Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

Intergenerational Poverty and Mobility Among Native Americans in the United States

Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

On July 22 and 25, 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) held an information gathering meeting titled, Intergenerational Poverty and Mobility Among Native Americans¹ in the U.S. The meeting was held to inform the future consensus report of the National Academies Committee on Policies and Programs to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty. Building on the findings of the NASEM (2019) report, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, this ad hoc committee was convened by the Board on Children, Youth, and Families to identify policies and programs with the potential to reduce long-term, intergenerational poverty. As noted in the 2019 report, the harmful effects of living in poverty during childhood can entrench families and communities in poverty, leading to the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next. This cycle has a disproportionate effect on Native American families. To inform the committee’s review of the evidence, a public information-gathering meeting was held to engage with leaders, researchers, and practitioners on issues surrounding intergenerational poverty and mobility among Native American families in the United States, including exploring key structural determinants of entrenched poverty and promising interventions designed to address those determinants. The meeting was held virtually and was open to the public. Three meeting sessions were held over two days bearing these thematic titles:²

• A Conversation with Tribal Leaders on Intergenerational Poverty
• Intergenerational Poverty and Mobility Among Native Americans: Data & Trends
• A Conversation with Researchers: Drivers and Interventions of Intergenerational Poverty Among Native Americans

A CONVERSATION WITH TRIBAL LEADERS

Joe Hobot, president and CEO of American Indian OIC in Minneapolis, led the first session by asking tribal leaders to discuss their experiences with and

___________________

¹ During the workshop, speakers used the terms “Native Americans,” “Natives,” “Native people,” “Indians,” and “American Indians” to discuss the population of focus. Therefore, throughout this proceedings in brief the multiple terms are used to accurately reflect speakers’ remarks.

² Recordings of the workshop can be found here: https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/07-22-2022/intergenerational-poverty-and-mobility-among-native-americans-in-the-us-day-1; https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/07-25-2022/intergenerational-poverty-and-mobility-among-native-americans-in-the-us-day-2

work on intergenerational poverty. The invited tribal leaders were Kevin Killer (president, Oglala Sioux Tribe), Cheryl Crazy Bull (president and CEO, American Indian College Fund), and Judith LeBlanc (director, Native Organizers Alliance).

View of Intergenerational Poverty

Hobot began by asking speakers to describe what intergenerational poverty means or looks like within their work. Crazy Bull answered by saying that the issue of intergenerational poverty is personal to her, as part of a family that was lifted out of poverty through education and employment. The aspects of life that are foundational to Native American communities, such as kinship, cultural practices, and traditional foods and medicines, are damaged by the economic condition of poverty, she said. Families that have insufficient access to food, transportation, health care, and other resources are less able to participate in the cultural practices and traditions that contribute to prosperity and well-being. In other respects, LeBlanc remarked that one of the consequences of intergenerational poverty, as well as other current crises, is that people are “returning to the basics” through a revitalized interest in language and community. For example, she said, when the Navajo reservation was hit hard by COVID-19, there was a grassroots network that rose up to provide food to families. The current crises have revitalized a “certain understanding of community that sometimes has been lost in other periods of time.” Killer focused his remarks on the role of land in the economy. Noting that running a business usually requires capital, people, and property, he observed that while some tribes have a lot of land, it tends to be tailored to the industry in the area, and the federal government has a lot of influence over the use of that land. It is important to work within the frame of the resources of the community, he said, but also to redefine, rethink, and reimagine how economics can work while keeping health, education, and welfare front and center.

Key Barriers and Obstacles

Given the workshop’s focus on federal efforts to reduce intergenerational poverty, Hobot asked panelists to identify the most significant obstacles to mobility and to discuss how the federal government’s efforts may facilitate or hinder progress. Some panelists offered specific ideas.

LeBlanc said that the federal government should provide support for Native communities in accessing capital. For example, she said, while there are a number of new grants and programs and an influx of federal money into Indian country, there is a need for the federal government to make it widely known that this money is available and to provide technical support to those applying for grants or implementing programs. Killer said that one important role for the government is helping tribal leaders navigate bureaucracy, for example, easing the process of getting broadband internet on the reservation.

