American Indian reservations comprise territories within the United States’ borders that serve as the homelands for American Indian tribes. According to the 1990 United States census, approximately one-quarter of the 1,959,000 American Indians currently live on the 314 federally recognized reservations. American Indian reservations are concentrated in the western part of the United States, although there are reservations, containing nearly 44 million acres, in all parts of the country. They incorporate not only vast cultural differences, but distinctive experiences of history and context, ranging from the elaborate casinos of Connecticut to the problems of unemployment (up to 70 percent), substandard housing, alcohol and poverty plaguing reservations like Pine Ridge, South Dakota, which President Clinton highlighted in his 1999 visit.

The relationship between American Indian reservations and the United States federal government was shaped by an 1831 United States Supreme Court decision, which agreed with the Cherokee Indian nation that the state of Georgia had no jurisdiction over it since American Indian tribes were “domestic dependent nations.” This definition has formed the basis for the current legal relationship between American Indian tribes and the federal government, and, in essence, a definition of American Indian tribes.

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia led to the creation of the legal concept of limited sovereignty. According to this concept, tribes are nations with rights to internal selfgovernment on federally recognized reservations. Yet sovereignty has also been limited.

For example, the United States adopted a policy of Indian Removal in the 1830s, moving American Indian tribes to distant areas until they could be assimilated into mainstream society. Eventually this policy placed all federally recognized Indian tribes on reservations.

While theoretically American Indian tribes are totally independent from any other government within the reservation boundaries, federal Indian policy also has emphasized assimilation and trusteeship over Indian interests and rights of later immigrants who have encroached on Indian lands by lease or illegal appropriation. The government has even intervened to divert growing wealth from cattle or oil to reservations (South Dakota, Oklahoma). An emphasis on the privatization of Indian lands and the disposal of “surplus,” for example, reduced tribal lands from 119,373,930 acres in 1887 to 40,236,442 acres in 1911. Current acreage has grown since a 1933 low of 29,431,685 acres.

Reservation locations were determined in a number of ways. Some tribes, like the Cherokees of Georgia, were forcibly moved to Indian Territory, which eventually became the state of Oklahoma. A few tribes, like the Menominee of Wisconsin, were able to escape removal, gaining a reservation on marginal land in their original territory. Indians like the Florida Seminoles or Southwestern Navaho and Pueblo tribes also fought long to hold and regain their lands. Settlement over land claims has been a major political issue in the 1980s and 1990s in Maine, the Midwest, the Southwest and the West.

Tribal self-government first gained national attention during the war of 1812 when many United States citizens feared American Indian tribes might conspire with foreign enemies to threaten national security. Hence, under the doctrine of limited sovereignty, no tribe may establish independent relationships with foreign governments. Eventually the doctrine of limited sovereignty was refined to mean that although state and local laws do not apply on reservations, federal laws can be enforced.

Foreign-policy issues also led to a debate about the citizenship status of individual American Indians. An American Indian could become a US citizen only by renouncing his tribal citizenship. During the First World War, many volunteered even though, as non-citizens, they were not subject to the draft. After the war, a political movement arose to grant US citizenship to American Indians who served in the war. Some tribes opposed the idea of US citizenship for individuals, viewing this as an attempt to destroy the right of tribal self-governance. The American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, a compromise bill, granted dual citizenship to American Indians, who became full citizens of the United States and the states where they resided while remaining citizens of their respective tribes.

The last component of the Supreme Court’s definition of American Indian tribes was domestic. This means that the reservations are the direct responsibility of the United States federal government and are held in trust for tribes. This ensures that neither an individual tribal member nor tribal governments can endanger the tribe’s land base by disposing of it. Even through their elected legislatures, tribes may not sell or lease reservation land without the federal government’s permission. This regulatory authority is invested in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a division of the Department of the Interior. However, the BIA has also been accused of mishandling Indian funds, while development has often led to disputes about ownership and rights in recreational lands and even subdivision projects which had been granted to tribes in early treaties. This has kindled animosity between reservations and their neighbors.

Gambling has also become an arena of competition and conflict. In the 1970s, gambling was regulated only at the state level. Because state laws do not apply on reservations, some tribes opened high-stakes bingo parlors and casinos on reservation land. Some states objected, arguing that the right to operate gambling establishments had become a privilege that some, but not all, of their citizens enjoyed. The states were also concerned that gambling affected the entire state without access to accrued revenues. In response, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 in an attempt to re-establish the balance between the needs of the state and those of the tribe. This law grants individual states some control over gambling on reservations, but prohibits state control over low-stakes traditional gambling between tribal members. This has also created divisions between those reservations able to make use of their metropolitan settings and those for whom underdevelopment has made reservations prisons, as depicted in Thunderheart (1992) and the documentary Incident at Oglala (1992).