The Changing Political and Economic Status of the American Indians

A bstract . Resource development on American Indian lands is bringing about a dramatic transformation of the political and economic status of American Indians. Recently, scholars observing this change have increasingly used underdevelopment theory to explain the nature of these changes. However, this discussion points out that as applied to American Indians , the perspective of underdevelopment theory is skewed in several important ways. Specifically, it fails to take into account the distinctive historical and political status of Indians in American society , A simple typology, captive nations 2Lad internal colonies is proposed for describing the status of Indian tribes before and after development.