Talk:List of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States

This list was compiled by the U.S. Federal Government. All I did was format it and add an intro.

Alaskan Tribal Villages, Regional Corporations, etc. are maintained separately, so I made them a separate list to reflect that.

I used a Perl program to create the links, and in some cases, I'm sure I got the wrong part of the name linked. Feel free to fix that, but please don't change the names unless you have a more recent copy of the offical list that you're working from (in which case, update the comments at the top).

Thanks! -Harmil 17:55, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Occaneechi
I've removed the Occaneechi entry. While they are actually a Native American tribe, they are not one of the federally-recognized tribes that the USBIA interacts with. This list is specfically the latter (as described at the top of the list). If someone wants to create a "List of Native American Tribes Seeking Recognition", then I say more power to you! Just, please, don't add entries to this list that will just be removed when the list is later updated from official sources. Thanks! -Harmil 19:27, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I created a page for tribes Recognized by States but not the BIA and moved Occaneechi there. -Xlation

Fixing redlinks
Here is how I've been fixing redlinks. Feel free to use the same technique, as more hands will get the work done sooner. Please rely on creating redirects when possible, as the commonly used name and the BIA recognized name should both have entries on Wikipedia.
 * Click on a redlink to go to the edit page.
 * Click on the search link on that page.
 * You may not get anything if search is being flakey. Try again later.
 * Look through the pages that are found and see if any apply.
 * Please don't select a town or Census Designated Place based on name.
 * Avoid selecting reservations and language listings.
 * If a page is found that's appropriate, go back to the edit page and change it to:
 * 1) REDIRECTtarget page
 * If no page matches, consider doing some research to create a new article. Include the fact that this is the official name by which the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs recognizes the tribe.

Thank you for your help! -Harmil 14:07, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Caps in name
The name "List of Native American Tribal Entities" is not Wikipedia's name, it is the U.S. Federal Government's. A redirect has been added for Wikipedia-friendly capitalization, but the primary name is, in fact, the correct spelling. -Harmil 18:33, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * To be more precise, the name "Native American Tribal Entities" is actually a working group. The report is "Indian Tribal Entities Within the Contiguous 48 States Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs". I kid you not, that's actually the full title. It is a section of the larger, "Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs" (Federal Register / Vol. 68, No. 234 / Friday, December 5, 2003) -Harmil 18:48, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

List of U.S. Indian Tribal Government Web sites
Oh, by the way, that was me reverting the List of U.S. Indian Tribal Government Web sites removal. -Harmil 14:15, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

2005 version: we need your help!
The link to the 2005 version was added, but only one change from that version has been implemented: the Delaware Tribe of Indians, Oklahoma was removed. Beyond that, there are supposedly some corrections and name-changes (no new tribes), which Wikipedia should pick up, but diffing the two documents (being PDF) is a major pain. If anyone else wants to help, please feel free! -Harmil 14:13, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi, I was just going to load up the wikified document of the PDF of the FR and realized it won't be the same as what is currently posed. The wikified document, because of the way I have set-up the auto-markup, provides a wikified link for each of the listed Tribes/Communities/Tribal Towns separately from each of the listed Reservations/Ranch/Rancherias/Colonies, with added links to States... which isn't what you had.  Looking at what you have, I see that sometimes the Tribal name and its land-based jurisdictions are made into a single wiki link while other times only the Tribal name has been wikified.  Any reason for this inconsistency?  If the wikified document I have is loaded, it will cause many broken links, but at the same time, it would be consistent.  Another approach for consistency would be to consistently link the Tribal name and its land-based juridiction as a single for each of the Federally recognized Tribes. However, as a point of objection if the Tribal name and land-jurisdiction are made into single link for each of the listed Tribes, in the case of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, each of the six component Reservations are also Federally recognized individually, as with the components listed for Capitan Grande Band of Diegueno Mission Indians, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians and Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, while Pit River Tribe and Washoe Tribe are considered to have more than one reservation under their jurisdiction where each reservation are also allowed for semi-autonomous rights apart from the Tribe as a whole.  A single-line link listing would anger many folks in those Tribes/Reservations. CJLippert 22:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * If you wish, I can e-mail you the wikified (marked-up) text file document. CJLippert 22:35, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that just slamming a new version into place would help. However, rationalizing the linked part of the name also makes sense (I did it in one evening with a small Perl one-liner which I foolishly didn't save). For the most part, I tried to make a link out of the shortest part of the name that would be unique, so for "Foobar Indians of the Iowa Foobar Reservation, Iowa", I linked everything up to the comma. For the most part, this usally meant dropping the final state name, but there's a serious lack of consistency in the naming itself (sigh).


