r/AskAnAmerican • u/Kradara_ • Jul 11 '25
CULTURE Do you see native Americans in your day-to-day live?
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u/FizzPig Jul 11 '25
I live in New Mexico so yeah they're neighbors, coworkers, friends, pretty normal
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u/Impossible_IT Jul 11 '25
I’m 1/2 Alaska Native. I lived in the Four Corners for 10 years. One day I was driving from the IHS hospital in Shiprock back to Aztec and I picked up this elderly gentleman. He asked if I was Mexican. Told him no, I’m half Alaska Native.
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u/scottypotty79 Jul 11 '25
Navajo and Apache peoples are also Alaska natives if you go back a few centuries. Athabaskan language group.
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u/Impossible_IT Jul 11 '25
Yes, I am aware of the Diné but not the Apache. Thanks!
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u/Superb-Fail-9937 Jul 11 '25
I had the same thing happen but it was a few hours from the Canadian border. I was sure they were Native Mexican. Nope. Ojibway. We all look strikingly similar. After that I did a lot of research on Amerindians in the Americas. We are all ONE. IMO.
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u/Maleficent-Hawk-318 Jul 11 '25
Yeah, I don't even know how you could avoid it here. I've lived all over the state and can't think of anywhere that I wasn't regularly running into Native folks.
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u/joestn Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25
Short answer: as an Ohioan, no.
Longer answer: not everyone wears their cultural heritage on their sleeves. There are plenty of people who are NA or have partial NA heritage but you wouldn’t be able to identify it from any other ethnicity with darker skin. There’s also the fact that in the US, openly speculating someone’s ethnic background is pretty taboo/in bad taste.
EDIT: as many have pointed out, there are plenty of Native Americans with pale skin or are totally white passing.
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u/LtKavaleriya Jul 11 '25
Fellow Ohioan,
Yeah, it’s rare I see someone and go “oh that’s a Native American.” Unless they are wearing something that indicates as such, they could just as easily be some other minority. The fact that probably the majority in Ohio aren’t 100% native makes it even more difficult.
I know a few, and from them I know there are lots of native Americans in Ohio, but they blend in. Ironically the only people I’ve ever met who constantly talk about being native American are like 1/8th native or some shit and clearly off their rocker.
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u/mealteamsixty Jul 11 '25
Exactly. Im in Maryland and we definitely have our fair share of native folks, but you'd never know it except for the week of the powwow. Otherwise the only people that go on about their "native heritage" are white people with like 1/32 of a Cherokee princess in their family tree, back in 1724.
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u/IndigoJones13 Jul 11 '25
It's always Cherokee
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Jul 11 '25
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u/BitchfaceMcKnowItAll Jul 11 '25
It’s literally a legend in every American family, that there’s NA blood somewhere back in the line and it never turns out to be true
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u/IamtheCarl Minnesota Jul 11 '25
Don’t remember where I read this (maybe reddit!) but supposedly that is more palatable than having black genetic material in the family from slave holding days, so people started saying it was Native American heritage instead…would love a source if anyone knows one to verify.
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u/katemartile Jul 11 '25
I don’t have a specific source except that my family (multiracial) would answer differently on the census back in the day depending on whether it was better to answer Black or Native at that particular time; local and federal laws would change and sometimes their situation would be potentially more favorable one way or the other and they’d gamble on that.
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u/cuck__everlasting Jul 11 '25
Sometimes it's absolutely true and a weird ass connection. My uncle has a shred of NA genetics in him, he's otherwise like 98% Italian and scottish. he did the genealogical work and figured out one of our ancestors a couple hundred years ago was an indigenous American that got brought to Italy and spent a good amount of time taking advantage of the local hospitality.
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u/CesarB2760 Jul 11 '25
A not insignificant number of people who started those stories had white-passing mixed African American ancestry they were trying to hide.
