The 2015 Native American $1 Coins will appear from the US Mint as the seventh annual strike in the series to contain a new unique reverse design.

2015 Native American $1 Coins, Obverse - Click to Enlarge

Congress authorized the strikes with the passage of the Native American $1 Coin Act which became Public Law 110-82. In the act, the new reverse designs were to contain "images celebrating the important contributions made by Indian tribes and individual Native Americans to the development of the United States and the history of the United States."

This new series was to serve as an extension to the Sacagawea $1 Coin being issued by the Mint since 2000, but contain these new annual reverse designs instead of the static image of a soaring eagle. Accordingly, the first strike in the new series was issued in 2009. A brief description of this coin, as well as the next few that followed it is shown below:

• 2009 – This strike contains a reverse design emblematic of the Three Sisters method of planting developed by the Native Americans over a millennia ago.
• 2010 – Showing a design emblematic of the Iroquois Confederacy, the reverse of this coin honors the Confederacy which was an alliance created by five Native American tribes in the early 1400’s.
• 2011 – Offering a design emblematic of the peace treaties between Native Americans and European settlers, this reverse shows the hands of Supreme Sachem Ousamequin Massasoit and Governor John Carver exchanging the peace pipe in 1621.

The US Mint will continue this series of strikes until 2016, at which time a new overall theme may be chosen for each subsequent annual strike. The decision for that theme will be made by the Treasury Department after consultation with the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, the Congressional Native American Caucus, the National Congress of American Indians and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee.

All of the Native American $1 Coins in this series contain the same obverse – a portrait of Sacagawea, the young Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition on their trip through the wilderness of the United States in the early 1800’s.

The reverse of the 2015 Native American $1 Coin will continue the series emblematic of the contributions made by Native Americans to the history and development of the United States.