Afro-Indigenous

by Samantha Pehl

Afro-Indigenous: People may have only become aware of this term in recent years because of news within Indian Country. Some may have heard the term being used around 2017 with the Cherokee Nation ruling “that the Treaty of 1866 gave Cherokee Freedmen a right to citizenship” (Secretary Haaland). Since it has only been used by mass media in recent years, some may think it is a brand new concept, but in reality, discussions around Afro-Indigeneity in the United States date back much further. In 1920, C. G. Woodson, the founder of the Journal of Negro History, wrote, “One of the longest unwritten chapters of the history of the United States is that treating of the relations of the Negros and Indians” (Woodson 45). Research on the relationships and interactions between Black and Native communities has been in the minds of scholars for years, yet there is a lack of published work about it. Often “the histories and shared experiences of African and Native Americans are so intertwined, they are indivisible. At the same time, however, the shared history and the people that make up its chapters have become invisible” (Tayac 4). These individuals’ experiences should neither be invisible nor unwritten, Afro-Indigenous history and perspectives are central to understanding the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies fully.

While some people are “more familiar with the term ‘Black-Indian’ or ‘Afro-Native’”, in this essay, “the term ‘Afro-Indigenous’ [is used] to mean both the intersecting relationship between Black American and Native American peoples and those who identify both as Black and Indigenous” (Mays xv). In historical writing, there are countless texts about the interactions between Native peoples and European settlers, as well as the interactions between Africans and Europeans. Sadly, the relationship between Native and African Americans is never focused on in these texts. When these histories, intersections, and relationships are neglected, they continue to get pushed into the background and obscured by stories of “heroic” European colonialism. It is vital to discuss Afro-Indigenous histories to better understand, and hopefully continue, the cultural and social exchange that occurs between these groups.

An important connotation of this term to consider is the identity of people who are native to the continent of Africa. Kyle T. Mays, author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States, notes that “we first need to recall that Africans forced to come to this country did not racialize themselves as Black in their homelands; they had their own indigenous roots and tribal beliefs; they were connected to lands, customs, and cosmologies. They were Indigenous” (Mays 3). Indigenous African ethnic groups continue to exist today, but many of the people who were captured during the Transatlantic Slave Trade continued to practice their Indigenous African ideologies even in the diaspora. In his book examining the largest Jamaican slave uprising, Vincent Brown explains that “All the Africans brought to America were shaped by past societies and experiences; understanding these helps us to trace the influences of African history on America, and of American history on Africans” (Brown 10). Enslaved people who were transported to the Americas often shared similar languages, spiritual beliefs, and familial ideals, which all stemmed from their experiences living in Indigenous African communities.

The Middle Passage resulted in these Indigenous Africans being forced to dismiss their ethnic group identities so that Europeans could racialize them as Black in the Americas (Mays 14). Since these groups were racialized as Black in the Americas, many people today fail to acknowledge the validity of Native Africans in their conversations about Indigeneity. Not only should “Native US people…include Indigenous Africans in their understanding of who is Indigenous” we/they should work to include Indigenous groups from around the globe (Mays 16). By learning from Indigenous groups around the world, Native Americans can further their ability to make change within the US, but first, we must begin to understand Afro-Indigenous history within the Americas.

There were multiple times throughout the history of the United States when Black and Native communities converged. Although their struggles in the Americas were uniquely different, both groups were oppressed by white supremacist settler colonial structures. For example, during the Progressive Era, while “Indigenous peoples were losing their land and political power as sovereign nations, Black Americans were experiencing extreme racial violence” (Mays 56). By the 1960s and 1970s, “Black and Indigenous activists sought to radically transform their predicaments” while living in such an oppressive society. As a result of their individual struggles for power, both sides formed activist-led collations, and even though “they viewed their movements separately, … what brought them together in protest and ideological struggle was a complete restructuring of the capitalist, settler-colonial, and white supremacist system that had kept them oppressed for centuries” (Mays 109). These groups rallied under the titles of Black Power and Red Power with their discourses often existing side by side.

