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The purpose of the American Indian and Alaska Native Land Area Representation (AIAN-LAR) Geographic Information System (GIS) dataset is to depict the external extent of federal Indian reservations and the external extent of associated land held in “trust” by the United States, “restricted fee” or “mixed ownership” status for federally recognized tribes and individual Indians. This dataset includes other land area types such as Public Domain Allotments, Dependent Indian Communities and Homesteads.
This GIS Dataset is prepared strictly for illustrative and reference purposes only and should not be used, and is not intended for legal, survey, engineering or navigation purposes.
No warranty is made by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for the use of the data for purposes not intended by the BIA. This GIS Dataset may contain errors. There is no impact on the legal status of the land areas depicted herein and no impact on land ownership. No legal inference can or should be made from the information in this GIS Dataset. The GIS Dataset is to be used solely for illustrative, reference and statistical purposes and may be used for government to government Tribal consultation.
Reservation boundary data is limited in authority to those areas where there has been settled Congressional definition or final judicial interpretation of the boundary. Absent settled Congressional definition or final judicial interpretation of a reservation boundary, the BIA recommends consultation with the appropriate Tribe and then the BIA to obtain interpretations of the reservation boundary.
The land areas and their representations are compilations defined by the official land title records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) which include treaties, statutes, Acts of Congress, agreements, executive orders, proclamations, deeds and other land title documents. The trust, restricted, and mixed ownership land area shown here, are suitable only for general spatial reference and do not represent the federal government’s position on the jurisdictional status of Indian country. Ownership and jurisdictional status is subject to change and must be verified with plat books, patents, and deeds in the appropriate federal and state offices.
Included in this dataset are the exterior extent of off reservation trust, restricted fee tracts and mixed tracts of land including Public Domain allotments, Dependent Indian Communities, Homesteads and government administered lands and those set aside for schools and dormitories. There are also land areas where there is more than one tribe having an interest in or authority over a tract of land but this information is not specified in the AIAN-LAR dataset. The dataset includes both surface and subsurface tracts of land (tribal and individually held) “off reservation” tracts and not simply off reservation “allotments” as land has in many cases been subsequently acquired in trust.
These data are public information and may be used by various organizations, agencies, units of government (i.e., Federal, state, county, and city), and other entities according to the restrictions on appropriate use. It is strongly recommended that these data be acquired directly from the BIA and not indirectly through some other source, which may have altered or integrated the data for another purpose for which they may not have been intended. Integrating land areas into another dataset and attempting to resolve boundary differences between other entities may produce inaccurate results. It is also strongly recommended that careful attention be paid to the content of the metadata file associated with these data. Users are cautioned that digital enlargement of these data to scales greater than those at which they were originally mapped can cause misinterpretation.
The BIA AIAN-LAR dataset’s spatial accuracy and attribute information are continuously being updated, improved and is used as the single authoritative land area boundary data for the BIA mission. These data are available through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Trust Services, Division of Land Titles and Records, Branch of Geospatial Support.