Why is the standard of living so different on Native American reservations?

Government Induced Poverty

American Indian tribes are the single largest private land holders in the United States. Along with the timber, grazing and crop lands, other natural resources includes 5% of the U.S. oil and 10% of the gas reserves, 30% of the low sulfur coral reserves and 40% of the privately held uranium deposits.

For most people anywhere in today's world economy, such assets or major property holdings equal wealth and money. Not so for the American Indian and Alaska Native.

Simply stated, U.S. government policy toward Native Americans on the whole reflects one theme: gain control of tribal assets. Federal Indian law governs the tribal assets, federal agencies administer oversight and manage the assets and any recourse that pertains to beneficiary rights or fiduciary dispensation is locked within the U.S. federal courts.

Over 100 years of congressional legislation demonstrates that a clear, consistent and aggressive pattern exists whereby tribal assets and the wealth derived from such assets have been basically used to bankroll outside political and economic interests.

For example, the wholesale dispersal of over 100 million acres of Indian land from tribes to early settlers took place under the 1886 "Allotment Act". More recently under the 1996 "Indian Gaming Act", hundreds of millions of dollars from tribal gaming revenues has been redirected to state coffers.

Those are the same states that historically refused to provide any public services to reservation communities. In this closed and unjust system based upon the concept of plenary power, Congress has systematically removed assets from tribal ownership, reduced tribal control of assets and redirected the benefits to outside interests.

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The United States government has stolen “Billions of Dollars” from the Native American Trust Funds.

The "Individual Indian Monies (IIM) program" holds money “IN TRUST” on behalf of "INDIVIDUAL" Native Americans. An audit of the "Individual Indians Monies" program revealed “BILLIONS” of dollars are missing or otherwise unaccounted for.

When the U.S. government took control of Native Americans’ property rights in 1887, Indians were assured they would receive all the income from their land. They never did. According to accounts from whistle-blowers, money belonging to individual Indians was pilfered, skimmed, redirected, or thrown in with general government funds by the U.S. Department of the Interior or its appointed representatives.

In 1996 banker Elouise Cobell filed a class action lawsuit charging the government mismanaged more than $100 billion in oil, timber, grazing and other royalties on land owned by some 500,000 individual Indian beneficiaries.

In early December 2009, the government offered and the plaintiffs accepted a settlement in this 13-year-old case. The settlement provides $1.4 billion to be shared among the plaintiffs (yielding just $1000 per plaintiff)

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In addition to IIM are some 3000 "Tribal Trust Accounts", which includes per capita annual payments, compensation for rights-of-way and court settlements. As with IIM, however, waste, fraud and abuse are rampant.

The Native American Rights Fund (NARF), a non-profit law firm in Boulder, Colorado announced today that it has filed a class action lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C. on behalf of over two hundred and fifty (250) Indian Tribes.

The suit seeks full and complete accountings from the federal government for hundreds of tribal accounts worth billions of dollars that are held in trust by the United States.

The federal government long ago assumed the role of trustee for tribal trust funds, and created the accounts at issue. The funds come from revenues from tribal natural resources such as timber, minerals, oil and gas; court judgments entered against the United States for the unlawful appropriation of Indian land and property; and, income from the investments of money held in the accounts.

The federal government gave Tribes no choice about the creation of these trust fund accounts, some of which date back to the 1800s.

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wikipedia? that's not a source. and everyone knows they don't get any money from the government. That's just an urban legend.