Making Sense of Work on the Wind River Indian Reservation

Working and Living on the Wind River Indian Reservation

Research on social problems among American Indians consistently expresses a sequential narrative. Whether research focuses on poverty, poor health, low academic achievement, teen pregnancy, unemployment, or any other social problem, the discussion rests foremost on an overriding concern for the chronic and deep poverty of reservation Indians. The conclusions, though they may vary, nearly unanimously recognize two sets of contributing factors: those that are structural and those that are cultural.

Structural factors are most often traced to the distribution of power, historical institutional arrangements, and features of social geography and economic demography largely outside the control of the people in question. While recognizing longstanding racism and discriminatory practices, cultural features are most likely to be attached to the Indian people themselves.¹ For many observers—whether admirers or not—the Indians are a distinct and in some sense premodern social formation that abjure two fundamentals of a capitalist society: the desire for and pursuit of material consumption and the adoption of a socially expected means to accomplish this—a strong commitment to remunerative work.

Gitter and Reagan (2002) reflect this most succinctly in explaining the reasons Indians on or near reservations fare more poorly in the labor market. Comparing categories of Indians to persons more likely to be employed, they refer to "differences in constraints and tastes for market work." They conclude, "to some extent reservations, with their concentration of Indian culture, act to perpetuate traditional, nonmarket lifestyles" (1167). For years the U.S. Bureau of Labor has sought to develop a measure of unemployment that could more sensitively recognize the "cultural context" in which Indians—especially those living on a reservation—"temporarily withdraw from the labor force" in order to pursue traditional economic, religious, and social activities (Kleinfeld and Kruse 1982, 50).

This framing tends to circumvent an analysis of the conflicted relations between the original inhabitants of North America and those who displaced them over most of the continent. The significance of the resulting "purification of space" (Sibley 1988) of the national landscape and the relegation of the remnants of the Native Americans to isolated, unwanted parcels of land is seen principally as a demographic phenomenon. That Indians have retained and seek to maintain and revive elements of their original culture is occasionally appreciated but most often thought of as an impediment to market-oriented behavior. Such behavior would benefit Indians by translating into higher rates of employment, higher income, fewer social problems, and greater acceptance by the dominant society of non-Indians, that is, acculturation and assimilation.

This article rests on a different conception. American Indians, especially those living on reservations in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain West, are engaged in a continuation of the asymmetrical struggle that first sought to eliminate them, later resigned them to obscurity and poverty, then offered them the consolation prize of disappearing on their own. Failing this last step in the assimilation process, reservation Indians are often treated as an intractable and unwilling population that has not solved and may never solve the problems the colonization project created for them. In contrast, the view of Indians themselves is to recognize centuries of resistance and a partially successful effort to remain true to their history and culture despite the overwhelming power of invaders who seized and resettled their land and who, when the final destruction of the Indian physical presence failed, sought to destroy their culture. The asymmetrical power, radically differing interpretations of the historical record, and continuation of the colonization project are ongoing realities integral to understanding the Indians' situation today on the reservation.

The specific context of this examination is a single Indian reservation. The focus of the analysis is the cycle of employment and unemployment of the Indians living within the boundaries of the reservation. An understanding of this cycle and its exceptions is approached through a...