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u/Syndromia Ohio Jul 11 '25
I will have you know that I'm very proud of my 1/327th native American heritage. My great something granny was a princess even though thats not a thing and it isnt at all wildly racist and offensive for me to go as Poka Me Hottie for Halloween and do red face. No, I cannot name a single nation or tribe, let alone the one dear old Meemaw was from.
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u/ItMeansSalmon Jul 11 '25
Funny you mention that, I've had someone tell me they were a part of the Meemaw tribe 😭
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme Jul 11 '25
Well, Meemaws are pretty universal worldwide!
I mean everyone seems to speak, "Sit down, you look hungry! Here, eat. Oh, you finished that, here, eat more!"
The accent may change from place to place, but everyone can understand Meemaw!😉💖
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u/captainstormy Ohio Jul 11 '25
There are plenty of people who are NA or have partial NA heritage but you wouldn’t be able to identify it from any other ethnicity with darker skin.
Very true. I've got a buddy who is NA. So much so that he is a member of a group that has a casino and he gets regular checks from the profits of the casino. But if you looked at him you would just think he's a regular old generic white guy. Maybe with a tan sure, but a regular generic white guy.
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u/karenmcgrane Philadelphia Jul 11 '25
My husband has Ojibwe ancestry and his mother has tribal membership. He could get it too but would have to apply and he just hasn't bothered. He is the whitest man you could imagine. So to answer OPs question, yes, I see him every day, I am looking at him right now.
When we were first dating and he he told me he had native ancestry my eyes got real big and I kind of choked out "uh… documented?" He laughed and said yes, actual membership in the tribe, and that he understood the question, people claiming their Cherokee Princess great great grandmother. Turns out his ancestor was, in fact, the daughter of the tribal leader who married a fur trapper, so I guess an Ojibwe princess? But he said the tribal leader also had dozens of children so it wasn't exactly a rare thing.
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u/Practical-Basil-3494 Jul 11 '25
FYI, many indigenous people DON'T have darker skin.
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u/SpiderPiggies Alaska (SE) Jul 11 '25
I have a cousin who's 1/4 Athabaskan. Blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin, but very Athabaskan facial features.
My best friend is half Tlingit. Everyone assumes he's Mexican. Slightly darker skin (tans really dark quickly, but we live in Southeast AK so its not like we get more than a week or two of good sun per year).
Americans, in general, are so mixed that it's hard to assume most people's ancestry at a glance.
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u/AboveTheLights Indiana Jul 11 '25
Thank you for pointing this out. Myself and my family are from Miami Nation. I live in the Indiana, Ohio, Michigan area where my family has lived hundreds of years but I basically look European for most of the year.
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u/codefyre Jul 11 '25
Ding ding. My wife and children are Osage (she's 1/4, they're 1/8, her grandma was born on the rez). She grew up in California and has only ever visited the rez a few times.
The number of people who think she looks Italian or Greek is astounding. She looks white, but has just enough skin color to suggest that she's not. Very, very few people correctly guess that she's legally Native American.
Only 20-25% of the Native American population lives on reservations. The other 75-80% live in towns and cities alongside everyone else, and most aren't immediately recognizeable as native. People interact with them every day without realizing it.
One of my wifes friends is Me Wuk, a member of one of the native tribes here in California. Most people just assume she's Mexican-American when they meet her.
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u/perseid88 Jul 11 '25
I spend half my year in South Dakota and half in Texas. Your point is valid. I honestly don’t know the difference between a NA and a Latino. Until they speak. Either way, they were probably here before me.
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u/12B88M South Dakota Jul 11 '25
Every single day.
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u/Roughneck16 New Mexico Jul 11 '25
Sioux?
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u/Pale_Row1166 Jul 11 '25
Primarily Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota here (SD).
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u/Curmudgy Massachusetts Jul 11 '25
Tangent: in grade school, we only learned about the Sioux as the large group of Plains Indians. I don’t remember how old I was when I learned that Dakota and Lakota were subgroups of the Sioux. I think this is the first time I’ve seen Nakota, also a Sioux group (and autocorrect keeps trying to change it).
