Cultural Universals

“30 Days – Life on the Reservation”
Elements, patterns, traits, or institutions that are common to all human cultures worldwide

https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/t/0_mn129u0v

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The Navajo are Fighting for Water

Reservation Issues Today

30 Days was a reality television show on the FX cable network in the United States, created and hosted by Morgan Spurlock. In each episode, Spurlock, or some other person or group of people, spend 30 days immersing themselves in a particular lifestyle with which they are unfamiliar (e.g. working for minimum wage, being in prison, a Christian living as a Muslim etc.), while discussing related social issues. As in Spurlock's film, Super Size Me, there are a number of rules unique to each situation which must be followed during each such experiment. At least one episode each season has featured Spurlock as the person spending the month in the particular lifestyle.

Minimum Wage

Anti-Aging

Muslims and America

Straight Man in a Gay World

Off the Grid

Binge Drinking Mom

Immigration

Outsourcing

Atheist vs. Christian

New Age

Pro-life, Pro-choice

Jail

Working in a Coal Mine

Living in a Wheelchair

Animal Rights

Same Sex Parenting

Gun Nation

Life on an Indian Reservation 

"30 Days" took host and creator Morgan Spurlock to a Navajo Indian reservation to experience Native American life. Would he find a Najavo nation on the rise, or would he discover that Native Americans are still on the bottom of the socio-economic totem pole, he wondered.  Spurlock would live by three rules: he'd move onto the reservation and become part of a typical Navajo family; he'd learn the Navajo language; and soak up Navajo culture by taking part in Navajo ceremonies.

Clinton, Trump and the rest of the American political establishment are incapable of providing lasting solutions for the Lakota of Pine Ridge or the rest of the 566 federally recognised tribal entities in the US, he says.

More than 5.1 million people in the US identify as fully or partially Native American or Alaska Native, according to the US Census Bureau. Up to 2.5 million identify as fully indigenous Native American or Alaska Native. Of that total, more than half do not live on reservations.

Despite widely varying conditions in indigenous communities, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs estimates that "per capita income in Indian areas is about half that of the US average, and the poverty rate is around three times higher".

Among the most impoverished of these reservations, Pine Ridge is plagued by an 80 to 90 percent unemployment rate with a median individual income of $4,000 a year,according to the Re-Member nonprofit organisation's 2007 statistics.

Against this backdrop of poverty and joblessness, public health has suffered, according to Re-Member. More than 80 percent of residents suffer from alcoholism. A quarter of children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome or similar conditions. Life expectancy - 48 years for men, 52 for women - is the second-lowest in the western hemisphere, behind only the Caribbean country Haiti.

The tuberculosis and diabetes rates are eight times the national averages, while the cervical cancer rate is five times more than the US average.

The Navajo Nation was late launching its gambling enterprise, opening Fire Rock Casino in Church Rock, New Mexico, near Gallup, in 2008, 20 years after the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988 ignited an Indian casino industry that today spans 28 states and generates $28.5 billion a year.

Fire Rock, Flowing Waters Casino near Shiprock, Northern Edge Casino in Farmington and the flagship Twin Arrows Casino Resort on Interstate 40 west of Flagstaff generated about $120 million in combined revenues in 2015, according to reliable sources. (Tribal government enterprise figures are not publicly disclosed.)

https://ggbmagazine.com/article/better-late-than-never/

http://www.discovernavajo.com/navajo-casinos.aspx