a fundamental misconception in at least two primary ways. First, there is no given ethnicity which might be correctly said to encompass those who are indigenous to what is now construed as US territorality. Rather, there are at least 400 distinctly identifiable ethnicities comprising what is lumped into the catchall category of Native American. Similarly, at least three noticeably different racial divisions prevail within the overall group; persons of the so-called Athabascan stock (such as Navajos and Apaches) are as physically different from Iroquoian peoples (Mohawks and Cherokees, for example) as Mongolians are from Arabs. Second, notions of ethnic or racial minority status fail profoundly to convey the sense of national identity by which most or all North American indigenous populations define themselves. This characteristic, not the factor of ethnicity, is most important in understanding the reality of native North America today. It is this sense of themselves as coherent and viable nations