Presidents rarely visit Indian Country. Trump’s rally on the Choctaw Nation is the latest

DURANT, Okla. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s rally Thursday on the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma put him in the company of just a handful of U.S. presidents who have visited tribal reservations while in office.

The rally was 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.

While historically significant, the visit to Choctaw appeared to be incidental. Zach Kraft, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said the city of Durant was chosen because it’s close to Texas, a state that’s an important part of Trump’s political itinerary.

“President Trump wants to make sure Oklahoma stays red. And he also wants to make sure that Texas stays red,” Kraft told KOSU.

Trump gave a shoutout to Choctaw Principal Chief Gary Batton, who was wearing a beaded medallion around his neck and stood next to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who is Cherokee. Trump highlighted what he said is the lowest poverty rate in decades for all Americans, including tribal members — a statement backed up by a recent Census Bureau report. But experts say another, more comprehensive measure of poverty is not at an all-time low.

The Choctaw Nation rented out its events center for the rally but did not sponsor it, the tribe said.

Crystal Michels, a Choctaw citizen who wore a MAGA hat and waited in the rain for the rally, told KOSU she saw Trump’s visit as an opportunity for tribal leaders to ensure Choctaw is considered and the tribe’s sovereignty is upheld.

Mona Adkisson, who is Seminole, told KOSU she’s been following Trump’s agenda closely and wanted to hear him reaffirm conservative, Christian values.

“We’re tired of electing people that don’t do what they say they’re going to do, and he’s one that does,” Adkisson said.

Trump said he met with the tribe ahead of his speech. A spokesperson for the tribe said late Thursday that Batton did not yet have a response to the visit.

It’s not the first time Trump has been to a tribal nation. In the homestretch of the 2020 election campaign, Trump visited the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and endorsed its push to secure federal recognition, which he signed into law in 2025.

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 have 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 by happenstance. While traveling to Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1883, President Chester A. Arthur met with Shoshone and Arapaho leaders on the 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 acknowledgment of the assimilationist policies that shaped some of the earliest presidential encounters with tribal nations.

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Peters with The Associated Press reported from Cedar Crest, New Mexico. AP reporter Wufei Yu in Phoenix contributed. ___

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