Presidents rarely visit Indian Country. Trump’s planned Choctaw Nation rally will be the latest

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — President Donald Trump is holding a campaign rally on the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma on Thursday, putting him in the company of just a handful of U.S. presidents who have visited tribal nations while in office.

The rally is part of Trump’s recent campaign push through deep red states, where he has been stumping for Republican candidates and promoting his agenda ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Choctaw Nation is renting its venue for the rally but not sponsoring the event, it said.

“We hope his visit provides an opportunity to learn more about what we do as a sovereign nation for our members and for all people in southeast Oklahoma,” Choctaw Nation Principal Chief Gary Batton said in a statement.

Tribal delegations have been meeting with presidents in Washington since the Early Republic, but presidential visits to reservations have been few and far between. The purpose and tone of those visits has changed dramatically as the relationship between the U.S. and tribal nations has evolved.

Early visits promoted assimilation

What was likely the first visit to a reservation by a sitting U.S. president occurred Wind River Reservation and complimented the tribes’ “practice of industrial pursuits,” according to an account by Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan at the time.

While there, Arthur’s delegation pressed Shoshone Chief Washakie and Arapaho Chief Black Coal to consent to breaking up the reservation they shared into private parcels — a move aimed at dismantling tribal sovereignty and solving what Arthur termed the “Indian problem.” Both chiefs refused.

Other early presidential visits to tribal land similarly reflected an era when the U.S. tried to undermine tribal sovereignty and assimilate Native people into white society. Theodore Roosevelt’s 1903 trek to Havasupai land at the bottom of the Grand Canyon preceded the forced removal of that tribe to make way for a national park.

During his 1927 visit to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, President Calvin Coolidge promoted assimilationist boarding schools.

Recent presidential visits have focused on tribal sovereignty

President Bill Clinton made Pine Ridge a stop on his 1999 “New Markets Tour,” billing the visit as the first by a sitting president to tribal land since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1934 trip to the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Clinton acknowledged the federal government failed to meet its obligations to hundreds of tribal nations and called for investment in Pine Ridge’s economy.

“We have tried to have a more respectful, more proper relationship with the tribal governments of this country, to promote more genuine independence, but also to give more genuine support,” Clinton said.

In 2014, President Barack Obama met with Dakota youths and attended a powwow on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, speaking about expanding economic and educational opportunities in Indian Country and promoting tribes’ inherent right to govern themselves. The following year, Obama spent time in the Iñupiaq village of Kotzebue in Alaska, highlighting the impacts of climate change on Arctic communities.

President Joe Biden made a somber apology

In 2024, President Joe Biden traveled to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona to formally apologize for the federal government’s role in separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to attend boarding schools run by the U.S. and churches. A probe by Biden’s administration found that in addition to being stripped of their languages and cultures, many of those children experienced physical, emotional and sexual abuse. At least 970 died, and federal officials acknowledged the true number is likely higher.

Speaking alongside boarding school survivors and their descendants, Biden called that 150-year era a “blot on American history.”

“It’s a sin on our soul,” Biden said. “Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make.”

The visit marked a rare acknowledgement of the assimilationist policies that shaped some of the earliest presidential encounters with tribal nations.

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This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.