Residential and Household Poverty of American Indians on the Wind River Indian Reservation

Poverty among American Indians living on reservations in the United States remains a widespread and seemingly intractable problem. In order to address this problem it is imperative that researchers examine poverty and poverty policy longitudinally in order to better understand factors that contribute to poverty, to assess attendant personal and social consequences of persistent poverty, and to evaluate programs on reservations intended to reduce the impact of poverty or expedite individuals' movement out of poverty. This paper examines the persistence of poverty on the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) located in central Wyoming. Like many reservations, WRIR is characterized by its residents' low incomes, high unemployment, and high poverty rates. Home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho, the Reservation is unique in having conducted a census of households on the Reservation in 1987. The detailed information on households and individuals has been used extensively in support of reservation grant applications and in setting policy goals. The 1987 survey, with significant modifications, was replicated during the summer and early fall of 1998 as a joint effort by the Joint Business Council of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Service, various Wyoming State agencies, the University of Wyoming, and Johns Hopkins University. The present project has (1) restored and analyzed the 1987 data, (2) created pooled panel data of matched 1987 and 1998 residences, (3) and analyzed the tenacious hold of poverty within this population. This report describes poverty as related to education, per capita income payments, employment and unemployment. Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to examine the spatial distribution of survey information as part of our effort to more closely analyze our data and disseminate the information as widely as possible to all potential users on and off the Wind River Indian Reservation. This analysis provides a significant guide for the examination and design of poverty programs in the past and future.