In the first decades of the twentieth century the Ramapo Indians voiced for the first time a public claim that they were neither white nor black, but Native American. The Ramapo, along with numerous Indian communities including the Nanticoke, “Wesorts,” and “Amherst—many of which had previously existed in relative isolation—sought cultural as well as legal recognition as distinct populations each with its own specific culture, heritage, and importantly, its own racial identity. The dominant U.S. understanding of race as a binary, however, circumscribed American Indian projects of racial formation. Because black Americans had long been relegated to the bottom of America’s racial caste system, American Indians had to create a new vision of identity that was not only recognizably “Indian,” but also noticeably not black. Thus, the history of Native American identity projects has been deeply intertwined with …show more content…
Avowing a distinct racial identity was one of several strategies deployed by American Indians living in the eastern and southern U.S. in order to establish a separate racial status. Communities also sought to enshrine their identity by creating separate religious and educational institutions, establishing land bases, and by securing public recognition as Indians. Some scholars have described these efforts as ethnogenesis or even as ethnoregenesis. The former refers to the historical emergence of people who defined themselves by their sociocultural and linguistic heritage while the latter refers to efforts to revive a previously dormant ethnic identity. Although eastern Indians’ various identity projects could be described as acts of ethnogenesis or ethnoregenesis, the terms themselves have often been used to cast aspersions on the “genuineness” of their efforts and the “authenticity” of their identity. The terminology one uses to describe the collective actions taken by