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Indian Reservation Economies Righting the Ship

It has now been fifty years since the beginning of the self-determination era. Tribal leaders as well as government officials have hailed it the most successful program ever for Indian tribes. Tribes now receive more than $8 billion annually to execute a wide array of programs that were formerly run by the government. Tribal bureaucracies have ballooned to keep up with the work load. In California all Indian Health Services are operated by tribes or tribal consortiums. The National Congress of American Indians and the Government periodically put out glossy reports on the progress being made in Indian Country. Yet reservation residents still occupy the lowest economic and social rungs in the Country. There have been some improvements in health care and housing yet in five decades tribal populations still remain decades behind the general population of the Country. Commissions formed to study the economics of Indian country basically repeat the same recommendations. The 1984 Presidential Commission on Reservation Economies, the 2012 white paper by the Governors of the Federal Reserve, the 2014 HUD report on Continuity and Change all are in sync about what should be. This paper first reviews some of the achievements of the self-determination era over the past fifty years to lay the ground work for further investigation. It then studies four achievements that have been hailed by tribal leaders in an effort to discern what has been accomplished and what the motives may have been in developing them. The conclusions from this section are that tribal and government efforts may have been misdirected in a myopic effort to achieve self-determination. It then looks at the trust relationship going forward in view of recent Supreme Court cases that continue to narrow its scope. And finally it concludes that reservation economies must become the priority if Indian tribes are to survive and that scholars should be leading the charge to force change.