By Marshall L. Matz, as published in Agri-Pulse
The first Americans are still last in America, especially in the Northern Great Plains, where the disparity is the greatest. The unemployment rate on Indian reservations in the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming exceed seventy and eighty percent. Unemployment on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota is at 85 percent, around ten times the national average. The unemployment rate for the white population in this area of the country is below the national average, fueled by an increase in crop prices and energy production.
These extreme unemployment rates leads to a shorter life expectancy, higher suicide rates, alcoholism, violence against women, education gaps and a host of other negative social indicators.
The Indian reservation system in America is complex — legally, socially and economically — but there is no excuse for allowing the economic disparity between whites and Indians that exists in this country. It remains a national stain on our conscience.
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