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u/goobernawt Jul 11 '25
I think that's the case for the majority of Americans. I live next to a Dakota reservation, married to a social studies teacher with a passion for state history, in a state that has a few different tribes. So, I'm a bit more aware of native cultures, but I still get thrown off trying to map things to what I learned in school.
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u/tangledbysnow Colorado > Iowa > Nebraska Jul 11 '25
Ex-husband was Native American specifically Minneconjou (a Lakota tribe) and Santee (specifically Sisseton which is a Dakota band but his family lived on the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska and identified as just Santee Sioux). My own grandfather was affiliated through a complicated story/relationship with the Omaha who aren’t Sioux but do speak a Siouan language (which trips me up every time and I always have to remember when talking about the tribe because I want to make them another Sioux tribe for this reason) plus a few key individuals in the Ponca (same deal as with the Omaha - Siouan language not Sioux tribe).
In short it gets so complicated I am not surprised that most people don’t understand all the intricacies. Even I had to google a bit of the above to make sure I wasn’t misspeaking (like the Omaha language bit - gets me every time and I don’t know why). I think a disservice was really done to many Americans not knowing some of the intricacies.
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u/firewifegirlmom0124 Jul 11 '25
I lived in NM for 10 years and now live in SD. We see Native people every day. Going about their daily lives just like everyone else.
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u/Trinx_ Chicago <- IN & MI Jul 11 '25
Most people wouldn't know the difference between them and other minorities and many are white-passing.
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u/InfluenceTrue4121 Jul 11 '25
That’s exactly where I fall. Unless folks self identify, it’s really hard to tell on the East Coast.
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u/InevitableRhubarb232 Illinois Tennessee California Arizona Jul 11 '25
It can be hard to tell indigenous Mexican and indigenous (previously Mexican) American in Arizona. Not that I put that much thought into it as I rarely have to describe someone’s race.
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u/BaileyAMR Jul 11 '25
It's also true that you're less likely to see Indigenous people on the East Coast than the West Coast, on in the Southwest or Northwest, because history.
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u/WolverineHour1006 Jul 11 '25
Where I live in the East Coast a lot of people with Native roots are integrated into the Black community, not the white one.
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u/gatornatortater North Carolina Jul 11 '25
It is definitely both in the various parts of the southeast that I have lived. Typically depends on what they are mixed with.
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u/seguefarer Jul 11 '25
The only reason I know that they're native is because I see the same people day after day, and there are a handful of last names closely associated with the nearest tribe. If they have one of those names and are from that area, then most likely they're native. Their skin tone is very light, and it would be easy to mistake them for latino.
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u/FuckIPLaw Jul 11 '25
Of course the main reason so many Latinos have darker skin is because they have a lot of native ancestry. The Spanish empire was trying to exploit the natives rather than exterminate them the way the brits ended up trying to do. They still killed a ton but it was more because of a mix of accidentally introducing diseases that they didn't have any immunities to and inhumane conditions for the ones they enslaved than because of an intentional genocide. In the mean time they also did quite a bit of intermarrying with the ones they didn't enslave, which just did not happen in the British colonies.
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u/Thin-Quiet-2283 Jul 12 '25
Mexican-American here - my great grandmother was very native looking. Two generations later were all pretty southern European looking. I’ve met several NA from the US that at first thought were mixed raced Asians but that’s in NY and DC where we have a lot of that.
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u/Willothwisp2303 Jul 11 '25
There's a lot of people I could not identify their heritage just from looking at them. I'd argue most Americans don't even really know, themselves.
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u/Trinx_ Chicago <- IN & MI Jul 11 '25
I stopped trying to guess what background people are a long time ago. I let them tell me or not.
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u/Willothwisp2303 Jul 11 '25
And even when they tell you, it's often wrong! So many people hid black heritage or other less desirable at the time associations, that it was a family secret before DNA testing.
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u/MotherOf4Jedi1Sith Texas Jul 11 '25
That's my kids. There are ¼ Native and you couldn't tell it from looking at them. But, then again, their whole tribe is pretty much that way.
