1.
Ojibwe
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The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, or Chippewa are an Anishinaabeg group of indigenous peoples in North America. They live in Canada and the United States and are one of the largest Indigenous ethnic groups north of the Rio Grande, in Canada, they are the second-largest First Nations population, surpassed only by the Cree. In the United States, they have the fourth-largest population among Native American tribes, surpassed only by the Navajo, Cherokee, the Ojibwe people traditionally have spoken the Ojibwe language, a branch of the Algonquian language family. They are part of the Council of Three Fires and the Anishinaabeg, which include the Algonquin, Nipissing, Oji-Cree, Odawa, the majority of the Ojibwe people live in Canada. There are 77,940 mainline Ojibwe,76,760 Saulteaux and 8,770 Mississaugas, organized in 125 bands, as of 2010, Ojibwe in the US census population is 170,742. Ojibwe are known for their bark canoes, birch bark scrolls, mining and trade in copper. Their Midewiwin Society is well respected as the keeper of detailed and complex scrolls of events, oral history, songs, maps, memories, stories, geometry, and mathematics. The Ojibwe people set the agenda with European-Canadian leaders by signing detailed treaties before they allowed many European settlers into their western areas, in 1745, they adopted guns from the British to defeat the Dakota people in the Lake Superior area, pushing them to the south and west. The exonym for this Anishinaabeg group is Ojibwe and this name is commonly anglicized as Ojibwa or Ojibway. The name Chippewa is an alternative anglicization, although many variations exist in literature, Chippewa is more common in the United States, and Ojibway predominates in Canada, but both terms are used in each country. In many Ojibwe communities throughout Canada and the U. S. since the late 20th century, some 19th-century sources say this name described a method of ritual torture that the Ojibwe applied to enemies. Because many Ojibwe were formerly located around the outlet of Lake Superior, marie for its rapids, the early Canadian settlers referred to the Ojibwe as Saulteurs. Ojibwe who subsequently moved to the provinces of Canada have retained the name Saulteaux. This is disputed since some scholars believe that only the name migrated west, Ojibwe who were originally located along the Mississagi River and made their way to southern Ontario are known as the Mississaugas. The Ojibwe language is known as Anishinaabemowin or Ojibwemowin, and is widely spoken. Today, most of the languages fluent speakers are elders, since the early 21st century, there is a growing movement to revitalize the language, and restore its strength as a central part of Ojibwe culture. The language belongs to the Algonquian linguistic group, and is descended from Proto-Algonquian and its sister languages include Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree, Fox, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Shawnee among the northern Plains tribes. Anishinaabemowin is frequently referred to as a Central Algonquian language, however, Ojibwemowin is the fourth-most spoken Native language in North America after Navajo, Cree, and Inuktitut
2.
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
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The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas and their descendants. The term Amerindian is used in Quebec, the Guianas, Indigenous peoples of the United States are commonly known as Native Americans or American Indians, and Alaska Natives. Application of the term Indian originated with Christopher Columbus, who, in his search for Asia, eventually, the Americas came to be known as the West Indies, a name still used to refer to the islands of the Caribbean Sea. This led to the blanket term Indies and Indians for the indigenous inhabitants, although some indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers—and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are—many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. The impact of their agricultural endowment to the world is a testament to their time, although some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions the indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, chiefdoms, states, and empires. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by peoples, some countries have sizable populations, especially Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Greenland, Guatemala, Mexico. At least a different indigenous languages are spoken in the Americas. Some, such as the Quechuan languages, Aymara, Guaraní, Mayan languages, many also maintain aspects of indigenous cultural practices to varying degrees, including religion, social organization, and subsistence practices. Like most cultures, over time, cultures specific to many indigenous peoples have evolved to incorporate traditional aspects, some indigenous peoples still live in relative isolation from Western culture and a few are still counted as uncontacted peoples. The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes traveled, are the subject of ongoing research. According to archaeological and genetic evidence, North and South America were the last continents in the world with human habitation. During the Wisconsin glaciation, 50–17,000 years ago, falling sea levels allowed people to move across the bridge of Beringia that joined Siberia to northwest North America. Alaska was a glacial refugium because it had low snowfall, allowing a small population to exist, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered most of North America, blocking nomadic inhabitants and confining them to Alaska for thousands of years. Indigenous genetic studies suggest that the first inhabitants of the Americas share a single population, one that developed in isolation. The isolation of these peoples in Beringia might have lasted 10–20,000 years, around 16,500 years ago, the glaciers began melting, allowing people to move south and east into Canada and beyond. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice Sheets. Another route proposed involves migration - either on foot or using primitive boats - along the Pacific Northwest coast to the south, archeological evidence of the latter would have been covered by the sea level rise of more than 120 meters since the last ice age
3.
