Virginia Indian

Native American tribes in Virginia are the indigenous tribes who currently live or have historically lived in what is now the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States.

All of the Commonwealth of Virginia used to be Virginia Indian territory. Indigenous peoples have occupied the region for at least 12,000 years. Their population has been estimated to have been about 50,000 at the time of European colonization. At contact, Virginian tribes spoke languages belonging to three major language families: roughly, Algonquian along the coast, Iroquoian in the southern Tidewater region, and Siouan above the fall line. About 30 Algonquian tribes were allied in the powerful Powhatan paramount chiefdom along the coast, which was estimated to include 15,000 people at the time of English colonization.

As of 2016, the Virginia has one federally recognized tribe, the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, and the Commonwealth of Virginia recognizes 11 tribes. Only two of the tribes, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi, retain reservation lands assigned by colonial treaties with the English colonists made in the 17th century. The state established an official recognition process by legislation.

Federal legislation is being considered that would provide recognition to six of Virginia's non-reservation tribes. Hearings established that they would meet the federal criteria for continuity and retention of identity as tribes, but they have been disadvantaged by lacking reservations and by state governmental actions that altered records of Indian identification and continuity. Some records were destroyed during the American Civil War and earlier conflicts. In the early decades of the 20th century, state officials arbitrarily changed vital records of birth and marriage while implementing the Racial Integrity Act of 1924; they removed identification as Indian and reclassified people as either white or non-white (i.e. colored), according to the state's "one-drop rule" (most members of Virginia tribes are multiracial, predominantly of European or African ancestry). This caused Indian individuals and families to lose documentation of their ethnic identities. In 2015 the Pamunkey were officially recognized as an Indian tribe by the federal government.

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