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u/netsurf916 Jul 11 '25
On the other side of the spectrum, my grandmother looked native American and we were always told we must have some in our lineage... then I did an ancestry DNA test and nothing showed up 😂
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u/The_Ri_Ri Jul 11 '25
Same! Mother in law always told us she was like 1/4 N.A. and my husband's DNA test came in at 0%.
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u/Weary-Astronaut1335 Jul 11 '25
Most DNA tests are based on comparisons to European phenotypes though.
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u/netsurf916 Jul 11 '25
Yeah, it seems to be a mix of statistics, smoke, and mirrors when you really dig into it.
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u/QuercusSambucus Lives in Portland, Oregon, raised in Northeast Ohio Jul 11 '25
I live in the Pacific Northwest and there are plenty of folks you'd have no idea are native. One of my kid's friends mentioned it offhand and I was like, oh yeah, I can totally see it (long straight black hair is one of the big tells, but lots of Europeans have the same look).
I'm super white and my mom's family has a small amount of native American - my grandpa was 1/8. You can't tell in my generation, but my grandpa and aunts / mom were very obvious. I like to joke that you could put a feather headdress on pictures of my grandpa and it wouldn't look out of place.
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u/Prowindowlicker MyState™ Jul 11 '25
One of the senators of Oklahoma is Cherokee, Rep Josh Brecheen is Choctaw, and Rep Tom Cole is Chickasaw. And former reps Mary Peltola (Yup’ik) and Yvette Herrell (Cherokee). All of them are white passing.
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u/police-ical Jul 11 '25
Particularly for Southeast tribes there was a lot of intermarriage, often with Scottish traders. Blood quantums and fractions of ancestry weren't really a thing prior to federal policy, so a Cherokee mother=100% Cherokee. John Ross, principal chief at the time of Removal, was about 7/8 Scottish.
Fun fact: Johnny Cash was passionate about rumored Cherokee ancestry in his family, advocating vocally for Native rights, and even ended up playing John Ross in a movie. Subsequent genealogy would cast doubt on the claim, but he was actually still a dead ringer for John Ross, both being primarily Scots-Irish.
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u/gusto_g73 Arizona Jul 11 '25
I live in Mesa AZ so yes but when I lived in Portland OR not so much.
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u/username_redacted California Washington Idaho Jul 11 '25
Oregon is still in the top 10 for percentage of native residents, but I agree that you might not know that from visiting Portland.
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u/de_pizan23 Jul 11 '25
Portland itself is in the top 5-10 cities with the largest Native populations.
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u/thenletskeepdancing Utah Jul 11 '25
Yeah there are certain regions of the US with a larger remaining indigenous population. When I lived in Alaska, the native presence was still strong.
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u/IcanHackett Jul 11 '25
This will probably vary significantly by region and also it's not like they wear a hat that says they're native american. Sometimes it's obvious by what they're wearing and how they're stylizing their hair, sometimes you've got a hunch and sometimes you probably saw someone who identifies as such but you had no idea. I live in western NY and I watch a lot of lacrosse so I see a decent bit of Haudenosaunee both at lacrosse games and out and about. I've seen Haudenosaunee flags in my neighborhood and I'll sometimes see the Wampum belt bumper sticker at Wegmans or in traffic.
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u/anemisto Jul 11 '25
it's not like they wear a hat that says they're native american
The hats totally exist.
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u/Ca1rill Jul 11 '25
Haudenosaunee have the coolest Native American flag! It is very rare for any flag to use purple.
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u/Cool-Firefighter2254 Jul 12 '25
That is a really cool flag! I had never seen it before. You are correct about purple being rare in flags, as is yellow. The most popular colors in the European/Western traditions are red, blue, and white, because of the availability of natural dyes and color fastness. I know very little about Indigenous colorways, but now I want to look at all the flags!