Since the Black Power and Red Power movements both worked towards similar goals, there were often convergences in their ideologies and strategies. Kyle T. Mays explains that “Not only did Indigenous activists and intellectuals borrow from Black Power groups, but they also diligently studied them and worked with them” (Mays 110). It has been noted that members of the American Indian Movement mirrored strategies used by Black liberation groups, like sit-ins and rebellions, during their fight for sovereignty (Mays 109). In working together and having become closely aligned, “Black and Indigenous people also participated in each other’s struggles for liberation” by showing up to each other’s protests. Black activists supported the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1972, as well as the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 (Mays 112). Even though these movements did not eradicate oppression or white supremacy, their “leaders demonstrated a revolutionary love and commitment to international struggle that must continue today” (Mays 133). The relationship between the Black Power and Red Power movements is just one example of the many convergences these groups have had in US history. 

Although there are many moments in history where Black and Indigenous groups have come together, there are also a fair amount of divergences in their experiences as well. Their respective experiences with colonization, loss, and assimilation cannot be equated to each other since their functions in benefitting American colonial structures have been drastically different. Throughout US history, Native Americans and African Americans have been racialized in almost entirely opposing ways. The principle of racial classification used for Black people was the “one-drop rule” which meant that “any amount of African ancestry, no matter how remote, and regardless of phenotypical appearance, makes a person Black” (Tuck and Yang). In contrast, Native American ancestry was measured by blood quantum regulations which is a system that “determine[s] how much “Indian blood” an Indigenous person has and if they are qualified for Tribal enrollment ("Intersectional Indigenous"). This difference in racialization has been described with the terms “hypodescent”, where an increase in enslaved people benefited settlers’ wealth, compared to “hyperdescent”, where an increase in Indigenous people obstructed settlers’ access to land (Tayac 64).

Although the “one-drop rule” has since been outlawed, the repercussions of this racialization have “led to many Afro-Indigenous peoples having their Indigenous identities and even their Tribal citizenship denied” ("Intersectional Indigenous"). One Afro-Indigenous author states, “We were African American, American Indian, and white, yet unable to officially claim Indian or white status due to society’s constraints, including lack of records, patterns of migration, erasure, punishment, and the labels of “Colored” and “Mulatto” and “Free People of Color” neatly in place (Buchanan xxi). Since people with a single drop of “Negro” blood, or who looked “Black,” legally had to claim Blackness as their identity, Afro-Indigenous identities were erased from history. The manifestation of these blood-based regulations impacted how Afro-Cherokee people were listed on the Dawes Rolls. People who were of both Black and Cherokee descent “were restricted in the way that they could be listed, since the Dawes Rolls were organized by racial designation” (Miles 195). Even though many of these individuals “could demonstrate Cherokee ancestry and identity, the vast majority would not be listed on the ‘Cherokee by Blood’ roll.” Since “they appeared ‘Black’ to Dawes commissioners and because they were usually identified as former slaves, Afro-Cherokees were listed on the “Freedmen” roll, which did not record degree of Cherokee ‘blood’” (Miles 195). The way that these Dawes commissioners quantified Blackness and Indigeneity would cause Afro-Cherokees to “be forever handicapped by this paper segregation, unable officially to demonstrate the fact and degree of their Cherokee bloodlines” (Miles 195). This example of how racial categorization was used to harm mixed-race people is challenging, but it also provides the space to question how these systems benefited white settlers.

The implementation of systematic, blood-based, racial categorization in the US was “geared to ensure the ascendancy of white settlers as the true and rightful owners and occupiers of the land” (Tuck and Yang). Not only did it help maintain white supremacy, but it also “reflected the difference in how Blacks and Indians were viewed during the early period of colonization” (Tayac 66). During this period, the proliferation of Black bodies was seen as an advantage whereas Native bodies were seen as a barrier. These roles have been prescribed onto Black and Native identities to support the settler narrative for decades, but now we must come together to create substantial change.

