This is America?

While traveling abroad, I’m always surprised by the comments I get when I tell people I’m from the US. People often have an image of us … all of us … living it up like Donald Trump and living out our champagne wishes and caviar dreams in the most decadent way that only Hollywood can conjure up.

Even the so-called reality based TV shows hardly display the poverty and the desolate economic and financial situation that far too many Americans face today, and I doubt that there will ever be a TV show called, “Desolate Lives” based on 3.5 million homeless citizens in this country, as that isn’t an image that is marketable or the media want to sell to the rest of the world.

Sadly, there are too many Americans who are left out of this picture perfect illusion of the way the rest of world sees us, and none that has been isolated from this image more so than the 2.5 million Native Americans (American Indians).

It’s no secret that the history of the United States is marred by tragedy and injustice when it comes the treatments of the Native Americans, and too often deprivation and suffering within Native American communities has been met with sentiment that shocks the conscience … but the statistics are startling.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in every four (25.3 percent) Native Americans lives in poverty and nearly a third (29.9 percent) are without health insurance coverage. More shockingly, the median age among Native Americans are 30 in comparison to 37 for population as a whole, and only nearly 12% of Native American deaths are alcohol-related, which includes traffic accidents and alcoholic liver disease, which are the most frequent alcohol-related deaths, along with homicide and suicide.(1)

Native American reservations are among the poorest areas in the country, and in a geographically desolate areas such as the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana, the annual unemployment rate is as high as 69 percent. For most tribes, their remotely placed homes and communities frequently stifle viable economic activity, and this disturbing result is particularly harsh when we recognize that Native Americans witnessed their geography chosen for them by those who sought to terminate them as a people.(2)

It’s time that our government and we as a nation need to recognized our responsibility toward eradicating the extreme poverty that exist in America, especially among the Native American community. We do not need to travel to a developing or underdeveloped country to find desolate conditions. It’s here, in America … in our own backyard.

(1)http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aihmcensus1.html

(2)http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/ExclusiveCommentary.aspx?id=0fe5c04e-fdbf-4718-980c-0373ba823da7