UW study: Police disproportionately kill Native people near reservations

Fatal police violence against Indigenous people in the United States is significantly concentrated in and around reservations, a new study found.

Roughly 3 in 4 Native people killed by police from 2013 through 2024 were on or within 10 miles of a reservation, despite only about 50% of Indigenous people living on or near them, researchers at the University of Washington and Drexel University found.

Researchers say the overpolicing and racial profiling of people traveling in and around tribal lands, combined with chronic underinvestment and poverty in Native communities, may explain the disparity.

“These are the sorts of stories that Native people are already telling, and have long been telling, about their relationships with police,” said co-author Theresa Rocha Beardall, who is a UW associate professor of sociology.

Published last month, the study analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Mapping Police Violence database, which compiles information from government agencies, public records and media reports. The database recorded 203 American Indian or Alaska Native people killed by police from 2013 through 2024.

Racial disparities in policing remain pervasive and well-documented in the U.S., such as disproportionate rates of enforcement stops and uses of force against people of color. Indigenous people experience some of the highest rates of fatal police violence of any racial or ethnic group. One in 1,800 Indigenous men in the U.S. will die from police violence, according to a 2019 Rutgers University study.

Researchers have found race and place are significant predicators of deadly police encounters, with law enforcement more likely to use fatal force in economically disadvantaged areas with a larger population of people of color or low-income residents.

But this is the first comprehensive study on specifically where police killings of Native people are taking place, Rocha Beardall said, showing “the spatial and structural drivers of inequality.”

The mortality risk is “multiple times higher” in and around reservations, researchers found, making fatal police violence “a major population-level cause of premature death for area residents.”

Even when accounting for population density and rurality, Native people in and around reservations are at higher risk of fatal police violence, researchers found.

Federal, state and tribal law enforcement agencies were collectively responsible for the majority of on-reservation police violence deaths, or 54%. In the borderlands near reservations, local and municipal police were the primary driver of police violence deaths, accounting for roughly 77% of killings within 5 miles. More than 10 miles from reservations, local and municipal police were responsible for about 62% of the Native people killed by law enforcement.

With reservations and nearby areas often under overlapping law enforcement jurisdictions, Native people report experiencing persistent racial profiling, harassment and surveillance by police agencies in and around tribal lands.

On reservations and in some borderland areas, no reason was given for close to 20% of police stops in which a Native person was killed, researchers found, compared to only 11% in areas far from reservations.

Reservations are also often places of historic disinvestment where some tribal members – trapped in cycles of poverty, mental health issues, substance use or domestic violence – end up encountering the criminal legal system more frequently. Poor health care access, underfunded schools and other barriers to public goods exacerbates encounters with law enforcement, researchers said.

“This combination … creates a particular kind of precarity in Indian County,” Rocha Beardall said. “These kinds of things come together to converge to elevate the likelihood (of) death at the hands of police.”

Rocha Beardall said she hopes the study will encourage policymakers and local leaders to be more skeptical of traditional reforms such as body cameras and implicit bias training as the primary way to address fatal police violence. She said she’d like to see more investments in and research on Indigenous-led solutions – such as culturally attuned healing and wellness programs addressing crime and poverty – that could lower fatal police violence rates.