Yakama Case Study

In studying my area category of scholarship, I have learned about a handful of systems that have perpetuated poverty on reservations and specifically in Yakama, and also the impact that the U.S. government has in increasing this poverty. In the Treaty of 1855, which lead to the creation of the Yakama Reservation, the U.S. government guaranteed the Yakama people with 1.3 million acres of their original 10.8 million acres that they lived on. The rest of the land was declared “ceced land” and was give nover to white settlers. This treaty had the largest influence on land and natural resource loss, both of which are necessary for flourishing in a kin-ordered society’s way of life. In 1922, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided to move the Yakama
government is obligated to extend aid to reservations, claiming that the responsibilities of the EDA extend to all areas that are below the poverty line which includes much of reservation land, others fear that it is often misdirected. Kalt and Cornell discuss the faults of this “standard approach” of U.S. government aid and propose a new solution that they describe as the “nation-building” approach. In this proposed solution, all of the decision making for where money should be spent and what aspects of society are developed are placed in the hands of the native people. This idea is found favorable by many scholars because those who are are making decisions of development are impacted by the effects, whether positive or negative, rather than having the decisions made by an alienated and unaffected third party. The issue with these proposed solution is finding a way to used the government resources in a way that empowers the reservation communities. Also, there are debates around where nonprofits fit into this equation, because in many circumstances they are an unaffected third party, however they usually have a deeper relationship and therefore a better understanding for what is best for the native