How Race, Resentment, and Ideology Shape Attitudes About Native American Inherent Rights and Policy Issues

Abstract

What shapes attitudes about Native American policy issues and inherent rights? Race and ethnicity are important in shaping US public opinion, but Native Americans have been almost entirely excluded from this research. We use data from an original survey and focus groups collected from the Reclaiming Native Truth project to examine the factors that shape attitudes toward Native American inherent rights and broader race conscious policy issues. We find high levels of support overall, but several factors influence lower levels of support. Many people have very low factual knowledge about Native American issues and rely heavily on partisan shortcuts in forming opinions, especially for policy issues. Overall, attitudes about inherent rights are less consistent as many people have very little knowledge about them. People of color tend to be more supportive than white people and white people tend to rely more on partisan shortcuts. Specifically, conservative whites are the least supportive across most issues. We also explore the effect of Native American resentment, finding there are people who hold overtly hostile views of Native Americans and are unsupportive of their rights and policies. Our findings contribute to growing literature on Indigenous resentment, settler colonialism and public attitudes toward Indigenous peoples.