Date of Award

4-2012

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Patrick Donnay

Abstract

Poverty rates on Indian reservations are far higher than the national average. Since Tribal Governments have at least some control over these reservations, to what extent are they to blame for these higher than average poverty rates? I look at each reservation and their type of government, constitution, policies and demographics to analyze the causes of their poverty as it relates to tribal government. There are many other pieces of research that are similar to this, but none looking specifically at the overall effects the government has on its community. My hypothesis is that communities with higher poverty rates tend to have Tribal Governments that have a system similar to the United States other than traditional systems. There are many other variables to also look at when testing this hypothesis. Data has been gathered from the U.S. Census, the Native American Constitutional Law Project, Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country and other sources. Preliminary analysis shows that Indian gaming is only a partial solution to Native poverty on reservations.

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