States With the Most Indian Reservations and Tribal Areas

From Wall St 24/7, November 20, 2018

Most of us were taught as young children that the first Thanksgiving was a shared autumn harvest feast between Wampanoag Indians and early colonists in 1621. Often, however, the suffering of the Indigenous population shortly after the feast, and for the several centuries since, is brushed aside.

Today, Native American culture is concentrated in many of the nation’s tribal areas, including reservations, tribal statistical areas, home lands, and off-reservation trust lands. Not all federally recognized reservations are called reservations, though. Various states in the Western U.S. refer to such land areas as pueblos, rancherias, missions, villages, and communities.

While there are currently 326 federally recognized Indian reservations, there are nearly 700 tribal areas. For this reason, we didn’t limit our review to just reservations, but rather found the states with the most tribal areas.

For example, there is not one single federally recognized reservation in Hawaii, yet there are 75 tribal areas consisting of Native Hawaiians. In Alaska, there is only one federally recognized reservation, but the state has over 200 tribal areas, most of which are categorized as Alaska native village statistical areas (ANVSAs).

24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 2017 American Census Bureau to identify the states with the largest American Indian Reservations. We selected the five states with the most Indian reservations and tribal areas. In some cases, reservations go across state borders. This is the case with California, where there are 103 Indian reservations and tribal areas within state borders and four that are partially in the state. We considered these four in the total count of reservations in California….

3. Hawaii
> No. of tribal areas: 75
> Total pop. of tribal areas in state: 35,139
> Largest reservation: Nanakuli Hawaiian Home Land

There are 75 tribal areas in Hawaii, the third most of any state. Most of these areas are categorized as Hawaiian home lands. A home land in Hawaii is simply an area that is held in trust for Native Hawaiians. Congress enacted the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act in 1920. The act was created to improve the lives of native people in Hawaii. The home lands make up over 200,000 acres in the islands of Hawai‘i, Maui, Moloka‘i, Lāna‘i, O‘ahu, and Kaua‘i.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, none of the tribes in Hawaii is federally recognized, yet Native Hawaiians are recognized as indigenous people. Up until 2016, Native Hawaiians were the only federally recognized native people to be without a government-to-government relationship with the U.S. Two years ago, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced an administrative procedure that gave Native Hawaiians the ability to form a unified government….

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