 * The question is this: which is easier to cope with: finding the differences between the 2003 and 2005 versions or finding the link names that have changed and moving/duplicating the affected redirects? I've been creating redirects for about 3-6 months now, so having all or most of the links that point to them go away would be a serious bummer! -Harmil 22:49, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Phew! Got Q-Z incorporated. Often  XXX Tribe  severed existing links and I had to instead say  XXX Tribe  or  XXX Tribe . CJLippert 00:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The 2005 FR listing has been updated. Since this is the List of Tribe, the next task would be to update the Reservations.  Just a word of caution: before the update I have noticed some Tribe's components were listed separately from the Tribe where it seems someone have edited to reflect the Reservation and not the Tribe.  In order to ensure this is a list of Tribes and not the Reservation, this distinction needs to be clearly maintained. CJLippert 20:44, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Schaghticoke
This tribe was recognized, and then removed from the list. See http://www.petitiononline.com/STN06418/ for a petition that attempted to reverse the situation.

Until they are federally recognized, they don't belong on a list of federally recognized tribes. That doesn't really affect their stutus on Wikipedia otherwise, just in terms of this one article. -Harmil 18:41, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Full vs partial linkage
I'm starting to come back to the old problem that I used to have with linking partial names.

Just by way of example, here's one entry: "Bridgeport Paiute Indian Colony of California"

I'm starting to lean back to my initial feeling that this (the full name, including state) is what the BIA calls this tribe, and we should link directly to that name without piping (which might be a redirect). This solves several problems:


 * It creates a name which can be searched on that maps to the BIA official name.
 * Future edits to the target article will have the full BIA name listed in "what links here", which will ease re-naming resolution.
 * There is no ambiguity on the part of someone reading this article, as to which link they should click for an entry.
 * Because the full name is redirected as listed, there is consistency in all of the linking.

Just some thoughts on reviewing recent edits. -Harmil 19:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Please take a look at the "H" entries. If this looks good, will begin the process of having the full BIA names.  Now, this will resolve issues with most entries, but what about those with either multiple tribes/bands or multiple reservations where they are autonomous entities (such as with the Pit River Tribe or Minnesota Chippewa Tribe)?  Should we have them listed but without any links, and let the main BIA entry be the portal to access these subentries listed in FR via the article itself? CJLippert 07:15, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * What you've done seems fine to me. Honestly, I long ago started thinking of you as more the caretaker of this page than me ;-) So, there's two cases for ambiguity.
 * The tribe is listed twice here, and has one article - In this case, I would probably create a redirect page for both long names to the name Wikipedia has uses (or only one redirect if the Wikipedia name is one of the BIA names).
 * The tribe is listed once here, but there are multiple articles which cover them - IN this case, there probably needs to be a disambiguation page under the BIA name which directs the reader to the two (or more) pertinent articles.
 * Of course, that's just my opinion, and I think you've long since had an informed enough opinion on this topic that you should just use your own judgement as a first approximation and see if anyone has a problem. -Harmil 05:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Asking around various people on the Rez on the usability of this list, I had some interesting comments. Overwhelmingly, the response was that the list is confusing; however, many like the idea of able to easily access the tribal groups.  So, pondering upon these and other comments I got, what about this:
 * Rename the current List of Native American Tribal Entities to List of Native American Tribal Entities (by name) and having one link per FR name with no link to sublistings
 * Create a new page called List of Native American Tribal Entities (by State)
 * Modify the List of Indian reservations in the United States somehow to a "List of Native American Tribal Entities (by Reservation)"
 * Make a new List of Native American Tribal Entities as a diambiguation page with choices to all
 * In addition, add links for similar listings generated by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.
 * There currently is a Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas listed by regions, but also create a similar alternate break-out for a listing by country (though by country will cause multiple listings of some groups since many indigenous peoples have been unnaturally divided by these international boarders). Currently, there is a proposal to merge Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas and the List of Native American tribes; a way to not merge the two lists is to rename the former as List of indigenous peoples of the Americas (by region) and the latter as List of indigenous peoples of the Americas (by name). CJLippert 21:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I would think that, because this list is so tied to a single organization (albeit a large and relatively authoritative one), it would make more sense to focus efforts on sorting and categorizing on Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas and/or List of Native American tribes. These overlap badly and really need to be sorted out. Taking that on would probably yield more fruit.... -Harmil 06:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

