Line #28 Main/NeglectedRez


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6	[[quoteright:350:[[Film/WindRiver https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wind_river.jpg]]]]
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8	Indian reservations (as called in the US) or reserves (in Canada) depicted as brutally impoverished places, often plagued by greedy corporations exploiting nearby natural resources at the expense of the locals and clashes with either authorities or (almost always white) citizens from the settler nation, who will use the jurisdiction differences of reservations to do whatever heinous action they wish, knowing they likely won't face legal actions for it. Residents of such places will often lack basic services and amenities, inhabit dilapidated shacks and [[TrashyTrailerHome trailers/RVs]], drive TheAllegedCar, and struggle with disproportionately high rates of [[AddledAddict addiction]] (especially to [[TheAlcoholic alcohol]] and, more recently, methamphetamine and inhalants), crime, unemployment, and suicide.
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10	Since this aptly describes a lot of reservations--one example being South Dakota's Pine Ridge, which has been infamous in the US since TheSeventies for its low quality of life--this trope is also TruthInTelevision. Quality of life on US reservations is extremely poor on average, with high unemployment, low graduation rates, low incomes, and entire families often living in one cramped dwelling space. In 2017, over 80% of Canadian reserves had median income below the poverty line, according to census data.
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12	That said, fiction tends to make this (and the NativeAmericanCasino) the ''only'' places where modern indigenous people live, but in RealLife, this is far from true. In both the US and Canada, the majority of Indigenous people live in cities or otherwise off-rez -- and a variety of legal loopholes mean that many ''non''-indigenous live on reservations. And depictions of all Indigenous people in a work as TheAlcoholic, seen more in old-fashioned works, is now viewed as an offensive characterization and a DiscreditedTrope. Despite that, this trope is still used, often to call attention to the ongoing issues reservations and indigenous people continue to face due to policy conflicts with the settler country, though some have criticized the depiction as being akin to PovertyPorn in its ubiquity.
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14	Subtrope of InjunCountry. Tends to be a feature of TwilightOfTheOldWest and NewOldWest stories. Compare and contrast other settings known for their neglect and poverty like DyingTown, InnerCitySchool, and WretchedHive. Exaggerated depictions may take this image all the way to FailedState-levels.
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16	!!Examples:
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18	[[foldercontrol]]
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20	[[folder:Comic Books]]
21	* ''ComicBook/{{Scalped}}'': The Prairie Rose Indian Reservation where the comic is primarily set is a complete drug-addled gang-run hellhole, riddled with crime, drug and alcohol addiction, and poverty.
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24	[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
25	* ''Film/HoldTheDark'' takes place in the tiny Alaskan town of Keelut (named for a Native American creature of folklore) where the locals are predominantly poor Native Americans who are embittered at local white law enforcement.
26	* ''Film/{{Skins}}'': Beaver Creek Indian Reservation for the Lakota Sioux people is depicted as being a poor place with little going for it. Rudy, a tribal police officer struggles to help the town, as well as his brother Mogie, an [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]] single father to a teenaged boy. At one point, Rudy goes berserk on a liquor store the next town over because it's explicitly profiting off of alcoholic residents from the reserve.
27	* ''Film/{{Thunderheart}}'': The residents of the Lakota reservation live in extreme poverty, are being forced off their Reservation, and are often vitctimized by corrupt men who want to get mining rights to their land.
28	* ''Film/WindRiver'': The Wind River Indian Reservation is the primary setting for the film and it suffers from extreme poverty, lawlessness, and absence of proper law enforcement. Jane, a young white FBI agent stationed out in Las Vegas is assigned to a case at the reservation and is shocked by what she sees.
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31	[[folder:Literature]]
32	* ''Harvesting the Heart'' by Creator/JodiPicoult's has Nicholas volunteer medical services at a Hopi reservation, as the reservation suffers from a [[CriticalStaffingShortage lack of other doctors]].
33	* ''Literature/TheAbsolutelyTrueDiaryOfAPartTimeIndian'': The Spokane Indian Reservation is a miserable place where everyone is poor and either an alcoholic, a recovering alcoholic or has their life affected by alcohol. Premature deaths, abuse and sadness are common there and Junior hates it.
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36	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
37	* ''{{Series/Longmire}}'' takes place right next to a Cheyenne reservation, and a big chunk of the series involves exploring the political and social issues that the reservation faces. Later on a NativeAmericanCasino is built partway through the series.
38	* ''Series/OurAmericaWithLisaLing'': "Life On The Rez" features the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the poorest rez in the country.
39	* ''Series/ReservationDogs'' is set on a Muscogee reservation in Oklahoma, where drugs and poverty run rampant. Despite this, there is room for healing and growth across the generations of people who call the rez home.
40	* ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'' features a reservation in a few episodes. The residents are clearly poorer than the people in nearby Charming, and a local gang leader pretty much runs the place with the Reservation Police in his pocket, using it to grow shrooms and manufacture bullets to sell to criminals in the outside world. As the sheriff's department aren't allowed on the reservation, the [=SoA=] and the other gangs in town use it as a TruceZone or to hold events that they don't want the cops spying in on.
41	* ''Series/{{Yellowstone}}'': The local Crow Indian Reservation is shown to be quite poor, in spite of the [[NativeAmericanCasino local casino]]. The proud residents maintain their cultural traditions while struggling to make ends meet. The tribe is respectful to Casey, the white husband of a local Crow woman, Monica, but they make it plain that they are not "his people." The reservation also has to worry about brain drain, as shown when Monica resists taking a lucrative teaching position off the reservation, since it would leave the reservation school with one less teacher.
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44	[[folder:Video Games]]
45	* Subverted in ''VideoGame/OldWorldBlues''. The pre-war isolation and poverty of many Indian reservations was [[NotWorthKilling precisely the reason why]] they managed to survive WorldWarIII mostly unscathed, hence the large number of Native American factions in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, some of which, like the Navajo and Standing Rock, can rise into great powers in their own right.
46	* ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'': The Wapiti Indian Reservation is a WretchedHive ''by design'', with the U.S. government sticking the tribe on land they cannot farm, cut off from decent hunting territory, and no way to find gainful employment. And ''now'' they'll be moved to an even ''worse'' place because oil has been discovered under it. [[spoiler: More than that, [[GeneralRipper the local army commander]] is hideously abusing the Wapiti, tacitly ordering assault, rape, arson, murder and ''withholding medicine from the sick'', all to provoke the tribe into a rebellion he can crush so he can look good.]]
47	* In ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld'', the Wabanaki reservation on [[LovecraftCountry Solomon Island, Maine]] plays with this trope. They were building a NativeAmericanCasino (shaped like a tipi that they themselves knew was inaccurate, but that was what the tourists expected) before [[TheCorruption the Fog]] arrived and they also have an "[[TheThemeParkVersion authentic Wabanaki village]]" that serves as a tacky tourist trap. However, most of the native residents ''actually'' live in a trailer park.
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50	[[folder:Western Animation]]
51	* ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'': One episode features an Indian reservation, highlighting some problems that a few reservations face like land not suitable for farming cash crops leading to low development and poverty. Looten Plunder tries to irrigate it, and [[PetTheDog does give the residents paying jobs]], but [[WellIntentionedExtremist didn't quite think it through, resulting in environmental damage]]. By the end of the episode, the natives go back to farming, but they farm crops that are native to the territory ''and'' set up wind turbines.
52	[[/folder]]

Context Main / NeglectedRez