Other responses to Hobot’s question took a broader perspective. Crazy Bull said that the obstacles to economic prosperity in Native communities are lack of choice, lack of restorative opportunities, and lack of safety and security. When looking at a federal program, she urged the committee to consider whether the program addresses these issues and creates an opportunity to disrupt the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Federal investment, on its own, is “wholly inadequate” to helping people move forward. If an individual is hungry or does not know where he or she is going to sleep, it is difficult to focus on education or vocation, she said. LeBlanc said that in order for federal programs to work for Native Americans, it is critical to have representation in the government and for Native and tribal input to be incorporated into program design “from the get-go.” For example, she noted, the director of the National Park Service is Native American, and this representation has resulted in better communication and consultation with tribes. Hobot agreed that representation changes the nature of the dialogue between the community and the federal government. “If we have authentic conversations” with the government, funding can be directed toward solutions that are rooted in the community’s history and traditions, rather than toward overly prescriptive approaches. Native communities know what needs to be done, he said, and they need the government to lend support and then “get out of the way.” Killer agreed, noting that solutions are more likely to work when they are created and led by the community. Native communities need the same latitude and discretion for self-determination that is given to foreign countries when they receive aid, he said.

Community-Driven Solutions

Native communities should be the designers and architects of the solutions to intergenerational poverty in their communities, said Hobot, and asked panelists to talk about strategies that have been successful. Crazy Bull emphasized the importance of programs that provide high-quality maternal and child health care, access to safe and secure housing, and interventions for domestic violence. In addition, tribally controlled education is essential to the well-being and mobility of youth, she said; research has demonstrated real advantages to an education that is identity-based and connected to community. It is critical to invest in solutions that help children get a healthy start, Crazy Bull added, and that solutions give people the safety and security they need to make good choices for themselves. LeBlanc said that communities have solutions, but a lack of support from the federal government has stymied these efforts. In some cases, philanthropists have stepped in to help. For example, LeBlanc recently facilitated a meeting funded by philanthropists in which Native doulas, doctors, and nurses discussed how to make traditional ways of birthing available to all Native women. There has been a need for this type of work for a very long time, she said, and the fact that it had not happened “means that the government isn’t doing [its job].” In another example of the federal government hindering a community solution, said LeBlanc, there was an effort many years ago on the Muscogee Reservation to create community gardens that would allow families to work together producing food that is indigenous to their land and culture. Federal programs did not allow food from non-approved sources, so philanthropists funded the program. However, when funding wound down, the program ended.

Possible Path Forward

Hobot asked the panelists to describe what they see as the path forward to transcend intergenerational poverty. These efforts, said LeBlanc, must be based on an Indigenous framework that captures a way of thinking, a way of walking, an understanding that “everything is related,” and a different conception of time. For Native people, she said, our ancestors’ past and our descendants’ future come together in what we do today. Crazy Bull agreed and added that people in Indigenous communities do not necessarily think in terms of “upward mobility” but instead have goals of caring for themselves and their families, carrying out cultural responsibilities, having the safety of a home, and having access to health care. These things, she said, are not about mobility but are about quality of life and being “able to see ourselves in seven generations the way our ancestors saw us seven generations ago.” It is critical that partners—whether they are the federal government, philanthropists, or community partners—adopt this approach and think differently. In a similar vein, Hobot said that the path forward needs to center sovereignty by using community definitions of success and by allowing communities to decide how resources are dispersed to achieve that success. Crazy Bull said that moving forward also will require truth telling about issues such as the impact of Indian mascots, the history of Native American boarding schools, and the fact that land was taken from Native Americans in order to minimize their economic power. Killer agreed and said that there is a need for “a lot of healing.” “We have all the tools, we have all the ideas,” he said, but the work requires a partnership that incorporates healing into economic policies.

DATA AND TRENDS

C. Matt Snipp (professor, Stanford University) and Emilia Simeonova (professor, Johns Hopkins University) presented on the historical factors that have shaped opportunity and mobility for Native Americans in the United States as well as on current data and research.

