Nations, Reservations, and Tribes, Oh My!

A Native American tribe is any existing or historical community of Indigenous people of the Americas. Under United States law, the term is only given to tribes federally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and does not include tribes only recognized at the state level. The benefit of being federally recognized includes eligibility for programs and services by the United States. In order to become a federally recognized tribe, a certification process must be completed. Tribes possess something called tribal sovereignty, allowing tribes to make laws different from surrounding areas. However, these laws are limited because the tribe must answer to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

A reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Over a quarter of the area of Arizona is reservation land. There are three hundred ten reservations in the United States. This means that some reservations are shared by multiple tribes and some tribes do not have reservations at all. Some parts of reservations were sold to non-American Indians and as a result many reservations are seriously fragmented.

A Nation is a larger group of people such as several tribes who are organized formally under one leader. For example, the Navajo nation is located in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It contains 300,048 members who all have Navajo bloodline, but are from many tribes. The Navajo Nation manages the Navajo Indian reservation as an independent governmental body. 

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