The land, by the nations who belong to it
Every coloured shape is a homeland. Gold shapes are tribal lands held today. Click anything on the map, or start with one of these.
Reztoration shows the United States the way it was first known: as the homelands of hundreds of nations. Coloured shapes are traditional territories. Raised gold shapes are tribal lands held today.
Territories are approximate and overlap. Borders between nations were shared, seasonal and negotiated, not fenced. The territory outlines come from Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led nonprofit, which asks that they be used as a starting point and not as a legal or authoritative source. Present-day lands come from the US Census Bureau (2020).
Each nation speaks first. Where a nation publishes its own website, culture department, museum or language program, that comes before anything an outside archive holds.
What is not here, on purpose. Sacred, ceremonial and community-only knowledge is left out, even where an archive has made it public. Collections marked with Traditional Knowledge labels are respected as labelled. Plant medicine is shown as a historical cultural record, not medical advice.
Treaties. Shaded areas are land ceded to the United States, from Charles Royce's Indian Land Cessions in the United States (1899), digitised by the US Forest Service: the government's own record. A treaty is called broken only where a court, the Indian Claims Commission, an Act of Congress or the government itself documents the breach; the nation's own account is shown first wherever it has published one.
Today. Each ring is the seat of a nation's government. Each coloured dot is a Native-owned business or organisation, listed only with a source that shows who owns it. Artists who work from home are shown at their town, never their street.
If you belong to a nation and something here is wrong, or should not be shown, it will be corrected or removed.
Everything gathered, from every nation, in one place. Follow any piece back to its homeland.
What the United States promised, what it did instead, and where it stands today. Each one is on the record: a court, the Indian Claims Commission, an Act of Congress or the government itself found it. Where the nation has told it in its own words, that comes first.
These are records, not legal advice, and the research is still going. If you belong to a nation named here and something is wrong, or should not be shown, it will be corrected or removed.