Citizenship has a complicated history in Indian country, one that long predates the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. While Native nations often rejected citizenship as a hollow promise and conduit of colonization, other Indigenous people within the United States actively sought citizenship to combat inequality and dispossession. Some achieved unique recognition of rights, while most navigated limited citizenship as a framework to remain in their homeland. Featuring readings on regional case studies of Native political rights, the course will cover early victories and defeats of Native citizenship in the early American republic, citizenship in the Civil War era on state, federal, and tribal levels, tensions between tribal sovereignty and citizenship through the allotment era, and the long history of Native suffrage.