Indigenous Tribal Recognition Reclamation

About this project

Across the Americas, dozens of Indigenous nations exist today without formal recognition — tribes whose treaties were broken, whose records were destroyed, or whose identities were erased from official history. The Indigenous Tribal Recognition Reclamation Project is being built to find these unrecognized and forgotten tribes, document their histories, and help them reclaim the legal standing and sovereignty they were denied.

Our team is assembling a coalition of tribal historians, genealogists, legal scholars, and community organizers to build a recognition pipeline: archival research to reconstruct lost histories, evidence packages that meet federal and international recognition standards, and legal support for claims and justice initiatives ranging from land restitution to treaty enforcement.

This project also works to amplify the voices of tribes that were deliberately written out of the history books — ensuring their stories, languages, and rights are recorded accurately and defended publicly. Where governments failed to keep records, we help build them. Where recognition was denied unjustly, we help pursue it.

Focus areas

• Identifying and documenting unrecognized and forgotten tribes
• Reconstructing erased tribal histories through archival research
• Federal and international recognition case preparation
• Land, treaty, and reparations claims support
• Language, heritage, and cultural record restoration
• Coalition building with tribal governments and legal partners

Key goals

• ◆ Build a searchable archive of unrecognized and erased tribal histories
• ◆ File recognition evidence packages for the first cohort of partner tribes
• ◆ Support claims and justice initiatives for at least 5 tribal nations
• ◆ Publish a public report on tribes written out of official history