For the past several years the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development has been examining the conditions under which self-determined economic development might be successful on American Indian reservations. The heart of the research is the comparative analysis of economic development on some fifteen reservations in the Southwest, Northwest, and Northern Plains, using data from field visits and other primary and secondary sources. We are supplementing this with quantitative analysis of a sample of approximately one hundred reservations using United States census, Indian Health Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and other data on thirty or so social and economic indicators. While the project is ongoing and its conclusions are incomplete, this paper reports some of its findings to date.'