Historical and Structural Factors

Over the last several centuries, Native Americans have moved from a state of economic self-sufficiency to one of conditioned welfare dependency, said Snipp. As he summarized the history, in the late 19th century, as White settlers moved into Indian territory and the population of Native Americans plummeted, it looked certain that American Indians would eventually disappear entirely. The so-called “Indian problem” shifted away from being a military and security issue and toward the question of how to “humanely facilitate” the extinction of Native society and “gradually ease Native people into the dustbins of history.” A two-pronged approach was adopted, with one prong aimed at children and one at

adults. For children, a system of boarding schools was established that was designed to force the assimilation of Native people and provide them with vocational training for jobs in mainstream U.S. society. These schools were enormously harmful, said Snipp, contributing to language extinction, family disruption, and a historic antipathy toward schooling, with Native Americans viewing boarding schools and the people who ran them as the enemy.

For adults, the main vehicle of assimilation was land allotment, Snipp continued. Native individuals were given a tract of land, with a deed and a title, and whatever was left was sold to White settlers. While the hope was that Indian people would take pride of ownership in their land and become farmers, the result was massive land losses and “reservation checkerboarding,”³ a pattern of ownership that continues to serve as an impediment to planning and development on the reservation. Before land allotment, Native people collectively possessed roughly 156 million acres. By the end of the allotment era in 1930, this had shrunk to 30 million acres. Through the early 20th century, the focus on assimilation remained, although the land allotment policy ended and boarding school curriculum was revised to be less oppressive. After World War II, the government implemented a new approach, known as Termination and Relocation, which called for the unilateral abolition of tribal lands. Many reservations were dissolved and Indians were relocated to urban areas and offered job training and resettlement assistance. The program was “generally deemed a failure,” said Snipp, as it took “poor, uneducated, unemployed Indians on reservations” and moved them to cities where they were “poor, urban, uneducated, unemployed Indians.” In 1975, Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act (ISDEAA), also known as “the 638 Act,” based on its Public Law number. ISDEAA mandated the devolution of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA’s) oversight in the 1970s and 1980s, said Snipp, and relocation programs were formally ended in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan. Today, said Snipp, tribes are still trying to restore the lands that were lost through allotment. However, a number of obstacles stand in their way, including opposition from state and local governments due to loss to their tax base and high land prices.

CURRENT DATA AND RESEARCH

With this historical perspective in mind, Simeonova focused on the available data on mobility among Native Americans and noted challenges to further research (see Box 1-1). First, she emphasized that the Native American population is not a monolith, and that there are tremendous differences between rural and urban populations and among different tribal affiliations. The majority of people who identify today as American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) live off the reservation, and a great many live in urban settings. There are more people who identify as AIAN in combination with other races than people who identify as AIAN alone. Simeonova also said there are no reliable sources of data on who is tribally enrolled or in which tribes. Compared to the U.S. population as a whole, those who identify as AIAN are less likely to be college educated, are more likely to be unemployed, and have a lower median income. Unemployment rates among AIAN people are far higher on the reservation than off of it. Data on American Indian children, said Simeonova, show that around 30 percent of those who do not live on the reservation live in poverty, while on the reservation the proportion is close to half.

Simeonova also shared several examples of research on mobility among Native Americans. Using data from the Great Smoky Mountain Study,⁴ Simeonova and her colleagues looked at the impact of unconditional cash transfers funded out of Native American-run casino operations, and found a number of positive benefits, including:

• Reduced criminality among both parents and children
• Improved relationships between parents and between parents and children

___________________

³ Native lands that were alienated as a result of the General Allotment Act of 1887 were sold or transferred to non-Native parties but remained within reservation boundaries. As a result, trust lands, fee lands, and lands owned by tribes, individual Native and non-Natives are mixed together on the reservation, creating a checkerboard pattern (https://iltf.org/land-issues/issues/).

