Turtle Island (North America) (1492-Present)
Turtle Island is the name many Indigenous nations, including the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Lenape, and northeastern Algonquian peoples, use for what is now called North America. Before European contact, an estimated 1.2 to 18 million Indigenous peoples lived in North America, which includes the United States (US), Canada, and parts of Mexico.
By 1800 in the US, that number had fallen to around 600,000 and by 1890 to roughly 250,000. In addition to deaths due to colonial violence, many deaths resulted from diseases brought by European colonizers, which were sometimes deliberately spread.
The US government, along with waves mostly of European immigrants, pursued “manifest destiny,” the idea that the new nation was destined by God to expand its dominion across the continent. By 1871, the federal government signed over 350 treaties with Indigenous sovereign nations negotiating the rights to lands, natural resources, protection, and supplies. Nearly all these treaties were later broken or abandoned by the US.
Before 1887, reservation land where Indigenous peoples were forced to relocate belonged collectively to tribal nations rather than individuals. However, the 1887 General Allotment Act, known as the Dawes Act, divided communal lands into private parcels. After assigning these tracts to some tribal members, the US government sold remaining “surplus” land to white settlers. This policy transferred millions of acres from Indigenous control and weakened tribal governance, economic stability, and cultural continuity. Communities that resisted were forcibly displaced or killed.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, US authorities took Indigenous children from their families and placed them in settler-run boarding schools designed to erase their cultures and languages. Many children endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Over six generations, approximately 500,000 Native children were taken by force or sent to boarding schools.
In an effort to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into settler culture, these institutions banned Native languages, separated children from others from their community, changed their names, cut their hair, and stripped them of their traditional clothing. Photographs of the children circulated as propaganda, held up as evidence of the US government’s success in erasing Native culture.
Between 1830 and 1850, the US government forcibly removed Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands east of the Mississippi River to tracts of land designated as Indian Territory. Congress passed policies such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830 to advance the interests of white settlers and the cotton industry.
These acts authorized federal authorities to violently displace approximately 88,000 people. An estimated 12,000 to 17,000 people died from disease, exposure, and starvation, a death toll of 14 to 19 percent. The mass displacement of the Cherokee people, known as the Trail of Tears, stands as one of the largest acts of ethnic cleansing in US history.
By the 1950s, the US government pursued termination of Native Americans’ special status as sovereign nations with the authority to govern themselves (including their citizens and lands) inside the US. The purpose was to intentionally undermine their Indigenous political sovereignty while forcing them to assimilate into mainstream American society. In tandem, US authorities dismantled tribal governments and adopted relocation policies that pushed Indigenous peoples from reservations to urban centers.
In response, the Red Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s demanded self-determination and renewed tribal sovereignty. Due to this sustained pressure, federal authorities gradually abandoned these termination and assimilation policies, enacted laws reaffirming tribal rights, and renewed relationships with Native American tribes.
Indigenous communities continue to face systemic violence and inequality. Women and girls experience disproportionately high rates of violence, with over 90 percent of these crimes committed by non-Native perpetrators. Thousands of cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) are reported each year. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) estimates approximately 4,200 cases remain unresolved, with an untold number unreported.
Nonetheless, community activism continues to flourish as Indigenous leaders, youth, artists, and tribal elders unite to oppose destructive environmental, social, political, and economic policies. In 2016, Indigenous-led resistance at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation challenged the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatened water sources and ancestral burial sites. Thousands of activists traveled to “water protector” camps in North Dakota to support the opposition.
Despite centuries of oppression, intergenerational trauma, and cultural erasure, Indigenous peoples thrive by sharing traditions across tribal affiliations, reclaiming their rights, and fostering self-sufficiency and self-sustainability within their communities. Powwows serve as intertribal gatherings that sustain cultural traditions through food, dance, song, and craft. These community celebrations honor heritage, strengthen kinship ties, and pass knowledge across generations.
Government recognition of Indigenous cultures and representation has been slow. In 1990, November was designated Native American Heritage Month; and in November 2024, US President Joseph Biden became the first and only president to officially acknowledge and apologize for the country’s Native boarding school policy.