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Before the rise of the nation-state, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them.

What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It's about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it's something that people have wanted forever.

According to the now almost universally accepted theory, all the races of mankind had a common origin.

OUR history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us.

Each tribe has its characteristics, it is true.

On the Native American front, we have turned a new page in the 400-year history of the interface between the American settlers of this country and the nation's first Americans. That's included a new relationship where the sovereignty of tribes is in fact recognized.

If you go back in time you'll find tribes that were essentially only concerned with their own tribal members. If you were a member of another tribe, you could be killed with impunity.

We say that a group united and developed in the royal way, by forces of nature, is a race; a group united and developed by way of might, by human forces, is a state. This, then, is the difference between a race or nationality and a state.

Those objecting to the concept of race argue that the taxonomic definitions are arbitrary and subjective.

A race is what zoologists term a variety or subdivision of a species.