This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Self Described Groupings holds five peoples united by governing themselves rather than filed under a name or scheme drawn by an outside classifier, the exact contrast Linguistic Groupings elsewhere in this atlas represents.
Amazigh Peoples is the clearest case the type exists for: the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of Egypt who call themselves Imazighen, the free people, after centuries filed under a name outsiders invented, since replaced in general use by their own. Anishinaabe Peoples, around the upper Great Lakes, describe their own alliance in their own terms as a council of three fires, and its Midewiwin medicine society sets its own conditions of membership. Haudenosaunee carries the pattern furthest, a confederacy of nations in New York State and southern Ontario governed under the Great Law of Peace, with named offices and a procedure for filling them, a constitution rather than a grouping anyone drew from outside.
Romani People and Kickapoo Peoples show a self described identity surviving dispersal and pressure. Romani People trace to India, their language's inherited vocabulary the clearest evidence of where they came from, and the Pentecostal movement among them since the mid twentieth century has been substantial alongside the majority religion most communities practise. Kickapoo Peoples were pushed through Illinois and Missouri under nineteenth century removal before settling in Kansas, Oklahoma and, after a further migration, Coahuila, Mexico; in the 1820s the reformer Kenekuk led a revitalization movement among the Kansas Kickapoo blending tradition with Catholic practice, credited by historians as a factor in that community retaining a land base that outlasted many neighboring nations' relocations.