564 tribes according to the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8344449.stm

MickMacNee (talk) 17:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes there are, but this list is generated from the official listing published in the Federal Register, which still only lists 562. We are waiting for the new "Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs" to be published in the Federal Register so that our listing here could be updated. Stay tuned. CJLippert (talk) 19:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah. Cool. MickMacNee (talk) 20:50, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The two tribes currently missing from the list are the Delaware Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, also known as the "Eastern Delaware", and the Wilton Rancheria, California, formed from the "Me-Wuk Indian Community of the Wilton Rancheria" and "Wilton Miwok Rancheria" who both lost their recognitions in 1959, and took this long for them (as a single political entity) to re-gain their recognition. CJLippert (talk) 23:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Aha! A new FR was out but I didn't know about it until I checked it out. Page is now updated (for now). This might change very soon if seven more from Virginia and North Carolina are recognized. CJLippert (talk) 18:26, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Federal Register Link
The 2009 Federal Register link doesn't work. (Taivo (talk) 16:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC))
 * I see. Try the GPO link to get to the Federal Register. Meanwhile, I will see why that long-standing link no longer works. CJLippert (talk) 16:09, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Aha, found the problem. The long-standing link didn't have the newest listing yet when this article was updated, so a different link was used, which is now broken because it is time-dependent (and how have expired). The old long-standing link was resorted as that site now do show the most current listing. Thanks for bringing this to our attention! CJLippert (talk) 16:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Wrong interwiki links
the interwiki links are nearly all wrong - they are lists of nativa american tribes in general, not of the federal recognized tribes. --Plehn (talk) 07:32, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Lenape?
Yes? No? - the WOLF  child  20:06, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * All three US Lenape tribes have articles: Delaware Nation, Anadarko, OK; Delaware Tribe of Indians, Bartlesville, OK; and Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Bowler, WI. Yuchitown (talk) 02:54, 26 March 2016 (UTC)Yuchitown

Lost and Forgotten Tribe
The Winnipesaukee tribe seems to be missing and lost. Not much is said about them or if there is any left. I am curious how many Winnipesaukee's are still with us and if they are still full blood or what most term Half breeds. Seems we have lost many tribes along this sad journey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.211.65.64 (talk) 23:01, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
 * See Pennacook. Yuchitown (talk) 02:53, 26 March 2016 (UTC)Yuchitown

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Style question
Do folks here prefer "formerly XXX" or "previously listed as XXX" for the defunct tribal names? Yuchitown (talk) 03:47, 6 February 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

"Also" in the lead
Are Alaska Native tribal entities federally recognized tribes?

Why is the displayed text of the wikilink "tribes" instead of "entities"?

Apokrif (talk) 20:51, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, Alaska Native tribal entities are federally recognized tribes. Tribes is a far more specific term than entities. Yuchitown (talk) 23:32, 15 November 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

Infographic: Where are the Five Tribes?
The map used on this page is missing at least the Cherokee, Seminole, Muskogee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations in Eastern Oklahoma. Probably missing others too.

if there’s a reason for excluding these from the infographic, then the article should explain that somewhere. 72.107.246.64 (talk) 02:35, 25 July 2023 (UTC)