Who counts as an American Indian? Which groups qualify as Indian tribes? These questions have become increasingly complex in the past several decades, and federal legislation and the rise of tribal-owned casinos have raised the stakes in the ongoing debate. In this revealing study, historian Mark Edwin Miller describes how and why dozens of previously unrecognized tribal groups in the southeastern states have sought, and sometimes won, recognition, often to the dismay of the Five Tribes—the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. Miller explains how politics, economics, and such slippery issues as tribal and racial identity drive the conflicts between federally recognized tribal entities like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and other groups such as the Southeastern Cherokee Confederacy that also seek sovereignty. Battles over which groups can claim authentic Indian identity are fought both within the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Federal Acknowledgment Process and in Atlanta, Montgomery, and other capitals where legislators grant state recognition to Indian-identifying enclaves without consulting federally recognized tribes with similar names. Miller’s analysis recognizes the arguments on all sides—both the scholars and activists who see tribal affiliation as an individual choice, and the tribal governments that view unrecognized tribes as fraudulent. Groups such as the Lumbees, the Lower Muscogee Creeks, and the Mowa Choctaws, inspired by the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, have evolved in surprising ways, as have traditional tribal governments. Describing the significance of casino gambling, the leader of one unrecognized group said, “It’s no longer a matter of red; it’s a matter of green.” Either a positive or a negative development, depending on who is telling the story, the casinos’ economic impact has clouded what were previously issues purely of law, ethics, and justice. Drawing on both documents and personal interviews, Miller unravels the tangled politics of Indian identity and sovereignty. His lively, clearly argued book will be vital reading for tribal leaders, policy makers, and scholars.

Within the context of U.S.-Indian law, federal acknowledgment establishes a trust relationship between an Indian tribe and the U.S. government. Some tribes, however, have not been federally acknowledged, or, in more common language, “recognized.” In Cash, Color, and Colonialism, Reneé Ann Cramer offers a comprehensive analysis of the federal acknowledgment process, placing it in historical, legal, and social context.

"In discussing a wide array of legal, biological, and sociocultural definitions, Eva Garroutte documents how these have frequently been manipulated by the federal government, by tribal officials, and by Indian and non-Indian individuals to gain political, social, or economic advantage. Whether or not one agrees with her solutions, anyone seriously concerned with contemporary American Indian issues should read this book."—Garrick Bailey, editor of The Osage and the Invisible World "Real Indians is a remarkably candid, engaging, and compelling book. It tells the important and often controversial story of how 'Indian-ness' is negotiated in American culture by indigenous peoples, policy makers, and scholars."—Robert Wuthnow, author of Creative Spirituality "Eva Marie Garroutte has done an exemplary job of combining scholarly sources, personal accounts, interview data, and self-reflection to catalog and examine the ways in which individual and collective identities are asserted, negotiated, and revitalized. She invites readers to imagine an intellectual space where scholarly and traditional ways of knowing and telling come face to face in an epistemological landscape where the ‘traditions’ of social science and 'radical indigenism' can confront one another in constructive dialogue."—Joane Nagel, author of Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality

First book-length overview of the Federal Acknowledgment Process enacted in 1978, the legal mechanism whereby native groups achieve official "recognition" of tribal status.