Arizona drivers have lots of specialty license plates to choose from — 114 options to be exact. The largest federally recognized tribe within metro Phoenix is among the latest of Arizona’s sovereign nations to be featured.
This effort all began three years ago, when Republican state Rep. Teresa Martinez sponsored a bill that pitched letting the Gila River Indian Community design a plate of its own.
Her district encompasses tribal lands in Pinal County.
“Lots of people will think, ‘Oh, this is just another license plate bill,’” Martinez told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in 2023. “I would say this license plate bill is far from that. It is a very big deal.”
Because for each plate sold, $17 will be donated to the Gila River Indian Community’s transportation committee to fund road and traffic improvements. Commuters regularly travel through the nearly 600-square-mile reservation just south of Phoenix.
“Especially when the I-10 is down,” added Martinez, stressing that “it is closed, and it happens often.” Such delays and disruptions cause congestion when drivers, like speeding semi-trucks, are rerouted through tribal neighborhoods.
Martinez’s proposal ultimately passed, part of a larger license plate bill that included the neighboring Ak-Chin Indian Community and Pascua Yaqui Tribe. ADOT — or the Arizona Department of Transportation — is still working with the Yaquis, while Ak-Chin cancelled its plate due to lack of payment.
Each plate sponsor must provide a $32,000 fee to ADOT, which covers production costs. New legislation would be needed at the Capitol to amend that statutory deadline Ak-Chin missed — should the 1,100-member tribe wish to proceed.
In the ADOT announcement from last month, Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Community shared the newly unveiled plate embodies their “proud history, tradition and culture, and our enduring connection to our shudag.”
It’s an O'odham word meaning water.
Lewis used it, referring to the Gila River itself. He also hopes that travelers seeing their tribal seal on the highway “encourages others to learn more about our contributions to the state of Arizona.”
Made up of roughly 21,300 members, the Gila River Indian Community became the fifth of Arizona’s 22 tribes — behind the Navajo Nation, San Carlos Apache Tribe, White Mountain Apache Tribe and Hualapai Tribe — to print a plate.
Fewer than 20,000 tribal plates have been sold since 2022.
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