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Native Americans

Cultural  
  1. The descendants of the original inhabitants of North America and South America before the arrival of white settlers from Europe, also called Indians or American Indians. The term Native American is sometimes preferred over Indian because the latter is a misnomer that originated with Columbus, who mistook the inhabitants of America for the people of India. Both terms, however, are accepted.


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In recent years, Native American activism has taken the form of calls for the protection of their tribal or ancestral shrines and artifacts.

Example Sentences

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But he devotes considerable attention to how Native Americans manipulated and frequently triumphed over colonists.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

There were three quarters of a million people of African descent, thousands of Native Americans, people from every European nation and quite a few from elsewhere.

From Salon ● Aug. 30, 2026

Native Americans more or less cohabited peaceably with the grizzlies, each usually giving the other wide berth, at a mid-19th century ratio of about 10,000 California grizzlies to 130,000 native Americans.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026

While most Native Americans could explain where the ginger gene might have come from, there was one exception - a Cherokee girl called Lakia - whose family knew of no European ancestry.

From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026

Why, then, didn’t Native Americans domesticate those apparently useful apples and grapes themselves?

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

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