We constructed a new comprehensive dataset of land dispossession and forced migration for the vast majority of Indigenous peoples in the area currently called the contiguous U.S. Centuries of land dispossession have reshaped an entire continent, and its effects continue to endure. Indigenous land dispossession and forced migration have created the groundwork for contemporary conditions in which Indigenous peoples in the U.S. today face greater vulnerabilities to their health and food security, lack access to culturally-appropriate education, and have heightened exposures to contaminants. Estimating these developments for the first time with a quantitative macroscopic approach significantly broadens and deepens scientific understanding of these issues. We provide this comprehensive public dataset to initiate a long-term computational research program on these increasingly important issues, complement the growing, primarily Indigenous-led efforts to map Native lands across North America and beyond, and improve future policy-making by uncovering fundamental patterns unexamined at their full geographic and temporal scope.
This work informs climate adaptation and mitigation for Indigenous nations and furthers understanding of the factors affecting landscape resilience tied to historical land dispossession and forced migration. This initiative represents a new macro-level attempt to provide such information at a large-scale, and serves as a basis not only for ongoing efforts to mitigate future impacts of climate change, but for new policies to remediate the historical causes responsible for generating vulnerability across Native America.