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Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884), was a United States Supreme Court case.
John Elk, a Native American was born on an Indian reservation and subsequently moved to non-reservation U.S. territory, Omaha, Nebraska, where he renounced his former tribal allegiance and claimed citizenship by virtue of the Citizenship Clause. The case came about when Elk attempted to register to vote on April 5, 1880, and was denied by Charles Wilkins, the named defendant, who was registrar of voters of the Fifth Ward of the City of Omaha.
The question then was, whether an Indian, born a member of one of the Indian tribes within the United States, is, merely by reason of his or her birth within the United States, and of his afterwards voluntarily separating him or herself from his or her tribe and taking up his or her residence among white citizens, a citizen of the United States, within the meaning of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
Under the constitution of the United States, Congress had and exercised the power to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes, and the members thereof, whether within or without the boundaries of one of the states of the Union. The Indian tribes, being within the territorial limits of the United States, were not, strictly speaking, foreign states; but they were alien nations, distinct political communities, with whom the United States might and habitually did deal, as they thought fit, either through treaties made by the president and senate, or through acts of congress in the ordinary forms of legislation. The members of those tribes owed immediate allegiance to their several tribes, and were not part of the people of the United States.[1]
Although “Indian tribes, being within the territorial limits of the United States, were not, strictly speaking, foreign states,” “they were alien nations, distinct political communities,” with whom the United States dealt with through treaties and acts of Congress.[2] Thus, born a member of an Indian tribe, even on American soil, Elk could not meet the allegiance test of the jurisdictional phrase because he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe, a vassal or quasi-nation, and not to the United States. The Court held Elk was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States at birth. “The evident meaning of these last words is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.”[3]
The exclusion of native Americans from citizenship was eventually eliminated by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
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