Indian country



Indian country is any of the many self-governing Native American/American Indian communities throughout the United States. As a legal category, it includes "all land within the limits of any Indian reservation", "all dependent Indian communities within the borders of the United States", and "all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished."

The American military has since applied the term to sovereign land outside its control, including land in Vietnam.

Legal classification
This legal classification defines American Indian tribal and individual land holdings as part of a reservation, an allotment, or a public domain allotment. All federal trust lands held for Native American tribes are Indian country. Federal, state, and local governments use this category in their legal processes. Today, however, according to the U.S. Census of 2010, over 78% of all Native Americans live off reservations. Indian country now spans thousands of rural areas, towns and cities where Indian people live.

This convention is followed generally in colloquial speech and is reflected in publications such as the Native American newspaper Indian Country Today

Related and historical meanings
Historically, Indian country was considered the areas, regions, territories or countries beyond the frontier of settlement that were inhabited primarily by Native Americans. Colonists made treaties with Native Americans agreeing to offer services and protection indefinitely in exchange for peaceful transfer of Native American land.

Between the Appalachians and Mississippi
As the original 13 colonies grew and treaties were made, the de facto boundary between settled territory and Indian country during the 18th century was roughly the crest of the Appalachian Mountains, a boundary set into law by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Confederation Congress Proclamation of 1783, and later by the Nonintercourse Act. The Indian Reserve was gradually settled by European Americans and divided into territories and states, starting with Kentucky County (an extension of Virginia) and the Northwest Territory.

West of the Mississippi
Most Indians in the area of the former Reserve were either killed or relocated further west under policies of Indian Removal. After the Louisiana Purchase, the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 created the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River as a destination. It too was gradually divided into territories and states for European American settlement, leaving only modern Indian Reservations inside the boundaries of U.S. states.

In 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the tribal statistical area (and former reservation) of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation remains under the tribal sovereignty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act.

Usage in Vietnam
During the Vietnam War circa 1968, the American military and pilots referred to free-fire zones under South Vietnamese control as "Indian Country." American military personnel also used the term "savage" and "uncivilized" to refer to its inhabitants.

During a 1971 congressional hearing, American airborne ranger Robert Bowie Johnson Jr. defined the term to politician John F. Seiberling:"...it means different things to different people. It is like there are savages out there, there are gooks out there. In the same way we slaughtered the Indian's buffalo, we would slaughter the water buffalo in Vietnam."In 1989, Tom Holm claimed Vietnam War usage of this term was "in obvious mimicry of the old Cavalry versus Indian films".

21st century usage
As of 2008, the term "Indian country" is used by "soldiers, military strategists, reporters, and World Wide Web users to refer to hostile, unsecured, and dangerous territory in Iraq and Afghanistan."