More bureaucratic selective identity. If me and many others believe we are a native american tribe, then why can't we be one, if I can declare my current gender on a minute by minute basis.
"Native" to the western hemisphere are a rather arbitrary standard based on method of arrival. Apparently you can only be native if your ancestors walked here but that may only be one method of arrival but other prehistoric arrivals may have come from Europe to the east coast.
Just the other day there was a story posted here about evidence of much earlier hominids 130,000 years ago that died out. Or we can fast forward to the Viking attempts to colonize. The simple fact is that it looks like the Americas were subjected to multiple waves of attempted colonization with the final and most successful beginning in the 1500s.
While the indians had been here a long time, they were a remnant of a much larger and more sophisticated civilization that collapsed. The indian tribes we first encountered didn't build the Cahokia pyramids or the animal mounds all across the midwest and south. (Not to mention the much grander stoneworks of central and south America.) Things on that scale require an actual dedicated workforce that must be provided for by means other than hunter gathering.