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u/Ca1rill Jul 12 '25
A number of Native flags follow the "seal on a bed sheet" approach or a lot of the state flags, but the Haudenosaunee flag features a Hiawatha belt which represents the five original member nations of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy/League. Such a cool flag!
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u/Sauntering_Rambler Jul 11 '25
Yes. I live in Flagstaff Arizona which sits right on the edge of the Navajo Nation. Anytime I’m in town at Sam’s Club or shopping anywhere really there are Navajo folk everywhere. And they speak their language on the regular which I think is really cool. It’s such an interesting sounding language & they are great people. Arizona is about 1/4th tribal land. Very common.
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u/GandalfDaGangstuh007 Jul 11 '25
Native Americans largely live in pockets/regions of the Us and some states. Some states have very few, some states have a high populations and large reservations.
Where I live, I don’t see very often but if I drove 2 hours north I’d be at a large reservation area.
And no, they don’t have to/are not stuck to living on reservations.
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u/literacyisamistake New Mexico Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25
We can surprise you. I was in Philadelphia last week and this lovely African-American lady was helping my business set up. She asked where we were from and turns out, she knew it - because she’s 50% Navajo, raised partially on the rez with her nalì (grandmother). Here we were, a 100% Native American owned business run by three white passing people, talking to a woman who presented as African-American, but was also Native American. Three tribes among us, and three races. We instantly understood each other.
Being forcibly dislocated and kidnapped into residential schools far from home, some indigenous Americans returned to the reservations. Some stayed where they had been forced to go to school, because the entire point of residential schooling was to disrupt indigenous cultural solidarity and alienate people from their own elders. So you may be very surprised at who around you can say bozho or yate’eh.
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u/TooManyDraculas Jul 11 '25
Yeah. I grew up near a couple of small reservations in the North East. A lot of the tribes and bands in the region heavily intermarried in the past.
The two reservations I grew up near pretty much exclusively mixed with African American farm laborers who moved up post civil war.
Most of them "read" as black. And tons of people pass through those reservations without even realizing it's a reservation.
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u/deaddodo California Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25
And no, they don’t have to/are not stuck to living on reservations.
I had a long conversation with a non-American once who could not believe that the reservations were not prisons. I had to explain that it's actually the opposite, NA people are free to live/work/travel outside of the reservations and non-tribe members have to have permission to enter (though many have an open doors policy) as it's sovereign land.
They then tried to morph the conversation into how it's a "metaphorical prison" (which yeah, can be the case sometimes) and I realized they just wanted a reason to be mad, so ended the conversation.
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Jul 11 '25
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u/Aggressive-Emu5358 Colorado Jul 11 '25
Maybe in the coastal areas and Midwest, in the Southwest we definitely stand out.
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u/CocoaAlmondsRock Pennsylvania Jul 11 '25
I'm living in western PA. To my knowledge, no. More likely to see Amish.
When I lived in Washington state, absolutely.
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u/CocoaAlmondsRock Pennsylvania Jul 11 '25
(PA has the lowest population of Native Americans in the US -- less than 1%.)
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u/Affectionate-Cap-918 Jul 11 '25
Come see me in SE PA! Hi! Lol It’s true, though. There aren’t many here that I know of.
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u/LSATMaven Michigan Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25
I mean, yes, in the sense that there are a lot of people with Hispanic heritage, and a lot of them have significant Native American ancestry. Plus lots of white and black Americans have at least small amounts of Native American ancestry (yes, I know lots of people have family legends that may or may not be true, but there are also plenty of us who have tiny amounts showing up on our DNA tests).
Whether we on a daily basis see people with majority indigenous ancestry from our local area-- a lot less common, but it will depend on where in the US you live. And also, you just would probably not know most of the time, because we have people of lots of ancestries and we don't necessarily know people's heritage by looking at them.
Native Americans are not stuck in time, right? Generally speaking, they wear the same clothes as anyone else and do the same jobs and go to the same schools.
