Recognized, Then Taken Back: The Fight Over Federal Recognition

Why the list matters

In the United States, a Native nation is either on the federal list or it isn’t, and almost everything that follows depends on which side of that line it lands on.

Federal recognition means a government-to-government relationship with the United States, the relationship the treaties promised. Recognized tribes govern themselves as sovereign nations inside U.S. borders, run their own courts and police, can place land in federal trust, and can draw on programs run through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Indian Health Service. Tribes that are not on the list generally cannot.

In 2021, NPR reported that the United States recognizes 574 tribes while more than 200 others are not recognized.

How a tribe gets recognized

The main route is a petition to the Office of Federal Acknowledgment at the BIA, under 25 CFR Part 83. A petitioning group has to meet all seven criteria:

It has been identified as an American Indian entity on a substantially continuous basis since 1900.
It is a distinct community that has existed from 1900 to the present.
It has exercised political influence or authority over its members, as an autonomous entity, from 1900 to the present.
It submits a governing document that sets out its membership criteria.
Its members descend from a historical Indian tribe.
Its members are mostly not enrolled in a federally recognized tribe.
No act of Congress has terminated or forbidden the federal relationship.

A tribe can also go to Congress or to the federal courts, as the Chinook have tried.

Two tribes, recognized and then not

The Duwamish Tribe. On January 19, 2001, the BIA recognized the Duwamish, one of the last acts of the outgoing administration. HistoryLink reports that fewer than 48 hours later the incoming administration suspended the decision, and in September 2001 the Bureau issued a final determination denying recognition. They were denied again on July 2, 2015, in a decision signed by the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. The tribe sued in 2022, and in early 2025 a federal judge ordered the Interior Department to reconsider the petition under the 2015 rules and to accept new evidence (Westside Seattle Herald). I could not find a decision since. Seattle sits on Duwamish land, as we say on our About page.

The Chinook Indian Nation. The Nation’s own political history says treaties negotiated at Tansy Point in 1851 promised the Chinook they could stay in their homeland, and that Congress never ratified them. The BIA recognized the Nation in January 2001, and the decision was reversed in July 2002. The Nation went to court, and in March 2026 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Chairman Tony Johnson says Congress is now the most viable route.

This fight is not only with Washington, D.C. According to OPB, the Quinault Indian Nation challenged the Chinook’s recognition, and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians filed against the Supreme Court petition. Other recognized tribes have a stake in who is added to the list, and that complication belongs in this story.

What it costs

During the pandemic, the difference showed up in vaccines. NPR reported in 2021 that recognized tribes were sharing in more than $31 billion of relief, while the Chinook, with about 3,000 members, had no clinic and no Indian Health Service support. Chairman Tony Johnson told NPR the Nation received no testing supplies and no vaccine allocation, and that his own vaccine came from the neighboring Shoalwater Bay Tribe. He also said no tribal member died of COVID-19 directly, but several died because of the pandemic’s effects, including untreated chronic conditions.

Another door: Congress

Congress can recognize a tribe directly. In December 2025 it passed recognition for the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which the President signed on December 18, 2025, overturning a 1956 law that had barred the tribe from federal benefits (NC Newsline). It shows the path exists. It also shows how much depends on politics rather than on the seven criteria.

Where I stand

I understand that the government should use criteria to guard against fraud and misuse. But it sometimes seems to me that the government goes out of its way to keep qualified tribes off the list. Two nations were recognized and then un-recognized within two years. One of them first told the government it wanted to petition in 1977.

Indigenous rights is one of the causes Funny Not Funny works on. Equal justice for all has to include the people who were here first, and it should not mean they have to keep proving they exist.

What you can do

Read the tribes’ own accounts: the Duwamish Tribe and the Chinook Indian Nation.
Ask your members of Congress where they stand on federal recognition, including the Chinook Indian Nation Restoration Act mentioned in the OPB report.
If you live in Seattle, Real Rent Duwamish is one way to do more than read. We are pointing you to it, not claiming that Funny Not Funny pays into it.

This post was created by Mark R. Bracking and Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working together. Claude researched the facts and drafted the text from Mark’s notes, and Mark directed and approved it. Tony Johnson’s comment about Congress is Claude’s paraphrase of OPB’s reporting, not a direct quote.

Sources

Pages opened for this draft, checked October 13, 2026: