Reservation poverty
[14] As forced relocation progressed, many tribes lost access to tribal traditional lifeways, which centered around community living and hunting and gathering.
Reservations were placed on lands considered resource deficient, unfit for agriculture or cultivation, and which were isolated from urban centers and transportation networks.
Furthermore, native people who provided educational, religious, medical, and culinary services to their communities were replaced with non-native, government and Church-sponsored individuals.
[15] In the early twentieth century, tribes were further hindered by the Indian Reorganization Act, which imposed particular forms of governance and organization for tribal leadership.
However, by the time these changes occurred, traditional cultures had been severely and violently reduced, local economies had not been developed, families had been broken apart, and the stage for persistent poverty was set.
Sociologist Gary Sandefur has called reservations the "first underclass areas" because of their concentrated poverty, high unemployment, and low educational attainment levels.
Some researchers have suggested that asking reservation residents if they seek job opportunities when they occur would be a more accurate measure of unemployment than asking if they had applied for work recently.
Reservations are generally seen as very high-risk areas to place financial institutions, because of the lack of potential investors and overall dearth of economic activity.
[30] Without formal financial institutions, many reservation residents are unable to save or invest what income they do have, and do not have access to loans for homes, cars, or businesses.
Low access is described as 33% or more of the population living in rural areas where stores providing affordable and healthy foods are more than 10 miles away from their homes.
People are only able to access food that has high sugar and sodium as well as saturated fats, these options only lead to a higher risk of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
[35] The lack of safe roads and adequate transportation further isolates reservation communities and strengthens the neighborhood effects of concentrated poverty.
[39] The suicide rate among reservation residents is twice that of the general population, suggesting the troubling psychological impact of living in areas of extreme and concentrated poverty.
This program is the result of treaties established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that included provisions that the government would provide food and shelter for tribal members.
[41] Unfortunately, this food tends to be nonperishable, heavy on simple starches, and nutritionally deficient, thus contributing to high rates of obesity and diabetes on reservations.
Although it may keep many families from being completely unable to survive, it does not build economies, reinstitute cultural institutions, or create a source of pride for reservation residents.
[43] Furthermore, the rural nature of many reservations, the lack of available contact information and telephone numbers, protective rules by tribal councils, and a distrust of outsiders present data collection challenges.
Economist Elizabeth Zahrt Geib stressed the potential for tribes to define work for purposes of welfare distribution to include traditional tasks and arts more in line with native lifestyles before the reservation system was created.
[45] The Tanana Chiefs Conference of Alaska and the Lac du Flambeau Bank of Lake Superior Chippewa of Wisconsin have already included hunting and fishing as work activities for purposes of welfare distribution.
[46] In addition, locally controlled welfare programs usually mean much easier application processes and increased accessibility to offices, allowing a greater number of eligible individuals to become recipients.
Reservations in relatively close proximity to urban areas have become sites for waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs), adding environmental degradation to the landscape of poverty.
[54] For Native American nations, environmental justice on reservations is more than the enforcement of equitable protection of human health and natural resources, it is also a matter of tribal sovereignty, self determination, and redistribution of power.
[59][60] However, many Native activists argue that a seat at the table "does not ensure a comparable serving of the environmental protection pie"[61] Indian gaming casinos are often considered a potential solution to reservation poverty.
These casinos can provide jobs on the reservation, attract tourists, and bring in money for tribes to fund education, health, and social service programs.
Other tribes fund child and elder care programs, health services, fire and police protection, and housing development with gambling earnings.
Depending on the profit distribution plan of the tribe, this can result in a redistribution of income from many to a few,[67] and a fractionalization of the reservation population between those who spend at casinos and those who earn from them.
[68] When reservation residents spend portions of their sometimes very sparse incomes gambling, casinos can serve to exacerbate rather than relieve conditions of poverty.
For example, the Native American Natural Foods Company of Kyle, South Dakota, on Pine Ridge produces energy bars using bison meat and cranberries that are sold in gourmet grocery stores throughout the country.
Due to the circumstances of their creation, contracts with ANCs are free from much of the regulation conventional contractors face, such as requirements for competitive bidding and spending caps.
These critics have stated that conventional capitalist business plans run counter to many Native traditions, which stress community and interdependence rather than individualism and competition.
