The Racial Formation of American Indians: Negotiating Legitimate Identities within Tribal and Federal Law

Abstract

Michael Omi and Harold Winant define “racial formation” as the process by which individuals are divided, by historically mutable rules, into racial categories.1 American Indians differ from other twenty-first-century racial groups in the extent to which their racial formation is governed by law, yet students of race and ethnicity are frequently unfamiliar with the unique processes of racial formation in this group. This article is a simple introduction to some of the legal definitions—both federal and tribal—that regulate American Indian racial formation. It also examines the consequences of the particular processes of racial formation that apply to Indian people. Finally, it considers the questions of who is able to satisfy legal definitions of identity and who is unable to do so and some of the many reasons that the “Indians” and “non-Indians” who emerge from the rigors of the definitional process do not always resemble what one might expect.2