A person who is born and raised in a community will obviously share the cultural identity of that community. Many Indian societies also had procedures for inducting outsiders into the community. These procedures usually involved, at least in part, the outsider adopting the culture of the community. Today, there is much debate among the members of some Indian tribes and communities about how they define their members. To sum up, Indians are the descendants of the original people of North and South America.
Indian tribes decide who their members are.
Not belonging to a tribe or having non-Indian ancestry does not necessarily mean a person is not an Indian. In our opinion, neither of these terms is any more correct than the other. You'll notice that we use both interchangeably. The prevailing opinion among non-Indians seems to be that this is the most politically correct term. In our opinion this makes both terms politically incorrect.