Plains Indians
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Plains Indians are usually divided into two broad classifications which overlap to some degree. The first group became a nomadic horse culture during the 18th and 19th centuries, following the vast herds of buffalo. These include the Blackfoot, Arapaho, Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Lakota, Lipan, Plains Apache, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwe, Sarsi, Nakoda, and Tonkawa. The second group of Plains Indians were semi-sedentary, and, in addition to hunting buffalo, they lived in villages, raised crops, and actively traded with other tribes. These include the Arikara, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kaw, Kitsai, Mandan, Missouria, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Pawnee, Ponca, Quapaw, Wichita, and the Santee Dakota, Yanktonai and Yankton Dakota. Both groups included people indigenous to the region as well as those who were pushed west by population pressure linked to the expansion of white culture. Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains are often separated into Northern and Southern Plains tribes, the tribes followed the seasonal grazing and migration of buffalo. The Plains Indians lived in teepees because they were disassembled and allowed the nomadic life of following game. When horses were obtained, the Plains tribes rapidly integrated them into their daily lives, people in the southwest began to acquire horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico. As horse culture moved northward, the Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted nomadic lifestyle and this occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback. The Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was the first European to describe the Plains Indian culture, while searching for a reputedly wealthy land called Quivira in 1541, Coronado came across the Querechos in the Texas panhandle. The Querechos were the later called Apache. According to the Spaniards, the Querechos lived in tents made of the skins of the cows. They empty a large gut and fill it with blood, Coronado described many common features of Plains Indians culture, skin tepees, travois pulled by dogs, Plains Indian Sign Language, and staple foods such as jerky and pemmican. The Plains Indians found by Coronado had not yet obtained horses, by the 19th century, the typical year of the Lakota and other northern nomads was a communal buffalo hunt as early in spring as their horses had recovered from the rigors of the winter. In June and July the scattered bands of the gathered together into large encampments. These gatherings afforded leaders to meet to make decisions, plan movements, arbitrate disputes. In the fall, people would split up into smaller bands to facilitate hunting to procure meat for the long winter, between the fall hunt and the onset of winter was a time when Lakota warriors could undertake raiding and warfare
4.
Pan-Indianism
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Pan-Indianism is a philosophy and movement promoting unity among different American Indian groups in the Americas regardless of tribal or local affiliations. Some academics use the term pan-Amerindianism as a form of disambiguation from other territories called Indian, the movement is largely associated with Native Americans in the Continental United States, but has spread to other indigenous groups as well. A parallel growth of the concept has occurred in Alaska and Canada, there, however, other indigenous peoples, such as the Inuit and the Métis are often included in a wider rubric, sometimes called pan-Aboriginal or some variation thereof. Pan-Indian organizations seek to pool the resources of indigenous groups in order to protect the interests of native peoples across the world, also in 1912, the Alaskan Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood came together, centering on their shared interest of the protection of Native resources. In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, which reversed assimilation and this was an important step for Native American affairs. The Pan-Indian movement grouped all Indians into one dominant culture, rather than recognizing individual tribal culture, before there were successful national and continental organizations, there were several regional bodies which united multiple nations within the context of post-settlement politics. The Grand General Indian Council of Ontario was organized with missionary assistance in the 1870s, likewise, the Allied Tribes of British Columbia was created in 1915. In 1911, the first national Indian political organization in the US was created and this organization pursued such things as better Indian educational programs and improved living conditions. This was paralleled by the establishment of League of Indians of Canada in 1919, the Society of American Indians was the most influential of the early pan-Indian organizations. It played a role in advocating Indian citizenship, which was finally granted by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Before World War II and throughout the 1940s and 50s, native activism was less developed, many leaders made a genuine effort to work with the American government. In 1922, as a gesture, Deskaheh, a Cayuga chief, traveled to the League of Nations in Geneva in hopes of obtaining recognition of his tribes sovereignty. In 1939, the Tonowanda Band of the Seneca tribe issued a Declaration of Independence to the state of New York and it was ignored and natives who broke state law were arrested. In other cases, American Indian tribes struggled to maintain their sovereignty over land that had been granted to them by treaties with the federal government. Unrelated Native American groups, and Americans in general, began to notice, for one week in June 1961,420 American Indians from 67 tribes convened for the American Indian Chicago Conference held at the University of Chicago. After exchanging opinions that many aspects of Indian affairs, the Declaration of Indian Purpose was drafted. In 1989, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, also known as the International Labour Organizations Convention No, to date, this has been the only formally binding international convention that specifically applies to indigenous peoples. The conference recognized the goal of native groups to maintain their position as independent of national governments
5.
