Navajo Nation surpasses Cherokee to become largest tribe in the U.S.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. —  The Navajo Nation has by far the largest land mass of any Native American tribe in the U.S. Now, it’s boasting the largest enrolled population, too.

Navajos scrambled to enroll or fix their records as the tribe offered hardship assistance payments from last year’s federal coronavirus relief package. That boosted the tribe’s rolls from about 306,000 to nearly 400,000 citizens.

The figure tops the Cherokee Nation’s enrollment of 392,000. But it, too, has been growing, said tribal spokeswoman Julie Hubbard. The Oklahoma tribe has been receiving about 200 more applications per month from potential enrollees, leaving Navajo’s position at the top unstable.

The numbers matter because tribes often are allocated money based on their number of citizens. Each of the 574 federally recognized tribes determines how to count its population. The Navajo, for example, require a one-quarter blood quantum to enroll. Cherokee primarily uses lineal descent.

Tribal governments received $4.8 billion from the coronavirus relief package based on federal housing population data for tribes, which some said were badly skewed. The Treasury Department recently revised the methodology and said it would correct the most substantial disparities.

The Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, one of three tribes that sued the department over the payments, said it’s satisfied with the additional $5.2 million it’s set to receive. The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida and the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas would get $825,000 and $864,000, respectively, under the new methodology. Both said those amounts didn’t make sense when broken down to a per-person figure. They plan to continue their fight in court.

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“We just cannot accept this as it is,” Carol Heckman, an attorney for Prairie Band, said in a court hearing last week. “We’re happy to keep talking about it, but Treasury would have to sweeten the pie.”

The Treasury Department should be able to avoid many of those problems as it sets about distributing another $20 billion allocated to tribes under the Biden administration’s new $1.9-trillion COVID-19 relief package. The department said it would use tribally certified enrollment figures to pay out $12.35 billion and tribal employment data for $6.65 billion.

Another $1 billion will be divided equally among eligible tribal governments, the Treasury Department said. Alaska Native corporations, which own much of the Native land in Alaska under a 1971 settlement, aren’t eligible for any of the new $20 billion in funding. The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether the corporations will get a tranche of money from last year’s relief package.

The Navajo Nation is on track to receive the largest share of the enrollment-based funding. About half of its members live on the vast 27,000-square-mile reservation that extends into New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.

The tribe opened its hardship assistance program in November, up against an initial deadline to spend federal coronavirus funds by the end of the year. It required that applicants be enrolled as Navajo citizens. The response was huge, with the tribe paying out more than $322 million to more than 293,000 applicants, the tribal controller’s office said. Adults received up to $1,350 and children up to $450.

As for the new round of funding, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez questioned the fairness of awarding more money to tribes that enroll people with less than one-fourth blood quantum.

“Here on Navajo, we verify blood quantum, and that’s a requirement,” he told the Associated Press. “If they had that same requirement, one-quarter Cherokee, just imagine.”

The U.S. Census reflects higher numbers for Native Americans than tribes’ enrollment records because it allows people to self-identify as Native American and Alaska Native and report ties to multiple Indigenous groups across the Americas. Not all of those 5.2 million people are eligible to enroll in tribes. The 2010 count put the Cherokee Nation around 820,000 and Navajo at 332,000.

Cherokee Native Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the recent higher enrollment figure from the Navajo Nation government shows Natives are strong and an important force for economies, education and environment.

“It’s truly a positive any time our citizenship grows and thrives,” he said in a statement.