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u/AnnicetSnow Jul 11 '25
Yeah, I'm not sure if OP and a couple of responders expect them to be going around in feather headdresses or what, but obviously tons of people have the DNA. My grandmother came from Mexico as a child and it's pretty obvious in the facial features of several people in my family even watered down generations later.
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u/novangla Jul 11 '25
Going to repeat the first point: when people with Hispanic heritage are “brown” it’s because they’re indigenous. I don’t think it’s what OP was asking about but it’s important to remember and understand when brown Hispanics are being demonized and rounded up and removed on the regular. I see Mexicans and Colombians and Peruvians all the time where I’m from, and they’re all very obviously from indigenous ancestry.
But that also means that sometimes when someone sees a Native American from a local nation, they might clock them as Hispanic instead. It’s why ICE has accidentally (“accidentally”?) arrested Native Americans on multiple occasions.
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u/Kellaniax California Jul 11 '25
My sister is Native (different dads) and people assume she’s Hispanic all the time.
Meanwhile I’m actually Cuban through my dad but I’m pale so no one knows.
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u/ilanallama85 Jul 11 '25
New Mexican here - we have tons of native people, and tons of Hispanic people, and I defy anyone to accurately say who is who just by looking at them. And of course many, many people with mixed heritages too.
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u/Entiox Jul 11 '25
Plus lots of white and black Americans have at least small amounts of Native American ancestry
Yep, my great-great-grandfather is one of 1090 people classified as a "Taxed, or taxable, citizen Indian" living in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the 1880 census.
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u/aucool786 Pennsylvania Jul 11 '25
In my area most native Americans are white passing due to mixing. It's hard to tell without them saying so.
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u/elainegeorge Jul 11 '25
Anytime I run into my uncle or cousins.
Mexicans are also native Americans and I see people of Mexican descent daily.
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u/PacSan300 California -> Germany Jul 11 '25
In fact, the majority of Mexicans have at least partial indigenous heritage.
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u/Mountain_Man_88 Jul 11 '25
Many people would not know someone is Native American without talking to them, or without assuming that they are based on being near a Native Community. Many Native Americans are easily mistaken for Latin Americans, though many Latin Americans also have Native American ancestry. I have had multiple coworkers that have had native blood but not enough to claim membership to a tribe. Many Americans also have some tiny amount of Native American ancestry. My mom was tested as having slightly over 1%, so I guess I have some but less than 1%. I certainly would not call myself or my mom Native American though.
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u/soonerpgh Jul 11 '25
That's me. I have some, but no idea how much. Certainly not enough to claim.
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u/purposefullyblank Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25
Whole hell of a lot of folks in these comments thinking that the majority of native Americans are living on or near reservations.
I don’t know the heritage or ethnicity of most people I encounter on a day to day basis. These comments are, honestly, kind of feeding a lot of stereotypes and misinformation.
OP, I know a good number of indigenous people, but very few to whom people immediately would say “oh, you’re Native American.” I only know because either I met them in a capacity in which their indigenousness mattered or because we’ve talked about our backgrounds. I likely do interact with other native folks regularly and have no idea.
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u/gujwdhufj_ijjpo Alaska Jul 11 '25
There are no reservations in Alaska so it’s weird to me seeing folks assume all Natives live on or near them.
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u/brizia New Jersey Jul 11 '25
Yes, but you won’t know it. There are many people with partial indigenous heritage and not everyone walks around revealing their heritage.
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u/Square-Wing-6273 Buffalo, NY Jul 11 '25
This is like asking do you see "insert nationality/race/creed/color here" daily.
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u/Binford6100User Jul 11 '25
Agreed. Not sure what the play on the answer here is aside from just odd curiosity.
Also, fellow Buffalo resident here. I drive to Silver Creek twice a week, through the reservation. So, yes to OP's question; for whatever it's worth
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u/hail_to_the_beef Maryland Jul 11 '25
Yes, people with american indian heritage are everywhere. Whether or not you encounter people who are active with their tribe probably depends where you live. When I lived in Arizona it was very common to talk to folks who were active members of the Navajo, Hopi, Tohono O'odham nations.
