Winters v. United States - Reservation Populations

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 808,163 people live on the largest Indian reservations--those with 10,000 people or more, which constitute a large portion of the nation's Native American population of 1,878,285. Just over half of the population of the largest reservations is Native American, a group which includes American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Thus out of more than 808,000 people, 437,431 (54 percent) are Native Americans. This figure, less than a quarter of the nation's total Native American population, suggests a large degree of movement to non-reservation locales.

The largest tribal area is the Navajo and Trust Lands territory in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, which holds 148,451 people, 96 percent of whom are Native American. The next-largest reservation, the Pine Ridge and Trust Lands of Nebraska and South Dakota, is much smaller, with just 12,215 people, of whom 91.5 percent are Native American. The reservation at East Cherokee, North Carolina, has 5,388 Native Americans. Other substantial reservations include Fort Apache (11,182 Native Americans), Gila River (9,825), and Papago (8,480), all in Arizona.