American Indian Culture and Research Journal

There is agreement today among a variety of scholars that the cultural characteristics of a tribe affect its economic development. Despite this agreement, a variety of pronouncements regarding that effect have been espoused. Some scholars argue that any analysis of economic development in a region must explicitly incorporate the cultural characteristics of the people in that region. Other scholars contend that culture may serve as a barrier to development on reservations. It has also been popular to assume that acculturation eliminated traditional pre-reservation cultures of tribes. Questions remain about the continuity of pre-reservation cultural characteristics and the impact of those characteristics on economic outcomes. Part of the uncertainty about the impact of culture on economic development, in any given instance, lies in the nature of the studies undertaken in this area. Analyses of the role of culture in development have generally remained anecdotal or subjective, focusing on one tribe. As a result, the findings of those studies are not easily generalized. While cross-tribal analyses do exist, they do not typically account for the array of cultural characteristics of a tribe that might affect the development process. Further, the analyses generally do not consider whether and how culture affects the various dimensions of the development process. Examples of the different dimensions in which a reservation economy can develop include the level of economic activity and the distribution of income across households on the reservation.