What it means
SRPMIC is six letters that stand for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, and almost nobody says them aloud. In Scottsdale the nation across Pima Road is simply the Community, capital C understood, as in “the Community owns that land” or “the ballpark is on the Community.” The acronym lives on documents, highway signs and the Community’s own website; the short form lives in conversation. Both name a sovereign government, not a neighborhood, and the distinction is the whole point of knowing the word.
The Community is home to two peoples, the Onk Akimel O’odham (Salt River People, the “Pima” of older maps) and the Xalychidom Piipaash (Upriver People, the “Maricopa”). It has its own president, council, police, courts and schools, and its border with Scottsdale, drawn in 1879, works like a state line: city zoning, taxes and permits stop there. Everything a visitor thinks of as east Scottsdale, from Talking Stick to the spring-training ballpark, is on its land under its law. The Community’s government guide explains how that works; this page is about what to call it.
Where you’ll meet it
On the signs along the Loop 101 and Pima Road. On spring-training tickets with a Scottsdale address and a Community location. In Scottsdale council discussions of the freeway, water and regional planning. At Scottsdale Community College, which has leased its campus from the Community since 1970. And at the Huhugam Ki Museum, where the Community introduces itself.
Where the word came from
The long name is federal. “Pima” and “Maricopa” were the names Spanish and American officials used for the two peoples, and when the United States set aside a reservation along the Salt River by executive order on June 14, 1879, the paperwork used them. The Community’s own history records the strangeness of that year: a January order from President Hayes had reserved about 680,000 acres, and the June order cut it to 46,627, leaving two disconnected pieces of land along the river. “Indian Community” came with the modern government, a constitution and bylaws adopted in 1940 under the federal Indian Reorganization Act, which created the elected president, vice president and seven council members who govern today. Put together, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community was a mouthful from the start, and SRPMIC was the inevitable result.
“The Community” as the everyday form reflects how the nation refers to itself; its own documents say “the Community” throughout. Scottsdale picked up the habit through decades of dealings: the 1970 college lease, the 1982 to 1990 negotiations that put the Pima Freeway on the Community’s western edge, the 1988 water settlement that Scottsdale also signed. By the time the Pavilions opened in 1989 and Casino Arizona in 1998, “the Community” was the only name anyone in City Hall used.
The peoples’ own names are the ones worth learning. O’odham and Piipaash both mean, in their own languages, “the people.” Onk Akimel O’odham, the Salt River People, trace their ancestry to the Huhugam, the canal builders archaeologists call Hohokam. Xalychidom Piipaash, the Upriver People, came from the lower Colorado River generations ago and settled beside the O’odham as allies. The Akimel O’odham and Piipaash entry goes further.
What it is not
It is not the Gila River Indian Community, the other O’odham and Piipaash nation, south of Phoenix and seven times larger. It is not the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation on the Verde, a different people entirely. And it is not “the reservation” in the generic, careless sense; there are 22 tribal nations in Arizona, and this one has a name.
The fine print
The numbers vary by source, and the Community’s own pages give more than one. Its homepage describes a 52,600-acre reservation; its history page puts the current land at about 54,585 acres; the city guide on this site says more than 52,000, with about 19,000 kept as natural preserve and roughly 12,000 farmed. They count different things at different dates. More than 11,000 people are enrolled. As of 2026 the president is Martin Harvier and the vice president Ricardo Leonard.
Sovereignty here is practical, not ceremonial. The Community sets its own land-use rules and taxes, which is how a 15-story casino tower rose beside a city that had argued for decades about building heights. Its police patrol the reservation; its courts hear cases involving members; federal prosecutors take serious felonies; state authority reaches in only where Congress and the courts allow. Gaming runs under compacts with the state, signed in 1998 and reset by Prop 202 in 2002. The Community also sits on the Maricopa Association of Governments beside Scottsdale and holds water rights settled by Congress in 1988, after a century in which upstream diversions had dried its fields. Leaders like Alfretta Antone, who pushed for the museum, and Ivan Makil, president through the freeway and casino years, built that position.
One usage note. “Salt River” alone can mean the Community, the river or the Salt River Project utility, and Scottsdale uses all three daily. Context carries it: Salt River Fields is the ballpark on the Community; Salt River water is the utility’s. When in doubt, say the Community, and you will be understood on both sides of Pima Road.