In 1948, after serving in World War II, Miguel Trujillo from Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico entered the Valencia County Courthouse to register to vote. He was turned down even though he had served his nation in war just a few short years earlier.
Similarly, in the same year, Frank Harrison and Harry Austin, both Natives from the Fort McDowell Reservation in Arizona, entered the Maricopa County Courthouse in Scottsdale to register to vote. They too were turned down.
Harrison had served in World War II and owned property off the reservation on which he paid property taxes. The fact that pre-existing federal law had declared Native Americans to be U.S. citizens had made no impression on local election officials.
One hundred years ago today, a one-sentence, federal law declared that all Native Americans born in the U.S., who were not already citizens, were then designated as citizens of the U.S. The 1924 law was a milestone in the winding road of Indian policies, laws and court decisions that guided interaction between the tribes and the federal government.
Since Native nations had not been consulted about the enactment, not all tribes were happy with the unilateral bestowal of citizenship. Yet the Citizenship Act’s most important aspect was the opportunity to participate in a basic right shared by all citizens – the right to vote.
Citizenship implies both rights and responsibilities. However, history has shown a remarkable lack of uniformity in those ascriptions depending on factors such as race and gender. Women, for example, though citizens of the U.S. by birth, did not obtain a guaranteed right to vote until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919.
The Fifteenth Amendment, passed shortly after the Civil War, prohibited the denial of the right to vote based on race or prior enslavement. It was only after a courageous march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, however, and the ensuing passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act that discriminatory voting practices against Blacks in southern states were barred. So, too, the attributes of citizenship eluded Native Americans.
The 1924 Act was not the first instance in which Native American citizenship had been addressed, but without question it was broader in scope than any prior laws. Several treaties and early laws affecting specific tribes provided a path for Native citizenship through naturalization procedures and court decrees.
As ruled by the Supreme Court in 1884, separation from tribal affiliation was not sufficient to confer citizenship or the right to vote upon Native Americans in the absence of some formal acknowledgment by the U.S. of individual citizenship status. In 1919, following World War I, in recognition of their valuable service, Congress passed a law granting “full citizenship” to Native Americans who had served honorably in the military during the war.
Significantly, that law, like the 1924 Act that would follow, explicitly conferred citizenship status without requiring abandonment of tribal status or affiliation.
As Trujillo, Harrison and Austin later experienced, U.S. citizenship under the 1924 Act did not eliminate state and local efforts to deny Native Americans rights associated with state citizenship. Though ultimately found to be unlawful, those discriminatory practices – which also affected access to health care and other public benefits – were often justified based on the nontaxable status of Native Americans living and working on Indian reservations.
As to voting rights, a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court’s summary decision conclusively held that the 1924 Act entitles all Native Americans born in the U.S. the right to vote in state and local elections regardless of tax status.
Regardless of age, gender or race, the decisions of governments affect how we live our lives. As state and federal elections approach, the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Citizenship Act and the granting to Native Americans the rights of citizenship are certainly worth noting.
Tom Shipps is a partner in the Durango-based law firm of Maynes, Bradford, Shipps & Sheftel, LLP. He received his B.A. from Fort Lewis College in 1976, where he was a student in a Federal Indian Law class taught by Stephen Wall. He has represented the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in multiple cases in federal, state and tribal courts.
Stephen Wall is a 1972 Fort Lewis College graduate who serves as Faculty Emeritus in Indigenous Liberal Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe. He authored the book “American Indian Tribal Governance: A Critical Perspective,” published by the Tribal College Press in 2023.
