S.E. RUCKMAN: No Reservations about new "Promise Zones"

One sure fire way to get folk's attention is money. A recent announcement by President Barack Obama to send federal monies (and initiatives) into underprivileged areas filtered through the haze of extreme bi-partisanship that had lulled me into a light doze.

Naming them as "Promise Zones," Obama hinted at unparalleled funds to help stricken areas as a continuation of the ever pressing war on poverty. The move is designed to promote mixed income housing and tax credits to stimulate economic development.

Poverty is a funny thing. It is an equal opportunity employer, liberally affecting urban and rural areas alike. Obama's sites were a perfect reflection on this point. Blighted cities like San Antonio, Texas, Los Angeles, CA, Philadelphia, PA were named as well as eastern Kentucky and the Choctaw Nation of OK.

My half hearted attention suddenly became pinpoint sharp. Naturally, no other areas in this country can best be emblematic of societal blight than Indian Country. Take your pick. It's like playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey without a blindfold. American Indians lead the nation in the highest rates of virtually every social malady that is monitored.

But naming a region that has spawned a robust Indian gaming economy surprised me. I am not saying Southeastern OK lacks in circumstance that breeds poverty, it does. Rampant methamphetamine use and manufacture is a scourge there that wreaks damage liberally. Rather I was shocked that no real reservation areas (or those adjoining reservations) were listed in the newly minted "Promise Zones."

Surely the president's advisors would know that Indian reservations are particularly vulnerable sore spots, a kind of a political black hole where money and outreach fold over and succumb to the strength of forces not exactly understood by even the best sociologists. But reservations do not lack in lack.

I just came back from spending a month on the Navajo Reservation. I am no longer amazed by the bleakness of the economic and actual landscape like I was two decades ago. It is the starkness borne of acceptance that astounds me. Change there is best nurtured from the inside out, I am learning.

A story I wrote not too long ago was about the lack of office space available to anchor social programs (in this case, pre-natal care) on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I have never been there but I remember the oppressive thrall described via phone. The voice was monotone but the circumstances were palpable and dire. The story stayed with me long after.

President Obama pointed out that the focus of this war against poverty was to give children living in scarcity incentive to shine and thus secure a chance to rise above suffocating circumstances. No small feat. And admirable. Other factors like poverty mindset and high crime are daunting obstacles. Still, the effort must be made.

More announcements of other promise zones are forthcoming, we are told. It is my fervent plea with the assurance of absolute conviction that Obama will also include perimeters of Indian reservations. I understand tax credits are moot points in Indian Country, but mixed income housing is not.

I am not exactly endorsing the "Promise Zones" tag but naming areas situated in or by Indian reservations seems fitting since these Native zones were fostered by similar promises of the same government.