Indians Granted Citizenship

For most of American history, Native Americans were excluded from United States citizenship even as their lands were taken and their lives governed by federal authority. Citizenship had been extended only piecemeal—through individual treaties, through the Dawes Act of 1887 to those who accepted allotments of land and 'adopted the habits of civilized life,' and to the many Native men who served in the armed forces during the First World War. The anomaly of a people native to the land yet denied membership in the nation governing it grew increasingly hard to defend.

The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, also called the Snyder Act, finally granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. The law did not erase tribal membership or end the federal government's special relationship with the nations, and it left many questions of sovereignty unresolved. Nor did citizenship immediately bring the vote: several states continued to bar Native Americans from the ballot for decades on various pretexts, and the struggle for full voting rights stretched well into the twentieth century. Still, the act marked an important, if incomplete, recognition of Native Americans' place in the nation.