Why Native American Reservations Are the Most Poverty-Stricken Lands in America

Recommendable! This is a very long article, which I did not read in full!

In general, the federal government owns way too much land across the country including lands of Native Americans: "... roughly 640 million acres, about 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States ..." (Source)

Perhaps that should be reduced to 10% or less!!!

The patronizing treatment of the Native Americans by the federal government has been going on for a century or so. That to this day, there still exists a federal Bureau of Indian Affairs is a huge scandal!

"Of the 50 million acres of land on Native American reservations, only five percent of that land is owned privately by individuals. Another 20 percent is held in individual trusts, meaning that Native Americans can own interest in tracts of land, but the titles are retained by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which is housed in the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI). The remaining 75 percent of tribal land is held in a trust by the BIA and the interest in the land is owned collectively by a tribe. The “owners” in these trust arrangements are not allowed to sell their ownership rights or buy land from other individuals. It should come as no surprise then that, at 26.2 percent, the Native American poverty rate is almost double that of the rest of the United States.

Federal control of lands is the legacy of the outdated and racist assumption that Native Americans are incapable of managing their own lands or that their cultures are incompatible with markets. Because nearly all tribal land is managed by the federal government, everything that happens on Native American lands must wind its way through an arduous bureaucratic process. The tribes have little, if any control over those processes, which raises a substantial barrier to economic growth.

The lack of tribal autonomy creates several implications for economic development on reservations and impacts the quality of life of Native Americans on those reservations directly. Home ownership, natural resource development, and entrepreneurship on Native American lands are substantially hindered by government oversight. ..."

Why Native American Reservations Are the Most Poverty-Stricken Lands in America - Foundation for Economic Education The history of Native American reservations makes clear that the root of the problem is federal involvement in the Indian economy.