The high cost of gas and food make life on the reservation even more difficult than usual
During a hot, hazy morning on Oregon's Warm Springs Indian Reservation, resident Jake Billy leans on his car and tells a story. Once a long time ago there was someone special in his life.
"I almost married that girl," he says. "It was very close. It was iffy."
Things didn't work out. But Billy stayed in touch with his ex and her family. When his ex girlfriend's sister died recently, he wanted to go to the funeral a three hour drive away. But he just didn't have the money for gas. "I said my goodbyes from here," he says.
These kinds of heart wrenching decisions illustrate the quiet assault of inflation on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, located about 100 miles southeast of Portland. Had Billy been able to go to the funeral, he would have been able to offer emotional support to the family. "Which is something that natives do," says Billy. "It's our culture."
o other single group in the country is feeling as much financial strain right now as are Native Americans. A recent poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found inflation has caused a staggering 69% of Native Americans significant financial problems.
According to census data, close to 27% of Native Americans live in poverty. That's significantly more than the rest of the country, which averages close to 15%.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/20/1117689118/poll-69-of-native-americans-say-inflation-is-severely-affecting-their-lives