The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, (, enacted June 2, 1924) was an Act of the United States Congress that granted US citizenship to the indigenous peoples of the United States. While the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution defines a citizen as any persons born in the United States and subject to its laws and jurisdiction, the amendment had previously been interpreted by the courts not to apply to Native peoples.
The act was proposed by U.S. Representative Homer P. Snyder (R-NY), and signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on June 2, 1924. It was enacted partially in recognition of the thousands of Native Americans who served in the armed forces during the First World War.
Text
The text of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act reads as follows:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all non citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.
Approved, June 2, 1924. June 2, 1924. [H. R. 6355.] [Public, No. 175.]
SIXTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS. Sess. I. CHS. 233. 1924.
See House Report No. 222, Certificates of Citizenship to Indians, 68th Congress, 1st Session, Feb. 22, 1924. The act has been codified in the United States Code at Title 8, Sec. 1401(b).
History and background
U.S. Constitution
Under Article One of the United States Constitution, "Indians not taxed" were not counted in the population of a state for purposes of apportionment. Indigenous tribes were largely considered to be separate nations, with citizenship and treaty rights, so their people were not considered to be citizens of the United States.
The earliest recorded date of Native people becoming U.S. citizens was in 1831, when the Mississippi Choctaw became citizens after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek of 1830 was ratified. Under article XIV of that treaty, any Choctaw who elected not to move to Native American territory could become an American citizen when he registered, and if he stayed on designated lands for five years after treaty ratification.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) said that Native people could become citizens, although their acquisition of citizenship was by way of naturalization (that is, not by birth within U.S. territory):
They [the Indian tribes] may without doubt, like the subjects of any foreign government, be naturalized by the authority of Congress and become citizens of a state and of the United States, and if an individual should leave his nation or tribe, and take up his abode among the white population, he would be entitled to all the rights and privileges which would belong to an emigrant from any other foreign people.Dred Scott v. Sandford, Opinion of Chief Justice, page 7.
After the American Civil War, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (ratified in 1870, after the 14th Amendment came into effect) repeated the exclusion, declaring: all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.
Fourteenth Amendment
In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment declared all persons "born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" were citizens. However, the "jurisdiction" requirement was interpreted to exclude most Native Americans, and in 1870, the Senate Judiciary Committee further clarified the matter: "the 14th amendment to the Constitution has no effect whatever upon the status of the Indian tribes within the limits of the United States". About 8% of the Native population at the time qualified for U.S. citizenship because they were "taxed". Others obtained citizenship by serving in the military, marrying whites, or accepting land allotments such as those granted under the Dawes Act.
The exclusion of Native people from U.S. citizenship was further established by Elk v. Wilkins (1884), when the Supreme Court held that a Native person born a citizen of a recognized tribal nation was not born an American citizen and did not become one simply by voluntarily leaving his tribe and settling among whites. The syllabus of the decision explained that a Native person "who has not been naturalized, or taxed, or recognized as a citizen either by the United States or by the state, is not a citizen of the United States within the meaning of the first section of the Fourteenth Article of Amendment of the Constitution".