⁴ The Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS) is a longitudinal, population-based community survey of children and adolescents in North Carolina. The original participants in GSMS include 1420 children and their parents, from western North Carolina, with 349 of the youth in the study enrolled as members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. See here for more details: https://devepi.duhs.duke.edu/studies/great-smoky-mountains-study/

• Improved high school graduation rates
• Improved personality traits in children up to age 16
• Decreased prevalence of mental health issues for adolescents
• Higher levels of future civic participation among children, and
• Improved economic well-being for children, particularly those who suffered from worse mental health (Akee et al., 2010, 2013, 2018, 2020; Akee, Jones, and Simeonova, 2022).

Another study used IRS data to examine the impact of tribal casino operations (Simeonova, Akee, and Jones, 2021). The study found that Native American wages and income increased substantially after casinos began operating, and that children who resided on reservations at the time had higher future earnings. IRS data were also used by Akee, Jones, and Porter (2019) to examine income mobility over time; they found that Native Americans, relative to other racial groups, were more likely to experience downward income mobility between 2000 and 2014. A study that used similar data sources to examine intergenerational mobility (Chetty et al., 2018) found that AIAN children have low rates of upward mobility and high rates of downward mobility.

DRIVERS AND INTERVENTIONS OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY AMONG NATIVE AMERICANS

Stephanie Fryberg⁵ (professor, University of Michigan) moderated a discussion with these participating researchers: Matt Gregg (senior economist,

___________________

⁵ Member of the National Academies’ Committee on Policies and Program to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis), Megan Bang (professor, Northwestern University, and senior vice president, Spencer Foundation), Beth Redbird (assistant professor, Northwestern University), and Karina Walters (professor, University of Washington). The discussion centered on drivers of the perpetuation of poverty from childhood into adulthood among Native Americans in the United States, and promising interventions to reduce the chances that Native American children will be poor as adults.

There is a wide spectrum of socioeconomic outcomes across tribal communities, said Gregg. However, a few high-level drivers of intergenerational poverty are shared across many tribal communities. First, tribal members are “effectively shut out of the access to housing wealth” due to challenges including a lengthy mortgage process, higher cost for mortgages for mobile homes, and a lack of banking services on reservations. Second, the best lands and resources were taken away from tribal hands, and tribal governments were suppressed for hundreds of years. While tribes have been able to exert sovereignty since the 1970s, “they’re still getting their feet back under themselves.” Third, said Gregg, there has been a historic lack of public and private investment in reservation lands (e.g., investments in broadband internet or health care infrastructure).

Interventions to impact intergenerational mobility could be targeted at any of the three legs of stable and robust

economies, said Gregg: stable rule of law, education, and health care. Interventions in these areas have the potential to break the cycle of poverty; in Indian Country, interventions need to be merged with traditional cultures. It is critical for reservations to have a stable rule of law in order to promote private investment and retain tribal members; the creation of culturally specific tribal institutions can spur local development (e.g., Navajo Peacemaking Courts).⁶ Additionally, tribes need clear jurisdiction on criminal and civil matters; certainty in this area will help improve economic development. The other two legs of stable and robust economies—education and health care—are both treaty rights. The question, Gregg said, is what should these rights look like in the 21st century? For example, there are some universities that provide free tuition for members of federally recognized tribes in the state. “Is that enough,” asked Gregg, or should more be done? Similarly, Killer said that there are treaty provisions that say that each reservation or territory shall be afforded one doctor, but how does this play out in the context of modern health care?

Simeonova said that when considering how to impact intergenerational mobility, it is important to examine whether the levers and programs that have been used elsewhere will be effective for AIAN populations. Another issue, she said, is whether the policies are being designed and executed by the federal government, the tribal governments, some combination of the two, or another entity. The political, historical, and institutional context of AIAN communities is complex, and the nuances of tribal sovereignty are often poorly understood. While gaining understanding of this context is costly, she said, any intervention or data collection effort in this community must be designed and conducted in a way that is sensitive to the context and identities of these populations that have historically been mistreated.

