Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The “urban Indian” lives mainly in the big cities of the West. Los Angeles has
the largest Indian community of the United States with nearly 100,000 people. The
largest community in the East lives in New York (50,000). With over
100,000 Native Americans, Inuit, and Aleuts, Alaska is the only state where
“natives” represent more than 10% of the total population. In descending order, the
states with the largest community of Native Americans after Alaska are California,
Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. The proportion of Native Americans in the
total population of New Mexico reaches 9%. Tensions between Indians and whites
over land matters have not disappeared, particularly in Alaska where litigation
primarily concerns mineral rights. Native Americans continue to suffer from white
domination. They are the poorest inhabitants of the United States. The average per
capita income of the Native American community was only 60% of the national
average in 1999. Nearly 30% of the population lives below the poverty line.
The Native American community is the only community that still lives for the
most part outside of metropolitan areas in the United States (see Figure 4.2). This is
why, although they do not represent 1% of the total population, Native Americans
are relatively “visible” in the West and in the High Plains, and they even dominate
some counties of the Southwestern desert inlands where the largest reservations are
located (Hopi, Navajo, etc.).
Although relatively large (112,500 people in the 2000 census), the Indigenous
Hawaiian community, a group originally from Polynesia, accounts for only 9% of
the population of Hawaii. It is now widely integrated into the population, to the
point where two-thirds of the community is dispersed throughout the rest of the
United States.
4.2. A nation of immigrants
Over 99% of the population of the United States is of immigrant descent. The
America of 1920 was very concerned about ethnic origins and the linguistic and
religious diversity of recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. This led
Congress to take restrictive measures against immigration.
Different communities of European descent melted into the American “melting
pot” however and all now belong to one “race” - white “non-Hispanic”. Their
religious diversity persists, but their linguistic diversity has disappeared, and all
speak English as their mother tongue with very few exceptions, such as the
Louisiana “Cajuns”.
