Opportunities And Challenges For Economic Development In Indian Country

Among America's most complex planning environments, Indian country continues to face innumerable challenges to its community development. These factors are historic in nature, creating an assemblage of complex problems in reservation land management, policy implementation, and the ability of tribes to access capital for community investment.This study explores the history and the land, population, economic, and housing characteristics of Indian country. The authors' investigation includes: reservations, Alaska Native villages, and other Census-recognized areas of historical Native American settlement and tribal culture. They analyze the constraints to housing and economic development and develop strategies for addressing those constraints. This book also identifies, uses, and evaluates data sources relevant to the study of housing and economic development on tribal lands. The research in this book was funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation.In the Journal of the American Planning Association, Nicholas C. Zaferatos wrote that Housing and Economic Development in Indian Country is an essential desk reference for policymakers and planners working in Native American communities, as well as for nontribal agencies and other planners who share a concern for the well-being of tribal nations. It also contains extensive appendices in an accompanying CD containing data for individual tribal areas.

The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund works to promote development in Indian Country. The CDFI Fund's work in Indian Country is born of an awareness that Native communities all across the Nation face extraordinary economic challenges and limited access to capital. Soon after the CDFI Fund's creation, it began a comprehensive, multi-year study of lending and investment practices on Indian reservations and other land held in trust by the United States. In 2001, the CDFI published the landmark Native American Lending Study. The study concluded that one of the key reasons for the lack of economic opportunity in Native communities was the lack of access to capital and financial services. The study identified 17 major barriers that limit access to capital in Native communities and offered a variety of recommendations to address them. Those recommendations became the blueprint for the CDFI's Native Initiatives.

Native American peoples suffer from health, educational, infrastructure, and social deficiencies of the sort that most Americans who live outside tribal lands are wholly unaware of and would not tolerate. Indians are the poorest people in the United States, and their reservations are appallingly poverty-stricken; not surprisingly, they suffer from the numerous social pathologies that invariably accompany such economic conditions. Historically, most tribal communities were prosperous, composed of healthy, vibrant societies sustained over hundreds and in some instances perhaps even thousands of years. By creating sustainable economic development on reservations, however, gradual long-term change can be effected, thereby improving the standard of living and sustaining tribal cultures. Reservation “Capitalism” relates the true history, describes present-day circumstances, and sketches the potential future of Indian communities and economics. It provides key background information on indigenous economic systems and property-rights regimes in what is now the United States and explains how the vast majority of Native lands and natural resource assets were lost. Robert J. Miller focuses on strategies for establishing public and private economic activities on reservations and for creating economies in which reservation inhabitants can be employed, live, and have access to the necessities of life, circumstances ultimately promoting complete tribal self-sufficiency.

Among America's most complex planning environments, Indian country continues to face innumerable challenges to its community development. These factors are historic in nature, creating an assemblage of complex problems in reservation land management, policy implementation, and the ability of tribes to access capital for community investment.This study explores the history and the land, population, economic, and housing characteristics of Indian country. The authors' investigation includes: reservations, Alaska Native villages, and other Census-recognized areas of historical Native American settlement and tribal culture. They analyze the constraints to housing and economic development and develop strategies for addressing those constraints. This book also identifies, uses, and evaluates data sources relevant to the study of housing and economic development on tribal lands. The research in this book was funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation.In the Journal of the American Planning Association, Nicholas C. Zaferatos wrote that Housing and Economic Development in Indian Country is an essential desk reference for policymakers and planners working in Native American communities, as well as for nontribal agencies and other planners who share a concern for the well-being of tribal nations. It also contains extensive appendices in an accompanying CD containing data for individual tribal areas.

Most American Indian reservations are islands of poverty in a sea of wealth, but they do not have to remain that way. To extract themselves from poverty, Native Americans will have to build on their rich cultural history including familiarity with markets and integrate themselves into modern economies by creating institutions that reward productivity and entrepreneurship and that establish tribal governments that are capable of providing a stable rule of law. The chapters in this volume document the involvement of indigenous people in market economies long before European contact, provide evidence on how the wealth of Indian Nations has been held hostage to bureaucratic red tape, and explains how their wealth can be unlocked through self-determination and sovereignty.

Looks at the underdevelopment of the private sector on American Indian reservations, with the goal of sustaining and growing Native nation communities.