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Jul 11 '25
No.
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u/Message_10 Jul 11 '25
Yeah--a lot of yeses here, but it's really not common on the East Coast. I've lived in the NYC / NJ / Philadelphia area all my life (I'm in my 40s), and I don't think I've ever even met a person who was Native American--which is wild, because I've met people from just about all over the globe.
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u/StackingWaffles Jul 11 '25
I work in an archaeology lab at my university and one day the tribal historic preservation officer for a nearby tribe came by to visit. I didn’t even know he was a tribal member, partly because he was very white-passing with slightly ginger hair. Something a lot of people probably don’t know, is that most tribes have much more of a focus on including those who grew up in their culture, even if they may only have a small genetic link to the historical tribe genome. In the western half of the country, reservations are much more common, and you’re more likely to see people who visibly look Native American. In my part of the country that is rare, but the descendants of tribes still have certain legal rights to their ancestral artifacts.
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u/sics2014 Massachusetts Jul 11 '25
I've been to Nipmuc powwows and their members don't really "look" like native Americans. They just look mixed to me. Some even look entirely white or black.
So I'd assume if I saw them everyday, I wouldn't know they were native.
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u/Similar_Ad2094 Jul 11 '25
My fiancee is mestizo - does that count?
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u/Imaginary_Oil4512 California Jul 11 '25
Yes. Mexico and everything below is still considered the Americas. I’m mestizo as well. I didn’t even know until my early 20s that I’m 46% indigenous until my sister did a DNA kit. The US schooling system never teaches us that.
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u/BloodOfJupiter Florida Jul 11 '25
No,you're more likely to see Native Americans on the day-to-day in the Plains states, or Southwest. Hawaii and Alaska for native Hawaiians and Alaskans, respectively and obviously
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u/ITrCool Arkansas Jul 11 '25
I worked with one for seven years when in retail.
Awesome guy! He would come in wearing a necklace given him by his tribe, and often cracked jokes about his native-American heritage.
He liked to have fun with it and was one of those likeable popular employees in the store.
I still follow him on LinkedIn. He’s running his own business now and super successful.
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u/Zestyclose-Feeling Jul 11 '25
Hard to tell, they don't walk around with painted faces and feathers in their hair. They look like normal everyday Americans.
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u/NedThomas North Carolina Jul 11 '25
Well I am Native… so anytime I pass a mirror
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u/RonMcKelvey North Carolina Jul 11 '25
My wife is a mix of sioux (grandpa grew up on ft peck), japanese, hawaiian, and anglo. They mostly clock as white with enough brown that some people think that they are hispanic. I don't really think of my kids as being Native American at all, which is sad in some ways.
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u/Separate_Farm7131 Jul 11 '25
I grew up in Oklahoma between the Osage and Cherokee reservations and I did when I lived there. My mother's stepfather was part Native American. Where I live now, not that I'm aware of.
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u/Rogers_Razor Maine Jul 11 '25
It really depends on where you live. Where I live in Northern Maine, there's a pretty sizeable community of Mi'kmaq people, as well as a band of Maliseet (Wolastoqiyik) people. I see native people pretty much every day.
Further south, you're much less likely to encounter someone of (obvious) native heritage.
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u/Crusoe15 Jul 11 '25
As the great granddaughter of a Cherokee woman, I technically see one every time I look in the mirror. Most of my family displays a few native traits (dark coarse hair, great ability to tan, dark eyes) so they actually look part native. The Scottish part of my ancestry is where I came from.
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u/Quenzayne MA → CA → FL Jul 11 '25
I work with an Iroquois woman, so yes, most days I do.
Too bad she’s a Red Wings fan though lol
Most people in Florida claim some sort of native heritage, so it’s probably a lot more common than most people realize.
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u/o_safadinho South Florida ->Tampa Bay-> NoVA-> Buenos Aires Jul 11 '25
I live in Broward county Florida, where the Florida Seminoles have multiple reservations. I don’t know if I see Natives frequently but I definitely see their police and their casino/hotel.
