American Indian and Alaska Native
One race 2.5 million
[1]
In combination with one or more other races 1.6 million
[2]Not all Native Americans reside in the contiguous 48 states. Some live in Alaska or insular regions. These other indigenous peoples, including Alaskan Native groups such as the Inupiaq, Yupik Eskimos, and Aleuts, are not always counted as Native Americans. The Census 2000 demographics listed "American Indian and Alaskan Native" collectively. Native Hawaiians and various other Pacific Islander American peoples, such as the Chamorros (Chamoru) of Guam, can also be considered Native American in a broad sense but such a designation is not commonly made.[3]
Most of the historical record is about Native Americans and their contact with Europeans in the continental 48 United States. The first known major contact between Native Americans and Europeans in what is now known as the United States occurred in the early 1500s when Conquistadors Ponce de León and Hernando de Soto ventured into the area now referred to as the American Deep South.
The earliest recorded date of Native Americans becoming U.S. citizens was in 1831 when the Mississippi Choctaw became citizens after the ratification of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. They were the first non-European racial minority group to become citizens of the United States. However, it wasn't until The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, that U.S. citizenship was granted entirely to America's indigenous peoples, called "Indians" in this Act.
