The Yakama Indian Reservation is comprised of 1,371,918 acres.
Although the Yakamas ceded 10,828,800 acres of ancestral homeland to the U.S. government, they reserved their right to hunt, fish, access and use traditional cultural sites, gather traditional foods and medicines, pasture stock and have water in sufficient quantity and quality in all of their "usual and accustomed places" within this ceded area. 

The Yakama Reservation is primarily agricultural on the valley floor, range or grazing in the foothills and forested to the west and south. 
The city of Toppenish is located east of the Yakama Indian Nation's headquarters in the eastern part of the Reservation. 

The Yakama Reservation covers 1,573 square miles in the south-central Washington counties of Klickitat and Yakima.  This territory offers many and varied food sources such as fishing, hunting, and gathering of seasonal wild roots and berries. 

The members of the Yakama Nation have historically depended on the Columbia River and the salmon for their sustenance. 
Traditional routes for subsistence were, and continue to be on the Columbia River, starting above Priest Rapids to the traditional fishing site on Celilo Falls, and extending west on the lower Columbia River beyond the Klickitat River tributary. 

The Yakama Reservation and its members are governed by the Yakama Nation Tribal Council. Self-government was re-established among the Yakamas in 1935. 

Since the Indian Nation was made up of 14 bands and tribes, each group selected a representative, forming the modern tribal government. In 1947 a rule change provided for election by the General Council of half of the Tribal Council members every two years for four-year terms. All enrolled Yakamas become voting members of the General Council on their eighteenth birthday.