Reservation

Creative Commons License Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at Copyright and Use Information.

Refers to an American Indian reservation. An area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. There are approximately 310 Indian reservations in the U.S. although there are more than 550 federally recognized total tribes. This is because some tribes have more than one reservation, some share reservations, while others have none (often due to non-recognition by the U.S. government). Because of past land allotments (see Dawes Act) some reservations are fragmented, with pieces of tribal, individual, and privately held land, sometimes owned by non-Indians.