Reservations are the lands which were and are set aside by the American Federal government to be inhabited by various native tribes. However, often the land set aside for these tribes was undesirable and not their ancestral grounds. Modern natives living on rural parts of reservations often have to deal without basic infrastructural provisions such as sewage, water, telephone lines and cell phone service, garbage pick up, and more, further deepening the rut of poverty millions of Americans are born into. Those who were raised on reservations often have to choose between seeking a better life and leaving what little they have to live far from their community, culture, and homeland or staying with their people and continuing the cycle of pain and poverty.
But reservations are not simply pain and poverty, they are places full of life and culture, friends and family, tradition and preservation of that which was nearly destroyed. For some western tribes, the land on which their reservation stands is land that has been their tribe's stomping grounds for several hundred years and the connection that indigenous cultures often have with the land on which their ancestors stood and lived and fought is incredibly strong.
In addition to reservations there are also treaty lands, land agreed by international treaty between the US and a native nation to belong to the native nation for use in traditional living. These include hunting lands, gathering lands, sacred lands, necessary water sources, and more. Native tribes depend on these lands for survival.