Cultural appropriation
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Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. Cultural appropriation is sometimes portrayed as harmful, framed as cultural misappropriation, often unavoidable when multiple cultures come together, cultural appropriation can include using other cultures traditions, fashion, symbols, language, and cultural songs without permission. Cultural elements which may have meaning to the original culture may be reduced to exotic fashion by those from the dominant culture. Conversely, cultural appropriation or borrowing can be viewed as inevitable and this view distinguishes outright theft of cultural artifacts or exotic stereotyping from more benign borrowing or appreciation. Trans-cultural diffusion has occurred throughout history and is subject of study by a variety of disciplines, including folkloristics, cultural anthropology. Cultural appropriation can involve the use of ideas, symbols, artifacts, anthropologists study the various processes of cultural borrowing, appropriation, and cultural exchange, as part of cultural evolution and contact between different cultures. As a concept that is controversial in its applications, the propriety of cultural appropriation has been the subject of much debate, opponents view the issues of colonialism, context, and the difference between appropriation and mutual exchange as central to analyzing cultural appropriation. On the contrary, cultures as they exist now are themselves the products of previous instances of cultural appropriation, appropriation can be wrongful under this view, but the wrongfulness is determined by the intent of the appropriator and not the perceived power dynamics between the cultures. Proponents of cultural appropriation view it as often benign or mutually beneficial, citing mutation, product diversity, technological diffusion, and cultural empathy as among its benefits. Fusion between cultures has produced such foods as American Chinese cuisine, modern Japanese sushi, and bánh mì, each of which is sometimes argued to reflect part of its respective cultures identity. Cultural and racial theorist George Lipsitz used the term strategic anti-essentialism to refer to the use of a cultural form, outside of your own. Strategic anti-essentialism can be seen in both minority cultures and majority cultures, and is not confined only to the use of the other, in Australia, Aboriginal artists have discussed an authenticity brand to ensure consumers are aware of artworks claiming false Aboriginal significance. The movement for such a measure gained momentum after the 1999 conviction of John OLoughlin for the fraudulent sale of works described as Aboriginal but painted by non-indigenous artists. Some scholars of the Ottoman Empire and ancient Egypt argue that Ottoman and Egyptian architectural traditions have long been claimed and praised as Persian or Arab. In chapter four of his book Playing Indian, Native American historian Philip J, director of the CPO Leigh Kuwanwisiwma saw video of the performances online, and said the performers were mimicking our dances, but they were insensitive, as far as Im concerned. In the 1950s, the councilman of the Zuni Pueblo saw a performance and said, We know your hearts are good. In Zuni culture, religious object and practices are only for those that have earned the right to participate, following techniques, there are many other examples of groups associated with scout troops attempting to duplicate Native American dance with varying degrees of authenticity. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of negative stereotypes such as the happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation or the dandified coon, in 1848, blackface minstrel shows were popular for general audiences
6.
Hupa
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Hupa are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group in northwestern California. Their endonym is Natinixwe, also spelled Natinook-wa, meaning People of the Place Where the Trails Return, the majority of the tribe is enrolled in the Federally recognized Hoopa Valley Tribe. The Hupa people migrated from the north into northern California around 1000 CE and settled in Hoopa Valley and their heritage language is Hupa, which is a member of the Athabaskan language family. Their land stretched from the South Fork of the Trinity River to Hoopa Valley, Hupa people had limited contact with non-native peoples until the 1849 Gold Rush brought an influx of miners onto their lands. In 1864, the United States government signed a treaty that recognized the Hupa tribes sovereignty to their land, the United States called the reservation the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, where the Hupa now reside, one of very few California tribes not forced from their homeland. The reservation is next to the territory of the Yurok at the connection of the Klamath, the reservation has a land area of 141.087 square miles. Hupa people have traditionally excelled at basketry, elk horn carving, the Hupa use the acorns of Notholithocarpus densiflorus to make meal, from which they would make mush, bread, biscuits, pancakes, and cakes. They also roast the acorns and eat them and they also use the dyed fronds of Woodwardia radicans for basketry. They also use Xerophyllum tenax to create a pattern in baskets. The Hupa, like many tribes in the area, fish for salmon in the Klamath, one of the methods they once used to capture fish was the fish weir, which tribal members would maintain. The Hupa share many of their practices with the neighboring Yurok Tribe. Hupa tribal fishers and their families rely on the Spring and Fall Chinook Salmon runs, acorns, once abundant, were a main staple until they grew scarce. Because the Hupa were not located as close to the sea as their neighboring Yurok Tribe, they traded supplies with them, such as salt in exchange for baskets, or acorns for canoes. On February 8,2017 the federal court judge ruled in favor of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. The judge agreed to plans designed by the Tribes scientists to reduce outbreaks of a fish disease that had infected 90% of juvenile salmon in 2014 and 2015. Estimates for the populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber thought that the 1770 population of the Hupa was 1,000, Kroeber estimated the population of the Hupa in 1910 as 500. In 1943, Sherburne F. Cook proposed a population of 1,000 for the Hupa and 600 for the Chilula
7.
