Native American civil rights are the civil rights of Native Americans in the United States. Native Americans are citizens of their respective Native nations as well as of the United States, and those nations are characterized under United States law as "domestic dependent nations", a special relationship that creates a tension between rights retained via tribal sovereignty and rights that individual Natives have as U.S. citizens. This status creates tension today but was far more extreme before Native people were uniformly granted U.S. citizenship in 1924. Assorted laws and policies of the United States government, some tracing to the pre-Revolutionary colonial period, denied basic human rights—particularly in the areas of cultural expression and travel—to indigenous people.

Although the many tribes and peoples indigenous to the United States have varying civil rights priorities, there are some rights that nearly all Native Americans are actively pursuing. These include the protection of voting rights and resistance to the cultural assimilation of Native Americans. Many tribes that live on Indian reservations are currently facing the destruction of surrounding environments and water sources, depressed economies, sexual violence against women, and substance abuse.

The Americas were populated thousands of years before Europeans arrived in North and South America. As a consequence of this long-term existence in the continent, Native American cultures, origins, religions, and languages became vastly diverse. Agriculture and written language had developed independently in the Americas before European contact, with the domestication and cultivation of beans, squash, maize had been particularly important.

Traditional religious practices among Natives range from individual prayers, rituals, and offerings to large intertribal ceremonies. Precontact religion was often closely tied to the land and the environment. These concerns include the omnipresent, invisible universal force, and "the three 'life crises' of birth, puberty, and death", spiritual beings, revelations, human intercessors into the spirit world, and ceremonies that renew communities.

In 1585, an American Indian tribe on the eastern coast of North America made contact with English explorer Richard Grenville, who set up a settlement called Roanoke Colony. The Native people proved hospitable and receptive to Grenville, however, when a small silver cup was stolen from him, Grenville and his men sacked and burned down an entire village in revenge. By 1586, the English settlement had been abandoned. Grenville returned to England with a Native American captive called Raleigh.

In 1607, decades after the interaction between the tribe's folk and Grenville, Captain John Smith established the colony of Jamestown in the middle of the Powhatan confederacy in what is now Virginia. Powhatan, the leader of his tribe, refrained from attacking the colonists as they established their settlement. Despite this, conflicts quickly broke out between the colonists and the Powhatan. Chief Powhatan wrote in a letter to John Smith:

I have seen two generations of my people die...I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country... Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that is it much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them and to lie cold in the wood, feed on acorns, roots, and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep... Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner.

In the winter of 1609 through 1610, the residents of Jamestown had little food or effective shelter as they experienced the Starving Time. In December 1609, John Ratcliffe, who succeeded Smith as president of the colony, and around 50 colonists went to meet with a group of Powhatan Indians to bargain for food. However, they were ambushed and only 16 survived. Ratcliffe was captured and later tortured to death. This marked the beginning of First Anglo-Powhatan War. The Powhatan tribe integrated and cared for some of the colonists who deserted Jamestown to live with them, as they were much more prepared for the harsh winter. In the summer of 1610, when the governor of Virginia Colony, Lord De la Warr requested that Powhatan return the runaways, the Powhatan chief showed no intention to bring them back. In response, the colonists raided and sacked the Paspahegh capital, which was a tributary tribe to the Powhatan, killing at least 15 Natives, and kidnapping the wife of the village chief and their children. The war lasted until 1614, however, conflict resumed in 1622, when the Powhatan massacred Jamestown in March 1622, killing around a third of the inhabitants, 347 colonists. This caused second Anglo-Powhatan War that would last until 1632.