Researchers from Drexel University and the University of Washington have found that American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) people face a disproportionate risk of being killed by police in areas on or near reservations. Their peer-reviewed study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed 203 AIAN deaths at the hands of police between 2013 and 2024 and determined that roughly 73% of those fatalities occurred on or within 10 miles of reservation boundaries. Only about 40% of single-race AIAN individuals live in those same areas, a gap that points to a sharp geographic concentration of lethal force that existing policing debates have largely overlooked.
A Geographic Pattern That Defies Population Distribution
The central finding is striking in its simplicity. If fatal police encounters were distributed evenly relative to where AIAN people live, the share of deaths near reservations would roughly mirror the share of the population living there. Instead, the study documents a near-doubling: 73% of fatalities clustered in zones that hold 40% of the AIAN population, according to the PNAS analysis. That disparity suggests something specific about policing conditions in and around tribal lands, rather than a simple reflection of where Indigenous people reside.
The research team, led by Gabriel Schwartz, an assistant professor at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health, used federal boundary data to map each incident against reservation lines. By drawing a 10-mile buffer around reservation polygons, the researchers captured not only on-reservation deaths but also those occurring in the immediate surrounding areas where jurisdictional authority often shifts between tribal, state, county, and federal agencies. The study builds on prior work documenting racialized patterns of police violence and applies those tools to a population whose experiences are frequently obscured in national datasets.
How Boundary Data Shaped the Analysis
To define reservation boundaries with precision, the study relied on the U.S. Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line Shapefiles, a federal dataset that maps American Indian and Alaska Native areas and related trust lands. These shapefiles provide the legal boundaries of AIAN and Native Hawaiian jurisdictions and served as the spatial framework for determining whether a fatal police encounter fell inside, just outside, or far from a reservation.
This method matters because reservation borders are not always visible on the ground, and the law enforcement agency with authority can change within a few miles. A traffic stop five miles from a reservation boundary might involve a county sheriff, a state trooper, or a Bureau of Indian Affairs officer, depending on the jurisdiction. That patchwork of authority is central to understanding why fatal encounters concentrate near tribal lands rather than in urban centers where many AIAN people also live. By standardizing the boundaries and buffer distances, the researchers could compare risk across different regions without relying on inconsistent local maps.
Stops Without Stated Reasons
Beyond the geographic concentration, the study flagged a troubling pattern in how police initiated contact with the people they ultimately killed. On reservations specifically, officers provided no documented reason for stopping roughly one in five AIAN individuals who died. That figure raises questions about the quality of oversight and accountability in reservation-area policing, where reporting requirements can vary by agency type and where tribal police departments often operate with fewer resources than their municipal counterparts.
The absence of a stated reason for a stop does not automatically indicate wrongdoing, but it does signal gaps in documentation that make after-the-fact review difficult. When a fatal encounter lacks even a basic record of why the initial contact occurred, families, tribal governments, and oversight bodies have little to work with in seeking accountability. This documentation gap is not unique to tribal areas, but its prevalence in a zone already marked by elevated fatal violence rates compounds the problem and may hinder efforts to identify patterns of misconduct or systemic bias.
Jurisdictional Fragmentation as a Risk Factor
Most national conversations about police violence focus on urban departments and the racial disparities between Black and white Americans. AIAN communities have received far less attention, in part because the numbers are smaller in absolute terms and in part because the jurisdictional complexity of Indian Country makes data collection harder. A 2017 analysis from the Urban Institute noted that Native American fatalities in police encounters often went unexamined because cases were mishandled by non-tribal forces or fell through gaps between agencies.
The new PNAS findings give that earlier observation quantitative weight. The 10-mile buffer zone the researchers used is not arbitrary; it captures the real-world friction zone where tribal jurisdiction ends and state or county authority begins, often without clear protocols for coordination. Officers from different agencies may apply different use-of-force standards, carry different training backgrounds, and answer to different oversight structures. When a crisis unfolds in that transitional space, the risk of a fatal outcome appears to rise, particularly when communication between agencies is limited or when officers lack experience working with tribal communities.
Limits of the Available Data
The study draws on secondary databases of police killings rather than official agency records, a limitation the researchers acknowledge. Federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs do not publish detailed incident-level data on fatal police encounters in a format that allows independent analysis. Earlier research in PLOS ONE has documented broader disparities in AIAN encounters with law enforcement, including elevated risks compared with white Americans, but granular breakdowns by agency type for off-reservation incidents within the 10-mile buffer remain incomplete.
The new work also relies on public reporting and crowdsourced information to identify individual cases, which can introduce undercounting if deaths are not covered by local media or advocacy groups. Underreporting is a particular concern in rural and reservation-adjacent communities, where news outlets may be sparse and families may be reluctant to speak publicly. As a result, the true number of AIAN deaths in police encounters near reservations could be higher than the 203 cases the researchers were able to verify.
Missing Voices and Sovereign Perspectives
The analysis is quantitative and external: it does not include direct input from tribal leaders, AIAN advocacy organizations, or families of those killed. That absence matters because tribal nations exercise sovereign authority over their lands and maintain their own public safety priorities, which may not align neatly with state or federal frameworks. Incorporating tribal perspectives and internal law enforcement data could clarify how local policies, resource constraints, and community expectations shape the conditions that lead to fatal encounters.
Schwartz and his colleagues are based at institutions that have invested in public health and equity-focused research, including Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health, which has emphasized structural drivers of violence and injury. A separate summary of the findings notes that the team sees the work as a starting point for deeper collaborations with tribal nations rather than a final word on the subject. Future projects could involve data-sharing agreements with tribal police departments, community-based surveys of encounters that do not result in death, and qualitative interviews that illuminate how residents perceive the risks posed by different law enforcement agencies.
Implications for Policy and Public Health
The concentration of AIAN deaths near reservations has implications that extend beyond criminal justice. Public health researchers increasingly treat police violence as a population-level risk factor, akin to other forms of injury and trauma. The Drexel-led team’s focus on geography underscores that risk is not only about who people are, but also where they live and which institutions govern those spaces. In communities where jurisdictional lines are layered and contested, residents may experience heightened uncertainty about which officers will respond in a crisis and what rules will guide their actions.
Policy responses could take several forms. Clarifying cross-deputization agreements and use-of-force standards in border zones may reduce confusion during fast-moving incidents. Improving data-sharing between tribal, state, and federal agencies could help identify patterns of harm more quickly. Expanding training that is specific to AIAN histories, cultures, and treaty rights might also reduce the likelihood that routine encounters escalate into violence. While the study does not test these interventions directly, its mapping of where deaths occur provides a roadmap for where reforms might have the greatest impact.
A Call for Closer Scrutiny
For now, the researchers argue that the sheer concentration of fatal encounters near reservations justifies closer scrutiny from policymakers, journalists, and oversight bodies. The findings suggest that the standard framing of police violence as an urban issue centered on large city departments misses a crucial dimension of risk for Indigenous communities. As Schwartz and his colleagues at Drexel and the University of Washington continue their work, they emphasize that improved data and stronger partnerships with tribal nations will be essential to understanding and ultimately reducing the harms documented in this study.
In the meantime, the numbers themselves tell a stark story: AIAN people are far more likely to die in police encounters in and around the very lands that were set aside as homelands for their nations. That pattern, the researchers contend, should prompt a rethinking of how the United States measures, reports, and responds to police violence in Indian Country and its borderlands, and should elevate Indigenous experiences from the margins to the center of national debates over safety, sovereignty, and justice.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
