Reservation Poverty
American Indian Reservations face unique conditions and challenges of poverty. Income, employment, and educational attainment in these areas are considerably lower than national averages. Reservations are areas of land within the United States that are managed by a tribal government in cooperation with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is a branch of the Department of the Interior, located in Washington, DC. There are 334 reservations in the United States today. Currently, almost a third of American Indians in the United States live on reservations, totaling approximately 700,000 individuals. About half of all American Indians living on reservations are concentrated on the ten largest reservations.
Reservations vary drastically in terms of their size, population, proximity to urban centers, and cultural beliefs and practices. Despite such variation, reservations share a similar history and face similar contemporary challenges. At the forefront of these challenges is poverty. In 2010, the poverty rate on reservations was 28.4 percent, compared with 22 percent among all American Indians (on and off reservations), and 15.3 percent among all Americans. In addition to poverty rates, reservations are hindered by low education levels, poor healthcare services, low employment, substandard housing, and deficient economic infrastructure.
Read more about Reservation Poverty: Background, Poverty Rates On The Ten Largest Reservations, Extreme Poverty, Employment, Influence of Casinos, Economic Development, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words reservation and/or poverty:
“Music is so much a part of their daily lives that if an Indian visits another reservation one of the first questions asked on his return is: “What new songs did you learn?””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,—thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new country.... With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam’s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)