American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Statistics indicate that American Indians form one of the most disadvantaged minority groups in the United States. Poor health, low-paying jobs, and low levels of education, along with high levels of unemployment, all contribute to the American Indian's seemingly endless state of poverty. Their cultural persistence, some argue, exacerbates the problem. Studies do indeed indicate that Indians generally maintain their cultural distinctiveness, even after their introduction and adjustment to an urban, industrial style of life. The fact that many reservations are pursuing industrial development as a strategy for attaining economic an cultural self-determination increases the ramifications of Indians' adjustment to the industrial way of life. Federal policies and sociological analyses concerning American Indians in the past have failed to take into account long-term and world-wide system changes that not only impinge on the United States but which also have consequences for the United States government's relationship with American Indians and reservation development. Therefore, the major aim of this essay is to examine the intertwined "problems" of the persistence of Indian poverty and culture using the metropolis-satellite and world-system explanations. Focusing on the political and economic underpinnings of ethnic relations, these approaches allow not only the location of Indian-United States relations among more general, world-wide politico-economic processes but also a specification of these processes' impact upon the reservation economy and Indian ethnicity. A second aim is to illustrate United States-world system relations as a possible basis for alternative United States-Indian policy considerations, and for addressing the cultural dilemma that Indians face in their efforts to industrialize.