If you could cite some reliable information concerning the state of Native American economy during some year/s within 1950 to 1975, it would be much appreciated.
e.g. Native American:
poverty rates
income each household
income each family
average income compared with the national average
etc.
If you could please cite reliable sources on this issue…I’m having a tough time finding solid facts. I would even appreciate a list of possible sources which I could look into for this information. Thank you very much in advance!
Santa Barbara 2:34 pm on December 11, 2009 Permalink |
America in Ferment: The Tumultuous 1960s
The Native American Power Movement
Period: 1960s
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In November 1969, some 200 Native Americans seized the abandoned federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. For 19 months, Indian activists occupied the island to draw attention to conditions on the nation’s Indian reservations. Alcatraz, the Native Americans said, symbolized conditions on reservations: "It has no running water; it has inadequate sanitation facilities; there is no industry, and so unemployment is very great; there are no health care facilities; the soil is rocky and unproductive." The activists, who called themselves Indians of All Tribes, offered to buy Alcatraz from the federal government for "$24 in glass beads and red cloth."
On Thanksgiving Day 1970, Wampanoag Indians, who had taken part at the first Thanksgiving 350 years earlier, held a National Day of Mourning at Plymouth, Massachusetts. A tribal representative declared, "We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees." Meanwhile, another group of Native Americans established a settlement at Mount Rushmore to demonstrate Indian claims to the Black Hills.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new spirit of political militancy arose among the first Americans, just as it had among black Americans and women. No other group, however, faced problems more severe than Native Americans. Throughout the 1960s, American Indians were the nation’s poorest minority group, more deprived than any other group, according to virtually every socioeconomic measure. In 1970, the Indian unemployment rate was 10 times the national average, and 40 percent of the Native American population lived below the poverty line. In that year, Native American life expectancy was just 44 years, a third less than that of the average American. In one Apache town of 2,500 on the San Carlos reservation in Arizona, there were only 25 telephones, and most homes had outdoor toilets and relied on wood burning stoves for heat.
Conditions on many of the nation’s reservations were not unlike those found in underdeveloped areas of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The death rate among Native Americans exceeded that of the total U.S. population by a third. Deaths caused by pneumonia, hepatitis, dysentery, strep throat, diabetes, tuberculosis, alcoholism, suicide, and homicide were 2 to 60 times higher than the entire U.S. population. Half a million Indian families lived in unsanitary, dilapidated dwellings, many in shanties, huts, or even abandoned automobiles.
Kookiemon 2:34 pm on December 11, 2009 Permalink |
Check ot the National Archives section on Native Americans. There’s no single compilation of data unfortunately. You may have to collate that data yourself.
http://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/
Here is a listing of the various records you can look up along with where you can request copies of records.
http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/075.html#top
And you can’t forget the Bureau of Indan Affairs website.
http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.html
Also, the records at the University of Colorado in Boulder as a lot of information along with links to other informational sites.
http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/govpubs/us/native.htm
This, however, is probably the specific information that you are looking for.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/race/indian.html
You can request historical data from the Census Bureau, however, I’m sure that costs quite a bit. You may be able to find copies of that census data from your local library though.