EDUCATION

“Increased educational attainment … without a deep transformation of education models perpetuates a problem and will continue to create the problems” associated with intergenerational poverty, said Bang. Schooling has been a key tool of assimilation of Native communities, and the source of many harms. Boarding schools were aimed at “eradicating indigenous intellectual, cultural, and linguistic forms of life.” Hobot characterized education as a system of the “three ‘-tions’: assimilation, indoctrination, and subjugation.” While many in the United States believe that these policies are in the distant past, said Bang, they are ever-present in Native communities today. Bang’s son recently graduated from high school; he is the descendent of seven people who attended boarding schools, and he was the first male in the family to graduate from high school. He was not allowed to walk in his graduation ceremony unless he removed all cultural indicators, she said. The boarding school policies that stripped Native children of their culture, language, and clothing are still “very much alive.”

Bang gave an overview of where and how Native students are educated today, focusing on the K-12 system. The Native American population is young, she said; 29 percent of Native people are under 18 years old. The huge majority of Native students—90 percent—attend public schools, and the majority do not go to tribally controlled schools or schools on the reservation. The reading and mathematics scores of AIAN students are consistently lower than the scores of White students and look similar to the scores of Black and Hispanic students. Over the last 15 years, scores have remained relatively flat or decreased in public schools, although scores have increased for students who attend schools operated by tribes. Bang said that “where educational self-determination and tribal sovereignty are most likely to be exercised, we do see educational improvement.”

The science of learning and development has demonstrated that academic performance can be impacted by a school’s stance on equity, by whether culturally responsive instruction is utilized, by whether and how prior knowledge and ways of knowing are engaged in the classroom, and by the ability of a student to bring their racial and cultural identity to the classroom (NASEM, 2018). However, said Bang, schools today are

___________________

⁶ See more details here: https://courts.navajo-nsn.gov/indexpeacemaking.htm

the “main drivers of Indigenous absence in peoples’ knowledge,” and this absence enables systemic racism and presents challenges for Native people. Only half of states require teaching about Indigenous people, and 87 percent of those dictate the teaching of Indigenous people in the context of pre-1900 U.S. history (Shear et al., 2015). A majority of language arts and mathematics teachers rarely or never mention Native people in class (Rampey et al., 2021). This means, said Bang, that we live in a society that knows very little about Native people, and what is known is largely a historicized image. While the erasure of Native people from educational curricula has significant impacts on Native American students, there are broader consequences as well. It is imperative that all Americans know about Native people, said Bang, because this history is the “very foundation of the legitimacy of the United States.” LeBlanc agreed, and said that it must become the norm, rather than the exception, that all students learn about and understand Indigenous history: “Indigenous life on this land is foundational to understanding how we got to where we are at.” Implementing a curriculum that includes learning about Native history is a “critical battle” not just for Native children, but for all children, said LeBlanc.

Bang urged the committee to consider several areas for action in order to improve education and break the cycle of intergenerational poverty:

• Schooling experiences need to be grounded in and contribute to the revitalization of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge, culture, and language.
• Educational policies must take seriously the historical trauma that has been systematically inflicted and must support the cultivation of well-being for these communities and individuals.
• The relationships between schools, families, and communities need to be transformed.

In Minneapolis within his organization, shared Hobot, is an alternative program that meets the needs of Native American students by centering their culture, perspectives, and histories. Hobot said that these types of new approaches to education are a way to develop and cultivate future leaders who are “well-rooted in their identities, but have the skill sets to navigate the dominant culture.” In the world of higher education, Crazy Bull said that the College Fund has produced recommendations for post-secondary institutions—predominantly White institutions—on ways that they can create a more inclusive, welcoming, and safe environment for Native students (see American Indian College Fund 2019). Among the recommendations are recruiting more Native people to teach or work at the institutions and ensuring that the curriculum includes learning about tribes and Native communities.

HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE

A healthy population translates into a productive, stable, and secure tribal nation, said Walters. Much of the research on health in Indian Country has focused on structural and social determinants, she said, but it is critical to also acknowledge and address how issues such as colonialism and historic trauma can impact the health and well-being of Native Americans today. As an example, Walters shared her experience working to reduce obesity in her tribe, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Obesity and its comorbidities are a big issue, with one in three tribal youth projected to be living with Type II diabetes by 2050. The tribe has “thrown millions of dollars doing all of the right things” at the problem of obesity: walking paths, gyms, and greenhouses were built, food access was improved, and individuals were given education and programming. However, despite these efforts, obesity levels were reduced by only about three percent.

When talking with elders and community members about why these efforts were not successful, Walters said there were two main messages. First, people highlighted the importance of building health promotion programs based on Indigenous world views and knowledge. Second, she said, “people talked about a grief that just stayed present.” Traumatic events and settler colonialism have stretched throughout history, and continue to impact communities today, but they are often left out of the conversation about health and well-being, said Walters. For example, precolonial policies encouraged the scalping and enslavement of Native people; late-1800s laws outlawed Indian religions and languages;

boarding schools forced children away from their cultures and traditions; and the Indian Adoption Project of the 1970s removed many children from their families and communities. These types of historical traumas across multiple generations have been found to be associated with present-day issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol-related problems, and drug use. These relationships highlight the need to address historical determinants in current policies, said Walters, and to develop linkages between trauma, mental health, and the stability of tribal nations.

Native Americans have a treaty right to health care through the Indian Health Service (IHS). Unfortunately, said Walters, IHS is “woefully underfunded” to the point that it has “an impossible task to meet its trust obligations to ensure the health and well-being of Indian people in the United States.” From the beginning, she said, Congress did not appropriate sufficient money for Native health care, and the program has been a “quasi-symbolic gesture.” There are a number of issues in the current system. Less than 3 percent of funding goes to urban areas, where 65 percent of the community lives, said Walters. LeBlanc emphasized that treaty rights such as health care apply to all Native Americans, including those in urban areas. It can be difficult to get quality doctors and dentists out to remote areas, said Fryberg, and some Native Americans avoid IHS services because of past experiences with poor care. Walters said that IHS facilities are sometimes staffed by doctors “fresh out of medical school” who do not have the experience to address the issues and concerns in Indian Country. There is a critical need to invest in the infrastructure of the community in order to provide the care where and when it is needed.

The current administration has made attempts to address these issues, including through increased funding to IHS and a proposal to elevate the director of IHS to an assistant secretary position, said Walters. The ISDEAA allows tribes to use IHS funding to develop their own health programs under “638 compacts,”⁷ said Killer, who shared his experience with the two separate health care systems for the Oglala Sioux Tribe. On the reservation, the IHS does good work, but it is “extremely bureaucratic” and hard to get things moving. The other organization is Oyate Health Center, which provides care to the urban Native community living in Rapid City, South Dakota. This process has had “missteps and mishaps” but overall has been going in a positive direction. For Native Americans, providing their own health care is an extension of the treaty right, he said, and allows them to have a responsive, tribal member-led health care system. Redbird added that because Native Americans have viewed health care as a human right for centuries, they have innovative and creative ideas for how to serve their communities. Walters said that while 638 compacts allow tribes to exercise some sovereignty, the health processes and practices are still tied to federal policies and funds. She suggested that it would be helpful to conduct a systematic review of IHS and its current functioning, as well as how these compacts are working.

CLOSING

In closing, Greg Duncan⁸ (professor, University of California, Irvine) noted that the workshop presented two approaches to improving economic mobility among Native Americans: the first, removing barriers to wealth accumulation to allow tribes to be less constrained in their approach to development, and the second, leveraging outside resources to implement targeted programs. Redbird commented that the first approach is the one with the most support from tribes. Tribes know their people, their lands, and their hurdles best, she said, and because the tribal population is diverse and complicated, one-size-fits-all programs often fail in Indian Country. This is the “great part about tribes,” said Redbird; there are more than 500 nations addressing issues in different ways. The allocation of resources and removal of barriers would be among the best and most effective ways to address the issue, she said. Taking this approach in the arena of education, said Bang, would require building the infrastructure for a self-determining, tribally controlled education system; she said that change would have massive implications around trust responsibilities and treaty rights.

