Three out of four Indigenous people killed by police die on or near reservations

PNAS, March 2026

Between 2013 and 2024, 203 American Indian and Alaska Native people were killed by police in the United States. Nearly three-quarters of those deaths, 73%, occurred on or within 10 miles of a reservation. Only about 40% of the AIAN population lives in those areas.

That disparity is the central finding of the first comprehensive national study of fatal police violence against Indigenous people, published in PNAS by researchers at Drexel University and the University of Washington. The numbers are stark, but the researchers argue that understanding them requires looking beyond statistics to the policies that created the conditions.

Mapping the geography of violence

The research team, led by Gabriel Schwartz of Drexel's Dornsife School of Public Health, combined data from the U.S. Census and the Mapping Police Violence database to plot the geographic locations of all recorded AIAN deaths from police encounters over more than a decade.

The concentration around reservations was striking. Even after accounting for community features that might influence the results, including population density and rurality, the disproportionate risk on and near tribal lands persisted. This is not simply a matter of more AIAN people living in these areas. The rate of fatal police violence is elevated beyond what population distribution alone would predict.

The study also identified what the authors call "border lands," the few miles of territory immediately surrounding reservations. These areas showed elevated death rates, possibly because higher concentrations of Indigenous people cross back and forth across reservation boundaries for work, shopping, and daily life, creating more frequent encounters with law enforcement.

Different police, different patterns

The type of law enforcement involved differed markedly between reservation and non-reservation settings. On tribal lands, federal, state, and tribal police were responsible for the majority of deaths. Away from reservations, municipal and county police were primarily responsible.

A troubling detail emerged about the nature of encounters: police provided no reason for stopping one in five of those killed on reservations. The documented rationale for police contact differed systematically between tribal lands and elsewhere, suggesting that the policing itself operates differently in and around reservations.

Co-author Theresa Rocha Beardall of the University of Washington placed the findings in historical context: Indigenous communities have documented and resisted police violence for generations, from the American Indian Movement's records in the 1960s to contemporary youth-led protests. The research, she noted, puts population-level data behind what Native peoples have long understood about their own safety.

Structural causes, not individual explanations

Schwartz connected the findings to structural factors: entrenched poverty, poorly funded schools, and chronically neglected health systems on reservations. He described the fatal interactions as "structurally instigated" rather than arising from individual circumstances.

This framing matters because it points toward systemic interventions rather than case-by-case reforms. The authors argue that colonial policies designed to confine, displace, and dispossess Indigenous peoples continue to shape who is killed by law enforcement. Reservation boundaries were not drawn to serve Indigenous communities but to contain them, and the policing infrastructure that developed around those boundaries reflects that origin.

What the data cannot show

The study relies on the Mapping Police Violence database, which compiles data from media reports, public records, and other sources. Undercounting is likely, particularly in rural areas and on tribal lands where media coverage of police encounters may be sparse. The 203 deaths recorded over the study period may underestimate the true number.

The analysis also cannot identify the specific causal mechanisms driving the geographic disparity. Whether the elevated risk near reservations stems from more frequent police contact, different policing practices, higher rates of armed encounters, or some combination of factors requires additional research.

The authors note that measuring the broader health impacts of fatal police violence on Indigenous communities, including psychological trauma and community-level effects, remains an important area for future study. So does evaluating proposed alternatives to conventional policing, such as Indigenous-led healing and wellness responses to crime and poverty.

This group of researchers has previously documented that Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders also experience among the highest rates of fatal police violence of any racial group in the United States, suggesting that the patterns documented here reflect broader dynamics affecting Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities.