This page does not provide an exhaustive or complete list of resources available, but it does provide some of those we’ve found to be the most useful to inform service in Indian community efforts. The Corporation does not specifically endorse non-Corporation documents, but it does encourage ongoing research, education, and development.

If there are particular tools or resources you’ve found helpful and are willing to share, please forward the item, or information on how to find it, to kferguson@cns.gov.

Corporation Resources  

• Fact Sheets
  • National Service in Indian Communities (271 KB PDF)
  • Corporation for National and Community Service (121 KB PDF)
  • Senior Corps (103 KB PDF)
  • AmeriCorps (108 KB PDF)
  • Learn and Serve America (99 KB PDF)
  • Martin Luther King Day of Service (1.29 MB PDF
        
• Corporation Strategic Plan
  • Resource Guide for the Strategic Initiatives (856 KB PDF)
        
• Issue Briefs
  • National Service: Addressing Key Native American Issues (410 KB PDF)
  • Faith Based and Community Initiatives (157 KB PDF)
  • Leveling the Path to Participation: Volunteering and Civic Engagement Among Youth From Disadvantaged Circumstances (120 KB PDF)
  • Mentoring in America: A Summary of New Research (132 KB PDF)
  • National Service and Mentoring (344 KB PDF)
  • The Health Benefits of Volunteering: A Review of Recent Research (728 KB PDF)
        
• Research and Policy Development
  • Volunteering in America: 2007 State Trends and Rankings in Civic Life
  • Volunteering in America: 2007 City Trends and Rankings
  • Youth Helping America: The Role of Social Institutions in Teen Volunteering (120 KB PDF)

Demographics and Community Information

• Alaska Native Knowledge Network
        
• U.S. Census Bureau American Indian/Alaska Native Data and Links
      
• Urban Indian History and Fact Sheet
      
  Currently, more than 65% of the American Indian and Alaska Native populations reside in urban or suburban areas, away from their reservations. This statistic is in large part the consequence of Federal relocation policy of the 1950s and 1970s and inadequate economic opportunities on reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Relocation Act poorly attempted to “assimilate” American Indians into the general population by moving over 85,000 Indian people from the reservations to urban areas between 1952 and 1972 with the promise of jobs and homes, both of which were inadequately or not provided.
  

Critical Issues in Indian Communities

Key Policy and Issue Areas

• 2007 State of Indian Nations
      
  National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) President Joe Garcia Delivers 5th Annual State of Indian Nations Address. January 2007.
      
• Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country
      
  The United States Commission on Civil Rights transmits this report, A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country, pursuant to Public Law 103-419. This report examines federal funding of programs intended to assist Native Americans at the U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Education, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. In this report the Commission assesses the adequacy of funding provided via programs administered by these six agencies and the unmet needs that persist in Indian Country. July 2003.

Violence and Crime

• American Indians and Crime: 1992-2002
      
  This report represents a compilation and new analysis of data on the incidence, prevalence, and consequences of violent crime among American Indians. The report uses data from a wide variety of sources, including statistical series maintained by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and the U.S. Census Bureau. The findings reveal a disturbing picture of the victimization of American Indians and Alaska Natives. The rate of violent crime estimated from self-reported victimizations for American Indians is well above that of other U.S. racial or ethnic groups and is more than twice the national average. This disparity in the rates of exposure to violence affecting American Indians occurs across age groups, housing locations, and by gender.
      
• Maze of Injustice: The failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA
      
  Amnesty International has focused its research on response to crimes of sexual violence on tribal lands and in neighboring areas. The experiences of Indigenous women living far from tribal lands or in urban settings, therefore, are not reflected extensively in this report. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 56% of Native American and Alaska Native people live outside Indian Country.2 Just under 10% of Native Americans live in large urban centres.3 The available information points to high rates of sexual violence and a lack of culturally appropriate services in towns and cities. This is of sufficient concern to merit urgent further research.
      
• National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)

Education

• Building Culturally and Linguistically Competent Services to Support Young Children, Their Families, and School Readiness
      
  The purpose of this toolkit is to provide guidance, tools, and resources that will assist communities in building culturally and linguistically competent services, supports, programs, and practices related to young children and their families. By offering services in culturally and linguistically meaningful ways, communities can engage all families and support young children’s readiness for school.

Children and Youth

• Guidelines for Nurturing Culturally Healthy Youth
       
  “…guidelines address issues of concern in the application of traditional child-rearing and parenting practices in nurturing culturally healthy youth in the contemporary world. The guidelines are organized around various roles related to childrearing, including those of elders, parents, communities, professional educators, child-care providers, family services agencies and the youth themselves. Special attention is given to the educational implications for the integration of traditional childrearing and parenting practices in schools throughout Alaska. The guidance offered in the following pages is intended to encourage the incorporation of traditional knowledge and teaching practices in all aspects of the lives of children and youth, including that which occurs in classroom settings. It is hoped that these guidelines will help to more fully nurture the social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual development of Alaska’s youth.”
      
• National Indian Children Welfare Association
       
• Native American Youth in Transition: The Path from Adolescence to Adulthood in Two Native American Communities
      
  This report examines in depth the barriers faced by Native American youth in making a successful transition to young adulthood. It recommends a number of ways that tribes and other governments can help these youth. The study was conducted by the Northwest Indian Child Welfare Association, in conjunction with the tribes.

Health

• The Diabetes Epidemic Among American Indians and Alaska Natives: Fact Sheet
      
• Health Disparities Experienced by American Indians and Alaska Natives
       
• Health of American Indian or Alaska Native Population
      
• Issue Brief: Urban Indian Health
      
  Few people realize that the majority of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States are now living in American cities, not on reservations. Yet, Federal health care policy toward American Indians and Alaska Natives continues to focus largely on the needs of those living on reservations in rural areas—needs that, despite demonstrable progress since the creation of the Indian Health Service (I.H.S.) in 1955, remain substantial (Kauffman et al., 1997). The purpose of this Issue Brief is to describe the large and growing urban Indian population, their health status, and the major federal health programs (i.e., I.H.S. and Medicare) and federal-state programs (i.e., Medicaid and Child Health Insurance Program) that are available to improve Native Americans’ access to needed health services.

Housing

• Indian Housing Fact Sheet
       
• Native American Housing Needs and Recommendations
      
  “Notwithstanding the financial benefits a small number of tribes are receiving from gaming enterprises, a large portion of the Native American and Native Hawaiian population continues to live in appalling housing conditions even as those in much of the nation have improved. Some have compared these conditions to those commonly found in the Third World. Forty percent of Native Americans live in overcrowded or physically inadequate housing conditions whereas the rate for the general population is six percent. Current estimates indicate an immediate need for 200,000 units; an estimated 38,250 Native American families are ready and able to afford mortgage loans. Infrastructure needs are overwhelming. One in five homes on reservations lacks complete in-house plumbing, a rate 20 times the national average. There is no established real estate market in much of Indian Country as there is in the nation as a whole.”

Economic Development

• Asset-Building in Tribal Communities: Generating Native Discussion and Practical Approaches
      
  Publication prepared by Sarah Hicks, Karen Edwards, Mary Kate Dennis, and Christy Finsel for the George Warren Brown School of Social Work (Washington University in St. Louis).
      

• Racial, Ethnic and Tribal Philanthropy: A Scan of the Landscape, Forum of Regional Association of Grantmakers
            
  The purpose of Resource Directory is to provide general administrative tribal contacts, unique cultural information and links to additional locations that provide information about American Indian Tribes and their resources.