Native American nations divided over America's 250th anniversary

HALIFAX, NC - Marty Richardson descended into the wooded grove, weaving through a crowd of onlookers attending a local America 250 celebration.

When Richardson began to speak, the crowd went silent. The Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe, he told them, endured warfare, land encroachment and devastating diseases brought by European settlers over the last two and a half centuries - forces that nearly wiped out their people.

"Treaties with the colony and the country have been broken, and promises to our people not fulfilled," he said, his voice rising.

For Native American tribes in the United States, navigating the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding is complex.

The American Revolution led to the society we live in today. But it also accelerated thedestruction of Indigenous civilizations, who'd called the land home for thousands of years. Many indigenous peoples living in the Eastern United States fought for the British during the war to protect their land from further European intrusion.

Some tribes see the anniversary as a commemoration of colonization. Many are not recognizing the festivities. Others believe they need to capitalize on the fleeting moment to educate more Americans about their history.

"Our people endured and are still here," Richardson told the crowd in Halifax.

The Haliwa-Saponi are a state-recognized tribe seeking federal recognition. They chose to participate in the official North Carolina festivities, Richardson said, to claim their seat at the table.

"We welcome the opportunity to make the next 250 years of our country one that acknowledges and atones for the treatment of Native peoples, includes us in major decisions and acknowledges our existence," he said.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Four hundred miles to the west, on North Carolina's border with Tennessee, Dakota Brown of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians said her tribe rejected similar offers to participate in official 250th commemorations.

Brown has served as director of education at the Museum of the Cherokee People for six years. The requests she's received from museums and historical sites never felt "quite right," she said, because they didn't center Cherokee voices.

This year, the museum opted to build its own exhibit about the tribe's perspective on the American Revolution and the founding of the United States

The Revolutionary War was a turning point for the Cherokee. In 1763, British King George III prohibited colonists from settling on Native American lands west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Colonists saw the law as an infringement on their rights. When they disregarded the boundary, British leaders told the Cherokee they could drive people off the land. During the War for Independence, the tribe saw the British as the lesser of two evils.

"The truth is that we fought on our side," Brown said. "We fought on the side of Cherokee people."

About four years ago, the museum began searching for historical objects and primary source documents created by Cherokee people at the time of the war.

Stories about the Cherokee written by non-Native people in the late 1700s presented a skewed, often European-centric understanding of the tribe's culture. Colonial artists, for instance, painted portraits of prominent male Cherokee leaders but did not portray women who held similar roles.

Keli Gonzalez, a painter the museum commissioned, became frustrated by the lack of female representation.

It showed "the gap" in Cherokee and European cultures, she said. Women controlled children and property and played pivotal roles in tribe politics.

"It was like the men were listened to, and they probably didn't even interview or talk to the women," Gonzalez said of European settlers.

But the museum did find some illuminating first-person perspectives from women of the era.

One prominent Cherokee named Katteuha co-wrote a letter to Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, urging him to push for peace between the Native people and settlers.

Delegates to the convention "ought to mind what a woman says," she wrote Franklin.

Vexed by the story, Gonzalez created acontemporary portrait of Katteuha. She wanted to spark a conversation about identity and whose version of history gets told.

"All I could think about was like the portraits of Cherokee dignitaries. They're really cool portraits, but they're all of men," she said. "We didn't have any depictions of women in that same light."

Akimel O'odham: Friendship, then betrayal

David Martinez, an Akimel O'odham and member of the Gila River Indian Community, described his and other tribes' relationship with the United States as "toxic."

The Akimel O'odham - or River People - and their neighbors, the Pee Posh – the People Who Live Toward the Water - didn't meet Americans until the Mexican-American War.

The tribes' lands are in the Salt River Valley and along the Gila River in central Arizona.

Martinez said the United States should "take some time to remember what Indian people did for them," as it celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding.

"O'odham farmers benefited from people passing through," said Martinez, the director of the Institute for Transborder Indigenous Nations Institute and professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State University.

O'odham and Pee Posh people supplied food and protection to American settlers and the U.S. Army.

"There was a geopolitical relationship as the U.S. military pursued Apaches and Navajos," Martinez said.

In 1859, Congress expressed the nation's appreciation by creating the first reservation in Arizona; the two tribes, now known as the Gila River Indian Community, were guaranteed 372,000 acres along the Gila River.

But that friendship was betrayed as settlers dried up the Gila with upstream dams and diversions. After decades of litigation, the tribe finally recovered its water rights.