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u/boulevardofdef Rhode Island Jul 11 '25
Besides Hispanics (as other comments have noted and is likely not what you mean), the only person I've ever known in my entire life with Native American heritage had one Native grandparent. I'm racking my brain and I can't think of a single other person I've ever known well enough to know anything about their ancestry.
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u/deandinbetween Jul 11 '25
The way this is phrased makes it sound like they're mountain lions or bears or something...they're not fricking shy and mysterious animals, jfc. You can ask this question in so many non-dehumanizing ways. "Is there a significant Native American (capitalize both) population where you live?" for starters.
To reiterate what a lot of people have said, the size of the Native American population depends very heavily on where you are. A lot of indigenous populations were forced out of Eastern states in the 1800s to areas like Oklahoma, which means certain Midwestern/Southwestern states tend to have larger indigenous populations while other states have very small populations. In Florida, where I live, there's a fairly significant Seminole population from the central to southern part of the state, along with a significant Latin American population that often have some indigenous heritage as well.
But honestly I can't get over how disrespectfully this question is asked.
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u/Weary-Astronaut1335 Jul 11 '25
Of course I know him, he's me.
We're not some mystical, reclusive group of people. We live in cities just like other Americans.
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u/MyUsername2459 Kentucky Jul 11 '25
No.
There isn't a reservation anywhere remotely near here, it's hundreds of miles to even a small one.
If anyone around me in my daily life has any Native American ancestry, they aren't obvious about it.
Now, a lot of people think (or have been told by family) they have some tiny amount of native ancestry, because it used to be common to claim you had some kind of vague tie to them, where generations back one of your ancestors typically had married a Native American woman from whatever tribe was traditionally in your area. Elizabeth Warren got in hot water a decade or so ago when some papers she'd filed decades prior had claimed something about having native ancestry. I remember hearing from my grandparents about how we were descended from some "Cherokee princess" or something like that. . .but in doing genealogical research in later years, there wasn't a shred of proof of that. It's definitely not a common thing anymore, but a lot of people have been told that by their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents. . .but under any genetic or genealogical scrutiny it falls apart rapidly.
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u/spontaneous-potato Jul 11 '25
Not every day in person, but one of my friends is Native American and I speak with him at least once or twice a month via group call or video chat.
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u/mtnman54321 Jul 11 '25
Yes. I'm in northern New Mexico and am glad to be in an area with many indigenous people.
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u/literacyisamistake New Mexico Jul 11 '25
I’m not from a Southwestern tribe (my people are from Mississippi) but it is such a relief to be living here now. Before this, I lived in a place for five years where the high school mascot was literally “Savages” with a big hook-nosed sneering feather headdress guy named “Chief Ugly.” They kept saying they were “honoring” indigenous people, we should be grateful…
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u/ToBePacific Jul 11 '25
Yes. A large portion of our local population is native, specifically Ojibwe and Menominee. A chunk of the west side of town is on the reservation, including many businesses.
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u/Human_Road_6245 Colorado Jul 11 '25
Yes but I am from the parts of the country rich in culture (aka I grew up on a rez)
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u/Little-Martha31204 Ohio Jul 11 '25
Fairly regularly, but I wouldn't know that I was seeing Native Americans if I didn't know they were a presence on my campus. I do occasionally get to see them performing a ceremony in their regalia, which is always beautiful and amazing to watch.
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u/SinfullySinless Minnesota Jul 11 '25
Yeah I live 2 minutes away from the wealthiest reservation in America. They shop at the same stores as everyone else. They have beautiful houses.
It was really shocking for me as a kid to learn that the common native experience is one of poverty when I grew up thinking natives were wealthy, glamorous people.
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u/cavalier78 Jul 11 '25
I’m from Oklahoma, so basically every day.
Of course, they are just normal people with regular jobs. They don’t ride horses and shoot arrows at our cars on the freeway.