Indians and Alaska Natives

Native Americans are a diverse group of people whose ancestors lived in North America before the European settlement. In the United States alone, there are more than 500 tribal organizations. In addition to their tribal affiliations, Native Americans are often distin-guished by language and/or cultural groups, some of which extend across both the United States and Can-ada. Contemporary Native American populations live in urban areas and on reservations or reserves in both countries. In the United States, ~1.9 million individu-als identified themselves in the 1990 Census as Ameri-can Indian or Alaska Native, but only 1.2 million of these resided in the 33 reservation states served by th