In Order to Give Due Recognition: Native American Declarations in the 20th Century

This essay is part of a content series exploring the nations, stories, and themes included in the Museum’s special exhibition The Declaration’s Journey, presented by Griffin Catalyst, on view through Jan. 3, 2027. Click here for more information about the exhibition.  

The Declaration’s Journey exhibition highlights the many ways that different people and nations have sought inspiration for their own fights for independence from the Declaration of Independence. This includes Native Americans, with the exhibition specifically including the Cherokee and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes. With the passage of the Snyder Act in 1924, Native Americans were finally granted citizenship in the United States, but thanks to loopholes in the law, were often without equal rights; Indigenous people were not able to vote in all 50 states until 1948. Throughout their fight for rights and tribal sovereignty in the 20th century, Native Americans repeatedly used the Declaration of Independence, citing it and, in some cases, using it as inspiration for their own declarations.

In 1939, the Tonawanda Council sent the governor of New York their own declaration, based on the Declaration of Independence. The declaration served as a challenge to any action by New York state that threatened the sovereignty of their tribe. This idea was taken further at the first Montana Indian Affairs Conference, held in 1951. At the conference, Tom Main, a Gros Ventre tribal leader from the Fort Belknap reservation, argued for adopting resolutions that tribes should control their own income and land. He composed “An Indian Declaration of Independence,” which accused the United States of “despotic colonial rule”, as John R. Wunder notes in the American Indian Law Review. A year later, the Blackfeet Business Council, the tribe’s governing body, passed a resolution that incorporated the ideals of the Declaration of Independence in response to new federal legislation regarding their rights. When he testified in Washington, D.C. before the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Blackfeet tribal leader George Pambrun, explicitly referenced the Declaration’s words.

One of the most impactful Native American declarations was the “Declaration of Indian Purpose,” created at the American Indian Chicago Conference in 1961. The conference brought together around 700 representatives from 64 tribes, and their declaration was the first major collective statement regarding tribal self-determination. It begins: “In order to give due recognition to certain basic philosophies by which the Indian people and all other people endeavor to live, We, the Indian people, must be governed by high principles and laws in a democratic manner, with a right to choose our own way of life.” The ideals spelled out in this declaration strongly influenced later activism.

Arguably the most famous example of Native American activism in the 20th century is the occupation of Alcatraz. Led by Mohawk student Richard Oakes, the activist group Indians of All Tribes took over Alcatraz Island near San Francisco for 19 months, beginning in November of 1969. They released the “Alcatraz Proclamation,” which begins: “We, the native Americans, re-claim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery.” The document goes on to illustrate injustices on Native people by the United States both past and present, echoing the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence. The Alcatraz Occupation, along with The Trail of Broken Treaties demonstration in Washington D.C. in 1972 and the Occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, led to greater awareness of the issues facing Native communities among the general public and eventually led to legislation in the 1970s and 1980s that granted greater self-determination and rights to Native Americans.

Native Americans have interacted with the Declaration of Independence since the beginning, from the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik tribes’ recognition of the United States as an independent nation in the 18th century. Throughout history, Native Americans have used the Declaration as inspiration for their own assertions of equal rights in America, which took on new meaning when they were granted citizenship in the 20th century.  A quote from a Cherokee petition, featured in The Declaration’s Journey, argues for “the protection of the rights, liberties, and lives, of the Cherokee people…”. Nearly 150 years later, the “Declaration of Indian Purpose” stated: “WE BELIEVE in the future of a greater America… where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will be a reality….” Through these and other Native American declarations of rights and sovereignty, Indigenous peoples have attempted to hold the United States to the ideals put forth in the Declaration of Independence, applying them to all people, including those first on this land.