who are the Native Americans?

Answer 1

You really answered your own question, if you look at it logically, Native Americans refer to any humans who were living here on the American Continent before the landing of colonists from the Old World, as in Europe. They were the Natives, as opposed to the Invaders.

Answer 2

Native Americans were first called Indians because Columbus and his men thought they had sailed to India, instead they had landed in Northern America. The "Indians" are a part of the original family groups who were here in the United States before the explorers to the new world from the other side of the ocean arrived on the shores of The New World.

Answer 3

here ya' go, and the link


Native Americans in the United States
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This article is about the people indigenous to the United States. For broader uses of "Native American" and related terms, see Native Americans (disambiguation).
Native Americans
and Alaska Natives


Total population
One race
2.1 million
Combination with one or more other races
3.4 million

Regions with significant populations
United States
(predominantly the Midwest and West)
Languages
American English
Native American languages
Religions
Native American Church
Related ethnic groups
Native Hawaiians
Native Americans are the indigenous peoples within the territory that is now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska down to their descendants in modern times. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which are still enduring as political communities. There is some controversy surrounding the names used to describe these peoples: they are also known as American Indians, Indians, Amerindians, Amerinds, or Indigenous, Aboriginal or Original Americans. In Canada they are known as First Nations.

The U.S. states and several of the inhabited insular areas that are not part of the continental U.S. also contain indigenous groups. Some of these other indigenous peoples in the United States, including the Inuit, Yupik Eskimos, and Aleuts, are not always counted as Native Americans, although the US Census 2000 demographics listed "American Indian and Alaskan Native" collectively. Native Hawaiians (also known as Kanaka Māoli and Kanaka 'Oiwi) and various other Pacific Islander American peoples such as the Chamorros can also be considered Native American, but it is not common usually due to a different historical origin (i.e. Polynesian).

Answer 4

The term is used to refer to indigenous peoples who lived in the Americas prior to European and Asian settlement (American Indians).

It's misleading, though.

A native American, by the words, is most accurately defined as someone who was born in America (could be anywhere in the Americas), but thanks to the politically correct speech police, while a person born in England can call himself a native Englishman, and someone born in China can call himself native Chinese, Americans cannot call themselves native Americans without being questioned about their indigenous peoples' heritage, because the term Indian used for indigenous American people came from Columbus thinking he'd landed in India, not on a whole new continent.

The people of my family have been born in America back 3-400 years on both my mother's and father's sides, though there are negligible amounts, if any, of American Indian genetic contributors.
I am native American. But I am not Native American.

How long DOES a people have to be in a place to be considered native? By the politically correct definition, even the Native Americans aren't native..they're Asian.

Answer 5

The term Native American refers to those people who are descended from the people who lived in The Americas before Columbus arrived in 1492. They are broken into two groups, those called commonly 'Indians' who make up the vast majority of Native Americans and The Inuit (or Eskimo) peoples who inhabit the cicumpolar region of North America in Greenland, Canada's Far North and Alaska (though there are also Inuit in the Far Eastern part of Russia).

Answer 6

A better term would be the first Americans . There were no native Americans. The only native peoples is those first Africans.

The first Americans were an Asian people some 20,000 yrs ago

Answer 7

Indians

Answer 8

Anyone who belongs to the ancient tribes. This could include all from the Sioux to Mexicans and Blackfoot Indians.

Answer 9

The locals

Answer 10

the over 500 Tribes of Indigenous People who lived here on Turtle Island ( U.S.A, ) before the European " invasion " of the white man.