1924
Indian Citizenship Act
United States; Native Americans not already U.S. citizens
On June 2, 1924, Congress declared noncitizen Native people born within U.S. territorial limits to be U.S. citizens, expressly preserving rights to tribal or other property. Citizenship alone did not remove state voting barriers: Arizona continued excluding reservation Indians under its guardianship interpretation until Harrison v. Laveen in 1948.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The Act did not require an individual application or renunciation of tribal membership; its express safeguard concerns property, not a comprehensive guarantee of sovereignty. The former assimilation interpretation credited to Dunbar-Ortiz has not been rechecked against chapter 9 or its underlying sources. Arizona is a documented example, not a nationwide account of voting restrictions.
Sources
- Primary law: Act of June 2, 1924, ch. 233, Public No. 175, 43 Stat. 253 (operative paragraph and proviso) ↗
- Primary judicial evidence: Harrison v. Laveen, 67 Ariz. 337 (1948), pp. 339–342, 348–349 ↗
- Book provenance, not rechecked: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), chapter 9; underlying source trail unresolved
- National Archives — Indian Citizenship Act ↗