Martinez said that the O'odham tribes have had to continually ask "What about us?" as treaties were signed and lands were purchased.

"It's natural for us to befriend people, but (the settlers) came from a culture of selfishness."

'First contact tribes' weigh in

The Shinnecock Indian Nation was among the first Indigenous people European settlers met. Their name translates to "People of the Stony Shore." For millennia, they have called Shinnecock Neck on what is now known as Long Island home.

Though people associate pre-United States history with the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims, Shinnecock people were contacted by British settlers as early as 1640, Shinnecock Chairwoman Lisa Goree said.

The 1,500-member tribe has fought to keep territory and traditions alive amid land loss, poverty, marginalization, and efforts by Southampton residents to lure them off their remaining 900 acres or, at the least, prevent them from creating economic opportunities for nearly 390 years.

Officials from the Town of Southampton did not respond to a request for comment.

The latest attempt to block Shinnecock's economic development was in 2025, when the town of Southampton sued the Department of the Interior. The lawsuit seeks to overturn a decision granting "restricted fee status" to a plot of land off-reservation on ancestral Shinnecock territory.

The tribe wants to build a travel center on the land along a busy highway on Long Island. Residents objected to removing trees and other construction activities.

Shinnecock tribal member Gordell Wright, an artist who carves wampum shell to create handcrafted jewelry, said when the colonists won the Revolutionary War, they pledged to honor treaties enacted between tribes and Great Britain.

"We've fought in every war since 1776," he said.

But the Shinnecocks learned in 1978 that despite those guarantees that the United States would respect their sovereignty, they had no formal relationship with the federal government.

"They kept moving the goalposts," Goree said.

Many tribal members who worked for years on the recognition petition died before the 32-year process to gain - or regain - federal recognition in 2010. The Shinnecocks continue to struggle to create a self-sustaining economy despite constant pushback from their billionaire neighbors.

"It's like you let people come to your house and they start taking things out of it and start taking it over," Wright said.

Goree was more diplomatic. Despite the obstacles in their way, the Shinnecock are still living in their own ancestral territory, she said.

"We celebrate 250 years of freedom even though when it comes to our own sovereignty we face many restrictions," Goree said. "They didn't make it easy for us."

In recent years, the Shinnecock have participated in the nearby village of Southampton's July Fourth parade.

California tribal nations see cultural renaissance

On the other side of the continent, tribal nations in Central and Southern California dealt with their own first contact with European settlers - the Spaniards.

The first Spanish expedition to California in 1542 was followed about 220 years later when Gaspar de Portolá and Franciscan monk Junipero Serra traversed the coastal lands. Soon, Catholic missions and Spanish rancheros sprouted, first attracting local Native peoples and later, enslaving them.

Tribes describe the last of three waves of European incursions, nearly 85 years after Serra hung the first Mission bell in San Diego in 1769, as the most brutal.

"By the time the United States made it to California, they had become very good at eliminating tribal peoples," said Terria Smith, a member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, a tribe in the Coachella Valley southeast of Palm Springs, California.

During the 19th century, California's Indigenous population plunged by about 80%, from 150,000 to 30,000, amid a government-sanctioned campaign to wipe them out, according to Benjamin Madley's "An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873." Madley - who teaches history at the University of California, Los Angeles - found that many people participated in the genocide, including vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. congressmen and California governors.

The state and federal governments spent at least $1.7 million on campaigns against Indigenous people in California, according to his book.

"In between the missions, the Mexicans and the Gold Rush, it's incredible that we're still here," Smith said.

Despite the efforts of three nations to slaughter or assimilate Native Californians, the peoples and their cultures survived and are thriving after a cultural renaissance, said Smith, editor of News from Native California, a magazine that chronicles the arts, cultures and stories of California tribes.

Bird Singing - a longtime dance tradition in Southern California, the Southwest and southern Nevada - is bigger than ever.

"There are thousands of Bird Singers and dancers now," Smith said.

Smith, who describes herself as a proponent of "California Indians first," said she will continue to work to increase their visibility.

"When you talk about Indian people," Smith said. "250 years is not a long time."

Karissa Waddick covers America's 250th anniversary for USA TODAY. She can be reached at kwaddick@usatoday.com.

Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West for the Arizona Republic. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @debkrol and on Bluesky at @debkrol.bsky.social‬.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Native American nations divided over America's 250th anniversary

Reporting by Karissa Waddick and Debra Utacia Krol, USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY

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Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

This story was originally published July 3, 2026 at 8:00 AM.