Afro-Indigenous history can be hard to examine and process, but the desire to “disremember” cannot stand in the way of the truth (Miles xxvi). Some people may fear the acknowledgment of “Black and Indian kinship” and its need for reformation, but this relationship has existed ever since “the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and it continues to prohibit Blacks and Indians from speaking directly with one another, forcing them instead to speak through and against the material and discursive structures of American colonialism” (Miles xxvii). The communication between Black and Indigenous people can no longer be restricted or prohibited. Both groups have faced immeasurable amounts of oppression due to colonial structures in the Americas, but those same structures must not continue to silence our voices. Discerning this history can be upsetting, but it is imperative to feel and learn from those emotions. “Anger is loaded with information and energy” (Lorde 280) and it “is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change” (Lorde 282). We should be angry at these forms of injustice, outraged even, “but never surprised. Black and Indigenous peoples will never get justice in the US because it is a police state. The democratic project has been designed to control them/us. You can’t have justice in a state built on enslavement and the dispossession of Indigenous land until something new emerges” (Mays 160).

Our generation must work to create that new emergence, but it is a task that cannot be done by one group alone. We must come together while acknowledging that, “Black and Indigenous solidarity is a difficult task” since “solidarity is not inevitable; it requires intensive labor, intentional compassion, and love”. It is likely that when coming together “We might get upset with one another, we might call each other out, but it should be done through love, and with the larger intention of ending the structural forces of antiblackness and settler colonialism” (Mays 145). Central to this new emergence and change, as Mays explains, is love and compassion for each other. Sharing Native and Black memories can be painful because it not only reminds us of “the suffering we have endured in the vise of colonial expansion, genocide, and slavery but also the suffering we have endured at the hand of one another in this context of brutal oppression” (Miles xxvi). The enslavement of Black people within some Native American nations is an aspect of history that many people seem fully willing to forget. Although it would be nice to wash aspects of history from our collective memory, it is important to discuss and unpack these experiences so that we can work together to fight settler colonialism and anti-blackness moving forward.

Black and Indigenous groups should come together with compassion, love, and patience to work towards bettering their own futures and those of generations to come. When working towards this goal of Afro-Indigenous futurism, we must keep in mind that “there is also a mundane facet to [it]: the hard and less glamorous work of survival and care for one another, which always has a future-bearing energy to it” (Nixon and Belcourt). When working towards this change, even when it feels stagnant, we must maintain a commitment to caring and respecting each other. That commitment is the only way to eventually dismantle these pervasive anti-black settler colonial ideologies.

Works Cited

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"Intersectional Indigenous Identities: Afro-Indigenous and Black Indigenous Peoples." Native Americans in Philanthropy, 1 Feb. 2022, nativephilanthropy.org/blog/2022/02/01/intersectional-indigenous-identities-afro-indigenous-and-black-indigenous-peoples. Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.

Lorde, Audre. "The Uses of Anger." Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 1/2, 1997, pp. 278-85. JSTOR, www.jstor.org.dartmouth.idm.oclc.org/stable/40005441. Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.

Mays, Kyle T. An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States. Boston, Beacon Press, 2021.

Miles, Tiya. Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2015.

Nixon, Lindsay, and Billy-Ray Belcourt. "What Do We Mean by Queer Indigenous Ethics?" Canadian Art, 23 May 2018, canadianart.ca/features/what-do-we-mean-by-queerindigenousethics/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.

Secretary Haaland Approves New Constitution for Cherokee Nation, Guaranteeing Full Citizenship Rights for Cherokee Freedmen. U.S. Department of the Interior, 27 May 2021. U.S. Department of the Interior, www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-approves-new-constitution-cherokee-nation-guaranteeing-full. Accessed 1 Mar. 2024.

Tayac, Gabrielle. IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas. Washington, Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, 2009.

Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, vol. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40. PDF.

Woodson, C. G. "The Relations of Negroes and Indians in Massachusetts." The Journal of Negro History, vol. 5, no. 1, Jan. 1920, pp. 45-57. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2713501. Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.