NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN POVERTY

Webmaster's note:

This photo assignment served as my first experience with historic Native American poverty and living conditions on poor North American Indian reservations.

The very next day I was on a full-day job photographing a child's extravagant birthday party at his parents' $22,000,000 home....

LOS COYOTES INDIAN RESERVATION, JULY 1998:

A Cahuilla Native American family poses alongside the 8-by 13-foot travel trailer that they lived in together for the past two years on the Los Coyotes Indian reservation; a federally-recognized Indian reservation located in a remote mountain wilderness area of San Diego County.

This Indian home, like too many other Native American homes in North America reservation communities, is without electricity and running water.

Just two months earlier, this Cahuilla family was moved into an adjacent new 24- by 46-foot, three-bedroom home (with electricity & water) as part of a program, sponsored by national and California gaming tribes, to aid the nongaming tribes in their historical conditions of Native American poverty.

I was hired to produce a series of photographs and 30x50-inch display prints for a conference display.

Agency: Waltona Manion and Associates

UPDATE 2006:

Since the 1998 photo was taken, housing has improved on Los Coyotes reservation.

21st CENTURY NATIVE AMERICAN LIVING CONDITIONS

CALIFORNIA INDIAN TRIBAL DOCUMENTARY picture essays showcases the sensitive journalistic documentation of village inhabitants indigenous lifestyles of the impoverished Indian ejidos of Baja, environmental portraits, habitations and pictures.