Native Americans – Introduction

NAMEINTRODUCTION
NATIVE AMERICANNative Americans, also known as American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Americans and other terms , are the Indigenous people of the United States; sometimes including Hawaii and other regions of the United States and other times limited to the mainland. There are 574 federally recognized tribes living within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian Reservations. Indigenous peoples of the United States who are not American Indian or Alaska Native include Native Hawaiians, Samoans, and Chamorro. The US Census groups these peoples as ” Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. The ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in what is now the United States at least 15,000 years ago, possibly much earlier. A vast variety of peoples, societies and cultures subsequently developed from all over the world. Since the 1960s, Native American self-determination  movements have resulted in changes to the lives of Native Americans. There are still many modern issues faced by Native Americans Today, there are over five million Native Americans in the United States, 78% of whom live outside reservations: California , Arizona, and Oklahoma have the largest populations of Native Americans in the United States. Most Native Americans live in small towns or rural areas. Native Americans are called Ancestral Puebloans not Anasazi.