1978 to stop the mass removal of Native children from their families and communities, the Indian Child Welfare Act protects the right of children to remain with their families, in their communities, and connected to their cultures.
The survival of our nations, our families, and our children hinges on protecting both our tribal and U.S. citizenship.
Despite ongoing challenges, the law remains one of the most important protections for tribal sovereignty and Native families. In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act’s constitutionality in a 7–2 decision in Haaland v. Brackeen, rejecting all challenges to the law.
More recently, in August 2024, the California Supreme Court strengthened the Indian Child Welfare Act by requiring child welfare agencies to investigate a child’s potential Native ancestry before separating families. But around the same time, the rejection of the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act denied survivors of cultural genocide a path to justice. The proposed commission would have investigated the legacy of Indian boarding schools and given survivors a chance to tell their stories and seek accountability.
Attacks on the Indian Child Welfare Act, birthright citizenship, and tribal sovereignty are interconnected. Each is a threat to the dual citizenship Native people hold. Undermining either form of citizenship puts Native people at risk of legal limbo, statelessness, and social and economic marginalization. The survival of our nations, our families, and our children hinges on protecting both our tribal and U.S. citizenship.
Refusing to Surrender
Despite continued threats to our sovereignty, Native nations, communities, and organizations use every means available, from the courts to direct action, to defend our rights and existence. The victories won and even the losses show that even in the face of systemic erasure and violence, Native people refuse to disappear, refuse to surrender.
The fight to protect Oak Flat in Arizona is a current example of this. Oak Flat, a sacred Apache site, is threatened by a copper mine authorized through a congressional land swap pushed by the Trump administration. Tribal leaders, activists, and allies organized to defend Oak Flat, arguing in court and mobilizing to ensure that sacred land is not exchanged and destroyed for foreign private profit.
As of October 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear further appeals, supporting lower court rulings that allow the transfer to proceed. However, a federal appeals court issued an emergency injunction blocking the transfer and delaying the mine’s advance while legal challenges are considered.
At Standing Rock, hundreds of tribes and tens of thousands of allies gathered and occupied land near the Cannonball River in North Dakota to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect treaty lands and water. Although the pipeline was completed, the resistance led to widespread awareness of Indigenous rights and environmental justice.
Standing Rock sparked solidarity actions around the world, inspired divestment campaigns targeting banks that financed the pipeline, and brought issues such as broken treaties, environmental racism, and missing and murdered Indigenous women into global conversations. It also resulted in ongoing legal challenges and inspired a new generation of Native activists who understand that sovereignty is not negotiable.
These interventions, whether through the courts or activism, are not symbolic but the literal defense of rights that are supposed to be guaranteed under tribal and U.S. law. It is the refusal to accept marginalization, neglect, erasure, and defeat. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is both a reflection of these struggles and a call to continue the fight.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day as Resistance
In this political landscape, Indigenous Peoples’ Day reminds the public that the survival of Native nations is inseparable from Native sovereignty. When birthright citizenship is questioned, when sacred lands are desecrated, when funding for essential programs is threatened, and when cultural institutions are ignored or attacked, the very survival of our communities is at stake.
In an interview with Truthout, Dina Gilio-Whitaker explained:
Tribes will always be a threat to a certain segment of the American population (currently coded as Republican) because the doctrine of tribal sovereignty erects a system of guardrails to protect the rights that hundreds of treaties guaranteed, and the small amount of land that tribes still control. Those lands hold coveted resources that tribes have the power to choose to develop or keep in the ground.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day calls on everyone to honor our survival and acknowledge the ongoing struggle against colonization and genocide. Our struggles are not isolated; they echo in other parts of the world, from the defense of our homelands here to the fight for survival in Gaza, where people continue to resist displacement and violence. It is a reminder that what happens to Native nations today is a glimpse of what can happen to any community when power goes unchecked and rights are violated. Indigenous Peoples’ Day reminds us that defending our sovereignty is defending justice for all.
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