There are two interesting maps that are drawn out about the density and percent of Indians and Native Americans living in the United States. These two maps are shown below. You may need to zoom in to actually see the layout and statistics. If not, go to the radicalcartography website and go to 1. Browse by Problematic 2. Social Statistics 3. US Demographics and then from there you can click on the Indian Density and Percent.
As you can see, the largest numbers of Indians live in Arizona and Oklahoma. Also, as I am sure that you can see, Alaska has a large population of Indians. These maps also outline where the reservations currently exist. Personally, I was somewhat surprised by the number of reservations and the locations of them all. They are spread out among the United States and after all of our talks in class, I did not expect there to be this many reservations left. Even so, it is sad to see how little clusters there are left of Indians. It is nice to see how many Indians reside in Alaska, but I still do not understand why the Indian population cannot be more accepted in the United States. Honestly, I am not all that knowledgeable about the history of the Indians and the different reservations, but after all that we have been studying in class I thought it was interesting to see how the reservations are set up and where the Indians are now mainly dispersed. Perhaps there have been many assimilated Indians, but there are also still reservations left.
Also, going off of the same map section, you can explore the densities and percent of other ethnicities as well. The others that are listed are Black, White, Hispanic, Asian and Pacific. It in interesting to look through and to see how the populations of these ethnicites compare to that of the Indians and Native Americans. Just some other little things that I noticed while browsing through these maps are the Asians and Pacific Islanders have very little population density than the other etnicities. Also, near the reservations there are not many other ethnicities other than the Indians, so perhaps they have stopped attempting to assimilate and have just decided to keep to themselves. It was interesting to compare all the maps and browse through them and I would recommend doing it if you have the time. I especially thought that the Indian ones were important because we are discussing this in class.
These two maps are very interesting. After seeing the map of what america "should" look like, if we had kept all the promises we made to the Native Americans, now I can see what America does look like. I feel like this map would be interesting if it was made into a time progression map. It would start at the estimated population density and land belonging to the Native Americans when settlers first started coming to America and go through to the present day and the maps we see here. Also you mention how you are surprised that there are so many reservation, but this is the only land that Native Americans have left of their own, I hope in the future that these reservations do not disappear because that would mean the United States is taking away more land from the Native Americans. That said I hope there will be some plan implemented in the near future to help some of the terrible circumstances that people on indian reservations face, but as we have seen there is no easy solution.
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