Indian reserve

Area set aside for habitation by American Indian groups in Canada. In total, there are some 1,000 variously designated reserves in the country, half of them in the far western province of British Columbia.

Canadian native peoples organize themselves into ‘bands’ rather than tribes. There are around 500 of these, though not all have reserves. Various treaties and federal laws stipulate that the reserves are for the use of ‘status Indians’, who have chosen not to assimilate into majority society. Generally, reserves are much smaller than reservations in the USA; they remain, technically, Crown Lands, which are owned outright by the central government.