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Native American
Also written: Native American, Native Americans, Native
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At a glance
Source-by-source
“For nouns: African American, Asian American, black, Hispanic, Latino, Native American, non-Hispanic white, white (do not use Caucasian). For adjectives: African-American man; Asian-American woman; Native-American youth.”
Casey 2013 lists Native American as the preferred noun form alongside other parallel racial/ethnic terms, and uses the hyphenated 'Native-American' as the adjectival form. The list is a quick-reference rule and does not engage with the broader Native American / American Indian / Indigenous debate. The hyphenated adjective convention is contemporaneous with AP style pre-2019.
“Refer to our organization as Native-led, rather than Native American-led.”
NGC explicitly prefers 'Native' or 'Native-led' over 'Native American' in collective and organizational descriptors — 'Native American' does not appear in NGC's capitalized identifier set, which names Indigenous, Native, and American Indian. The hierarchy of preferred terms is: Native people, Native, or Indigenous first; American Indian or Indian only when an individual self-identifies that way or when quoting.
“Native or Indigenous (Tribal when referring to governments, Tribal or Native when referring to communities within U.S. borders, Indigenous in international contexts). Whenever possible, use the specific name referring to the relevant Tribe or Band. … Be sure to capitalize 'Tribe' or 'Tribal' as well as 'Native' and 'Indigenous.'”
Sierra Club's preferred terms map a context-by-context rule: Tribal for governments, Tribal or Native for U.S. communities, Indigenous in international contexts — with the specific nation name always preferred over any umbrella term. Native American is treated as an acceptable collective term but not the default. Capitalization is consistent across Native, Tribal, Tribal, and Indigenous.
“Native Americans are the Indigenous people of North America. The term should only be used to describe groups of two or more people who come from different tribal affiliations. If you're interviewing individuals, or reporting on individual tribes, then identify them by their preferred tribal affiliation.”
GCJT adopts NAJA's precision rule explicitly: Native American is a multi-tribal collective term only. For individuals or single-tribe coverage, the specific tribal affiliation is the correct identifier; headlines should name tribes by their proper names. The guide credits NAJA as its source and recommends NAJA's Tribal Nations Media Guide for deeper reference.
“Native American and American Indian can be used interchangeably; however, the term is used only to describe groups of Native Americans — two or more individuals of different tribal affiliation. Journalists should always identify people by their preferred tribal affiliation.”
NAJA accepts Native American and American Indian as interchangeable for collective references, but imposes a precision rule: both terms apply only to multi-tribal groups. Coverage of an individual or a single tribe should always name the specific tribal affiliation. Self-identification overrides default usage. NAJA also flags 'Native' as primarily slang and advises caution outside descriptive uses like Native fashion or Native art.
“Native American and American Indian are both generally acceptable and can be used interchangeably, although individuals may have a preference. … In 2016, President Barack Obama signed legislation (HR 4238) that replaced the term American Indian with Native American in federal laws.”
DSG treats Native American and American Indian as interchangeable parallel terms with self-identification as primary. The entry adds two contextual anchors: 'Native' alone as an adjective is acceptable for stylistic descriptors but is otherwise slang; and federal law shifted from American Indian to Native American with HR 4238 in 2016. The interchangeability rule sources directly to NAJA.
“Whether to use the terms African American or Black, Hispanic American, Latinx or Latino, Native American or American Indian, and Pacific Islander or Asian American depends on a variety of conditions, including your intended audiences' geographic location, age, generation, and, sometimes, political orientation.”
RET frames Native American / American Indian as one of several term pairs whose right answer varies by audience — geographic location, age, generation, and political orientation. RET does not prescribe a default; the choice is positioned as part of a wider pattern of racial-ethnic terminology in active evolution.
Synthesis
The strongest consensus across the in-scope guides is not about which umbrella term to use — it’s that the specific tribal or nation name beats any umbrella term whenever the reference is to one nation or one person. NAJA, NGC, Sierra Club, GCJT, and DSG all push the same way: name the Diné, the Cheyenne, the Nooksack — not “the tribe,” not “Native Americans,” not “American Indians.” NAJA and DSG explicitly treat Native American and American Indian as interchangeable in genuinely collective references; NAJA, GCJT, and DSG add a sharper precision rule on top: both umbrella terms describe two-or-more people from different tribal affiliations. For a single person or a single tribe, the umbrella is technically inaccurate.
Where the guides diverge is on the default umbrella term when one is needed. Native-led NGC explicitly prefers “Native,” “Native people,” or “Indigenous” over “Native American” and reserves “American Indian” or “Indian” for direct self-identification or quotation. Sierra Club splits the difference contextually: “Tribal” for governments, “Tribal” or “Native” for U.S. communities, “Indigenous” in international contexts — with Native American treated as acceptable but not default. RET (2023) reframes the question entirely as audience-dependent: geographic location, age, generation, and political orientation shape which pair (Native American / American Indian) lands. The older Casey 2013 entry lists Native American as the preferred noun without engaging with the broader debate, which fits its date — the specificity-first framing settles into the corpus after this.
Chronology matters here. “Native American” gained traction in the 1960s as the preferred federal-era replacement for “American Indian” (NAJA, DSG). The 2016 HR 4238 legislation formally substituted “Native American” for “American Indian” in federal law (DSG). Post-2020 guides — NGC, Sierra Club, GCJT, DSG with its February 2021 update, RET — collectively shift further toward specificity-first, and toward “Native” or “Indigenous” as the preferred umbrella when an umbrella is needed at all. The post-2020 Native-led guides go further than non-Native-led guides on this point; that gap is itself a signal worth reading.
Audience notes
- Journalists. The NAJA precision rule is operational: use the specific tribal name unless the reference is genuinely multi-tribal. Headlines and lede paragraphs are where this slips most often — phrases like “Oklahoma Native American tribe” or “Native American group” are explicitly named by NAJA as accuracy failures, not just courtesy issues. If the story names one tribe, name that tribe.
- Communicators in or for Indigenous-led organizations. Follow the organization’s own naming. NGC’s preference for “Native” or “Native-led” over “Native American” reflects common usage in many Indigenous-led nonprofits and tribal media; non-Native communicators should mirror it when describing those organizations rather than imposing the more common umbrella.
- Coalition language and umbrella references. When an umbrella is genuinely needed (statistics, multi-nation policy contexts, demographic descriptors), Native American and American Indian remain in active parallel use. The legal frame favors Native American (HR 4238 in federal code); some communities still self-describe as American Indian. Self-identification overrides default usage whenever a community has stated a preference.
- Capitalization. Capitalize Native, Indigenous, Tribal, and Native American consistently as racial / ethnic / cultural / political identifiers across the corpus. The asymmetric “capitalize Black, lowercase white” debate that runs through Black and white does not have a direct analog here — these terms are uniformly capitalized in the post-2020 set.
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