Indian Reservation Roads

Summary

THIS IS A DRAFT PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

There are a large number of roads, particularly in the western half of the United States, that are located on American Indian Reservations. There are about 310 such reservations as reviewed by the United States Department of the Interior's (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

This page provides some guidance on editing roads on these reservations as we seek to achieve these things in Waze editing:

• Common or standardized naming of roads
• Preventing routing through private roads

These roads may be a mix of US government, public, tribal, and some private roads. Because most tribal lands are considered independent government entities, coordination and uniformity are not always clear. Public roads provide access to and within Indian reservations, Indian trust land, restricted Indian land, and Alaska native villages. Approximately 29,000 miles are under the jurisdiction of BIA and tribes and another 73,000 miles are under State and local ownership.

The Indian Reservation Roads (IRR) Program addresses transportation needs of tribes by providing funds for planning, designing, construction, and maintenance activities for all public roads. The program is jointly administered by the Federal Highway Administration’s Federals Lands Highway Office and the BIA, Division of Transportation, in accordance with an interagency agreement. The authorizing legislation is the highway authorization act (currently the Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act – A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU)) and codified in Title 23 U.S.C. and 25 C.F.R. Part 170.

References