Tribal land base

574 federally recognized tribes hold ~326 reservations or equivalent land areas, so a meaningful minority are "landless," and the forms vary: reservations proper (Navajo largest at ~27,000 sq mi, plus Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River, Wind River, Crow, Blackfeet, Tohono O'odham, Yakama); nineteen New Mexico Pueblos holding Spanish land grants later confirmed by the US; 100+ California rancherias, a consequence of the state's treaties never being ratified; Alaska, where ANCSA in 1971 extinguished aboriginal title and converted claims to corporate land ownership by Native regional and village corporations, 40+ million acres held as corporate fee rather than reservation, with Metlakatla the sole exception; state reservations in New York, Maine and Virginia; and scattered trust parcels for tribes without a contiguous base. What the land does is jurisdictional: tribal criminal jurisdiction over most offenses by Native people (federal for major crimes, states largely excluded outside PL-280 states); tribal courts, codes, environmental standards that can exceed the state's, water rights, hunting and fishing regulation, zoning; immunity from state taxation of member income and tribal enterprises on-reservation, which is the engine behind tobacco, fuel and cannabis operations; gaming, which IGRA permits only on Indian lands, so no land means no gaming revenue, which for many tribes funds the entire government; and mineral and timber ownership. Limits matter too: Oliphant (1978) stripped tribes of criminal jurisdiction over non-Natives, with only narrow congressional carve-outs since, allotment-era checkerboarding makes jurisdiction complicated parcel by parcel, and trust land can't be sold or mortgaged without federal approval, protective but hard to borrow against.

Oklahoma is its own category. Post-McGirt (2020), the Five Tribes have judicially reaffirmed reservation boundaries covering much of eastern Oklahoma, the Chickasaw's running ~7,600 sq mi, Indian country for jurisdictional purposes even though most land inside it is privately owned by non-Natives. Other Oklahoma tribes have service areas and trust parcels instead: the Comanche, Kiowa and Apache share a ~4,800 sq mi jurisdictional service area plus scattered trust and restricted allotment land, real legal territory but a checkerboard rather than a bloc.