Tribal Land Jurisdiction Screener — Reservation, Trust Land & THPO Check

Tribal land jurisdiction API. Give it a batch of coordinates and it runs a server-side point-in-polygon check against the U.S. Census Bureau's American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Areas (AIANNH) boundaries and returns, per point, whether it falls on tribal land — plus the area name and type, the land area, and ready-to-use flags for Section 106 THPO consultation, civil/regulatory jurisdiction, and trust-land lending/title review.

The transform is the value: raw Census/USGS layers give you a polygon dump. This actor normalizes the feature-type codes, separates legal reservation/trust land from Census statistical areas, and emits one clean, chainable row per asset.

Who it's for

• Section 106 / cultural-resource consultants — flag when a project site sits on tribal land so review routes through the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) instead of the SHPO.
• GovCon, energy & infrastructure siting — screen candidate sites (towers, pipelines, solar/wind, ROW) for tribal jurisdiction before diligence.
• Gaming / land-into-trust / economic development — confirm reservation or off-reservation trust status.
• Lenders, title & real-estate diligence — trust and restricted-fee land has distinct foreclosure, mortgage, leasehold and title rules (BIA-approved leases, HUD Section 184).
• AI agents — a clean geospatial tool for "is this coordinate on tribal land, and what regimes apply?"

Example input

{
  "assets": [
    { "lat": 36.07, "lon": -109.55, "label": "Navajo Nation, AZ" },
    { "lat": 32.7791, "lon": -96.8, "label": "Downtown Dallas TX" }
  ],
  "maxAssets": 500
}

Verified sample run

A real 6-site run (2026-07-21) returned 6 rows and 0 errors. Every hit came back as area type "Federal American Indian Reservation / Off-Reservation Trust Land" with section106_thpo_consultation: true:

Asset	On tribal land	Area name	THPO consultation
Navajo Nation, AZ	true	Navajo Nation	true
Pine Ridge Reservation, SD	true	Pine Ridge	true
Wind River Reservation, WY	true	Wind River	true
Gila River Indian Community, AZ	true	Gila River	true
Osage OTSA, OK	true	Osage	true
Downtown Dallas, TX (control)	false	—	false

The control point returned a clean, billable "no tribal jurisdiction" row rather than an error. This exact run is published as the actor's example task, so you can open it and re-run it as-is.

Output fields (one row per asset)

Field	Meaning
asset_label, asset_lat, asset_lon	The screened point, echoed back
on_tribal_land	True if the point is inside any AIANNH area
area_name / area_full_name	Area name (e.g. Navajo Nation)
area_type_code / area_type	MTFCC code + decoded type (reservation/trust, Hawaiian Home Land, ANVSA, OTSA, SDTSA, TDSA, joint-use)
land_tenure_class	Reservation / Trust land vs Statistical area vs Alaska Native Corporation
reservation_authority	Federal or State reservation
geoid, aiannh_code, aiannh_class_code	Census identifiers
land_area_sqm / land_area_sqmi	Land area of the area
water_area_sqm	Water area of the area
centroid_lat / centroid_lon	Centroid of the matched area
is_reservation_or_trust_land	Legal Indian country (federal reservation / trust / HHL)
is_statistical_area	Census tabulation geography only — not a legal jurisdiction boundary
section106_thpo_consultation	Any tribal hit → THPO cultural review may apply
civil_regulatory_jurisdiction	Reservation/trust → distinct tax/permit/gaming/land-into-trust regimes
lending_title_review	Reservation/trust → distinct foreclosure/mortgage/title rules
overlapping_area_count	How many AIANNH areas the point falls in
overlapping_areas	All areas the point falls in
source, source_url, checked_at, disclaimer	Provenance

Data sources (keyless, authoritative)

• Primary: U.S. Census Bureau TIGERweb AIANNHA MapServer (layer 47) — federal & state American Indian reservations, off-reservation trust land, Hawaiian Home Lands, and Alaska Native / tribal statistical areas (2025 vintage).
• Fallback / cross-check: USGS The National Map govunits "Native American Area" layer — used automatically if the Census service is unavailable, so a source outage still returns a graceful result.

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is a clean, chainable tool for AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) via mcp.apify.com. Field-level output descriptions let an agent call it as a "tribal-land jurisdiction" lookup and pass results downstream (e.g. into a §106 consultation or siting workflow).

FAQ

Is this a legal land-status or jurisdiction determination? No. It is an informational intersection screen. Census statistical areas (ANVSA/OTSA/SDTSA/ TDSA) approximate tribal areas for tabulation and are not legal jurisdiction boundaries. Always confirm Indian-country status, jurisdiction and title with the affected Tribe, the BIA, the THPO, and legal counsel.

How do I check if a coordinate is on an Indian reservation? Pass it in assets and read is_reservation_or_trust_land and area_type.

Does it cover Alaska and Hawaii? Yes — Alaska Native Village Statistical Areas and Hawaiian Home Lands are included. (Alaska Native Regional Corporations are a separate Census layer and are decoded if present.)

How is it billed? One result row per screened asset (Pay-Per-Event). Empty or invalid inputs cost nothing beyond the tiny actor start.

What coordinate system? WGS84 decimal degrees (lat, lon).

Related screeners

This actor is part of a family of single-coordinate federal due-diligence screeners that all take the same assets[]{lat,lon,label} input shape, so you can run several over the same site list and join the results per site.

• Site Due Diligence Bundle — 15 federal overlays for one coordinate in a single call.
• National Register of Historic Places Screener — the other half of the Section 106 question: listed historic properties and districts.
• Wild & Scenic River Proximity Screener — designated Wild & Scenic River corridors and Section 7 exposure.
• BLM Sage-Grouse Siting Screener — greater sage-grouse priority and general habitat management areas.
• Section 368 Energy Corridor Screener — designated Section 368 west-wide energy corridors.
• FEMA National Risk Index County Risk Profile — FEMA National Risk Index perils for the site's county and tract.