PRESIDENT CLINTON'S TRIP TO BRING DIGITAL OPPORTUNITY TO ALL AMERICANS

BACKGROUND ON INDIAN COUNTRY: THE NAVAJO NATION

APRIL 17, 2000

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES FACING NATIVE AMERICANS

In the United States today, there are more than 2.4 million Native Americans that belong to more than 550 tribes. Almost everywhere, they face serious economic challenges: 
      - Half the total Native American workforce is unemployed - 50 percent in 1997 (Bureau of Indian Affairs 1997). 
      - Nearly one-third of Native Americans live in poverty, compared to 13 percent of the total U.S. population (Census Bureau, 1995). 
      - Thirty-eight percent of Indian children aged 6 to 11 live below the poverty level, more than twice the 18 percent rate for the U.S. population as a whole. (Indian Health Service, 1997)

BACKGROUND ON THE NAVAJO NATION AND SHIPROCK, NEW MEXICO

With a population of about 235,000 and covering an area of 16.2 million acres, the Navajo Nation is the largest Indian reservation in the United States. 
Shiprock, NM, population 9,095, is the community on the reservation that President Clinton will visit. It lies in the northeastern corner of the Navajo Nation, not far from the point where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona meet. The town gets its name from a 1,700 foot geological monument rising impressively from the surrounding plains. The Navajo face most of the economic challenges confronting Indian reservations across the United States, especially in building an Information Age economy. 
- The Navajo Nation's unemployment rate was 58 percent in 1997 (Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1997). 
- With 38.8 percent of the Navajo Nation younger than age 16, the local economy will have to create 3,500 jobs per year in order to keep an already high unemployment rate from climbing further (Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1997). 
- Only 22.5 percent of Navajo homes have telephone service compared to 94.1 percent of all households in the United States (Dept. of Commerce, 1999; American Indian Report, March, 2000). 
- The few telephone lines that exist are often antiquated and therefore not well suited to transmitting the large volumes of data that flow along the Internet. 
- Among the few Navajo towns that have Internet service, even fewer have more than one Internet Service Provider and thus do not receive the low prices made possible by competition.