Chumash people
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They also occupied three of the Channel Islands, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel, the smaller island of Anacapa was likely inhabited seasonally due to the lack of a consistent water source. Modern place names with Chumash origins include Cayucos, Malibu, Nipomo, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Port Hueneme, Piru, Lake Castaic, Saticoy, Simi Valley and Somis. Archaeological research demonstrates that the Chumash have deep roots in the Santa Barbara Channel area, the Chumash resided between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the California coasts where rivers and tributaries abound. Inside and around the modern-day Santa Barbara region, the Chumash lived with a bounty of resources, the tribe lived in an area of three environments, the interior, the coast, and the Northern Channel Islands. These provided an array of materials to support the Chumash lifestyle. The interior is composed of the land outside the coast and spanning the plains, rivers. The coast covers the cliffs and land close to the ocean and, in reference to resources, the Northern Channel Islands lie off the coast of the Chumash territory. All of the California coastal-interior has a Mediterranean climate due to the ocean winds. The mild temperatures, save for winter, made gathering easy, during the cold months, what villagers gathered and traded during the seasons changed depending on where they resided. With coasts populated by masses of species of fish and land covered by trees and animals. Abundant resources and a winter rarely harsh enough to cause concern meant the tribe lived a lifestyle in addition to a subsistence existence. Villages in the three aforementioned areas contained remains of sea mammals, indicating that trade networks existed for moving materials throughout the Chumash territory, such connections spread out the land’s wealth, allowing the Chumash to live comfortably without agriculture. The closer a village was to the ocean, the greater its reliance on maritime resources, due to advanced canoe designs, coastal and island people could procure fish and aquatic mammals from farther out. Shellfish were a source of nutrition, relatively easy to find. Many of the favored varieties grew in tidal zones, shellfish grew in abundance during winter to early spring, their proximity to shore made collection easier. Some of the species included mussels, abalone, and a wide array of clams. Haliotis rufescens was harvested this species along the Central California coast in the pre-contact era, the Chumash and other California Indians also used red abalone shells to make a variety of fishhooks, beads, ornaments, and other artifacts. Any village could acquire fish, but the coastal and island communities specialized in catching not just smaller fish and this feat, difficult even for today’s technology, was made possible by the tomol plank canoe
8.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
9.
Mesoamerica
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It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas along with Norte Chico in present-day northern coastal Peru. As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures, while Mesoamerican civilization did know of the wheel and basic metallurgy, neither of these technologies became culturally important. Among the earliest complex civilizations was the Olmec culture, which inhabited the Gulf coast of Mexico and extended inland, frequent contact and cultural interchange between the early Olmec and other cultures in Chiapas, Guatemala and Oaxaca laid the basis for the Mesoamerican cultural area. All this was facilitated by considerable regional communications in ancient Mesoamerica and this Formative period saw the spread of distinct religious and symbolic traditions, as well as artistic and architectural complexes. In the subsequent Preclassic period, complex urban polities began to develop among the Maya, with the rise of such as El Mirador, Calakmul and Tikal. Mesoamerica is one of three regions of the world where writing is known to have independently developed. Upon the collapse of Teotihuacán around AD600, competition between several important political centers in central Mexico, such as Xochicalco and Cholula, ensued. During the early period, Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec. Towards the end of the period, the Aztecs of Central Mexico built a tributary empire covering most of central Mesoamerica. The distinct Mesoamerican cultural tradition ended with the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, over the next centuries, Mesoamerican indigenous cultures were gradually subjected to Spanish colonial rule. The exact geographic extent of Mesoamerica has varied through time, as the civilization extended North and South from its heartland in southern Mexico, Mesoamerica is recognized as a near-prototypical cultural area, and the term is now fully integrated in the standard terminology of pre-Columbian anthropological studies. Conversely, the sister terms Aridoamerica and Oasisamerica, which refer to northern Mexico, 10° and 22° northern latitude, Mesoamerica possesses a complex combination of ecological systems, topographic zones, and environmental contexts. A main distinction groups these different niches into two categories, the lowlands and the altiplanos, or highlands. In the low-lying regions, sub-tropical and tropical climates are most common, as is true for most of the coastline along the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The highlands show much more diversity, ranging from dry tropical to cold mountainous climates. The rainfall varies from the dry Oaxaca and north Yucatan to the humid southern Pacific, several distinct sub-regions within Mesoamerica are defined by a convergence of geographic and cultural attributes. These sub-regions are more conceptual than culturally meaningful, and the demarcation of their limits is not rigid, the Maya area, for example, can be divided into two general groups, the lowlands and highlands. The lowlands are further divided into the southern and northern Maya lowlands, the southern Maya lowlands are generally regarded as encompassing northern Guatemala, southern Campeche and Quintana Roo in Mexico, and Belize
10.
Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
