Native American Studies

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The Department of Native American Studies was established to provide and advance quality education for and about American Indians of Montana, the region, and the nation. In fulfilling this mission, the Department is committed to meet the changing needs of Montana's Indian tribes and all Montana citizens through excellence in teaching, research, and service. In its academic program, the department provides concentrated study through an undergraduate minor, the first online graduate certificate in Native American Studies offered, and a Master of Arts degree in Native American Studies. Students in any major can also gain a multicultural perspective through NAS offerings in the University's core curriculum. The Department, through its research and other creative efforts, actively pursues interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of Native American Studies.

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    The relative poverty of American Indian reservations : why does reservation poverty persist despite rich neighbors?
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2006) Cookson Jr., John Anthony; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert K. Fleck.
    American Indian reservations have per capita incomes $9,000 lower than adjacent counties. This paper seeks to explain why using an approach akin to the analysis of country-level data. I estimate differences in levels of income and income growth for a decade where Indian economies were transformed greatly by casino gambling - the 1990s. I test several recent innovations in the theory of economic growth within the context of American Indian economies and assess how economic performance depends on veto players, human capital investment, and windfall wealth. I find that measures of rule of law, rent seeking, and human capital are the most economically significant predictors of the per capita income gap. In addition, the size of Indian casinos is strongly correlated with convergence and economic growth, suggesting that tribal investment in Indian casinos plays an important role in reservation economies. From the work done here, promoting economic growth through enhancing a stable investment climate appears to be the most successful development strategy. Moreover, this study contributes to the broader literature on economic growth by providing new insight into the way institutional quality affects the speed of, or potentially lack of, convergence.
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