___________________

⁷https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/assets/bia/ots/ots/pdf/Public_Law93-638.pdf

⁸ Chair of the National Academies’ Committee on Policies and Program to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty.

Snipp warned that “federal meddling has been enormously damaging” to Native Americans over the course of the 20th century. He emphasized that whatever approach the federal government takes, it must work collaboratively and directly involve tribal governments. The federal government should enable and support tribes in economic development “without trying to direct them,” he said. Simeonova agreed that whatever the federal government does should be done with tribal involvement and collaboration. The most effective approaches, she said, are those that give people resources and the freedom to use them as they see fit.

All of the issues discussed at the workshop—lack of good data, underfunded health care systems, inadequate housing, poor educational outcomes, and barriers to mobility—are in part a manifestation of the miseducation of the American population, said Bang. The historical efforts to eradicate Native Americans and the current lack of education about and attention to Native Americans make it possible for these inequities to persist. Redbird added that with a large proportion of Native Americans being under 18, immediate and meaningful action on these issues has the potential to transform many lives. She warned, however, that “failing to act today has the potential to be detrimental in ways and on a scale” that hasn’t been seen in recent history.

Fryberg thanked workshop speakers, moderators, and participants, and adjourned the workshop.

REFERENCES

Indigenous Education. Springer Nature Singapore. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-1839-8_50-1

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). 2018. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24783

———. 2019. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Newland, Bryan. 2022. Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative: Investigative Report. Bureau of Indian Affairs. https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/inline-files/bsi_investigative_report_may_2022_508.pdf

Rampey, B. D., S. C. Faircloth, R. P. Whorton, and J. Deaton. 2021. National Indian Education Study, 2019. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/studies/pdf/2021018.pdf

Shear, Sarah B., Ryan T. Knowles, Gregory J. Soden, and Antonio J. Castro. 2015. “Manifesting Destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous Peoples in K–12 U.S. History Standards.” Theory & Research in Social Education 43(1): 68–101.

Simeonova, Emilia, Randall Akee, and Maggie R. Jones. 2021. “Gaming Opportunities: American Indian Casinos, Cash Transfers, and Income Mobility on the Reservation.” AEA Papers and Proceedings 111: 221–26.

DISCLAIMER This Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was prepared by Erin Forstag as a factual summary of what occurred at the meeting. The statements made are those of the rapporteur or individual meeting participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all meeting participants, the planning committee, or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

COMMITTEE ON POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO REDUCE INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY GREG J. DUNCAN, University of California, Irvine; FENABA R. ADDO, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; ANNA AIZER, Brown University; MARGARET R. BURCHINAL, University of Virginia; RAJ CHETTY, Harvard University; STEPHANIE FRYBERG, University of Michigan; HARRY J. HOLZER, Georgetown University; VONNIE C. MCLOYD, University of Michigan; KIMBERLY G. MONTEZ, Wake Forest School of Medicine; AISHA D. NYANDORO, Springboard to Opportunities; MARY E. PATTILLO, Northwestern University; JESSE ROTHSTEIN, University of California, Berkeley; MICHAEL R. STRAIN, American Enterprise Institute; STEPHEN J. TREJO, University of Texas at Austin; and consultant RITA HAMAD, James C. Puffer American Board of Family Medicine/National Academy of Medicine Fellow.

REVIEWERS To ensure that it meets institutional standards for quality and objectivity, this Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was reviewed by MARGARET (PEG) BURCHINAL, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. We also thank staff member EMILY TWIGG for reading and providing helpful comments on this manuscript. KIRSTEN SAMPSON SNYDER, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, served as the review coordinator.

SPONSORS This workshop was supported by contracts between the National Academy of Sciences and the Administration for Children and Families, Bainum Family Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Foundation for Child Development, Russell Sage Foundation, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.

For additional information regarding the workshop, visit: https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/07-22-2022/intergenerational-poverty-and-mobility-among-native-americans-in-the-us-day-1

Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Intergenerational Poverty and Mobility Among Native Americans in the United States: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26909.

Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education Copyright 2023 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.