Due to the General Allotment Act and the amendments that followed it, nearly 90 million acres of Indian land passed into non-Indian hands. While this was damaging to tribes in itself, what makes it almost fatal to tribal sovereignty is that this land was sold to non-tribal members within the borders of the reservation. As a result, trust lands and fee lands, lands owned by tribes, individual Indians, and non-Indians are all adjacent and mixed together on a reservation. The combination of these types of ownership within a reservation is called checkerboarding. This effect is shown below, on Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.

Checkerboarding seriously impairs the ability of tribes or individual Indians to use land to their own advantage for farming, ranching, or other economic activities that require large, contiguous sections of land. It also hampers access to lands that the tribe owns and uses in traditional ways.

Serious questions of jurisdiction also occur on checkerboard reservations as different governing authorities - such as county, state, federal, and tribal governments - claim the authority to regulate, tax, or perform various activities within reservation borders based on whether a piece of land is Indian or non-Indian owned or whether it is fee-simple, in individual trust or tribal trust. Often these different claims to authority conflict, which sometimes creates economic uncertainty, racial tension, and community clashes within or near the reservation. To complicate the matter even further, the case law relevant to jurisdiction on Indian land is highly complex and on some points inconsistent and unsettled.

Through the consolidation of similar parcels of land, individuals and tribes can gain great cultural, economic and civic benefits.

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