Ziebach County, South Dakota: America's Poorest County - Ziebach County, Hạt nghèo nhất nước Mỹ

Ziebach County, South Dakota: America's Poorest County - Ziebach County, Hạt nghèo nhất nước Mỹ

ZIEBACH COUNTY, S.D. — In the barren grasslands of Ziebach County, there's almost nothing harder to find in winter than a job. This is America's poorest county, where more than 60 percent of people live at or below the poverty line.
At a time when the weak economy is squeezing communities across the nation, recently released census figures show that nowhere are the numbers as bad as here – a county with 2,500 residents, most of them Cheyenne River Sioux Indians living on a reservation.
In the coldest months of the year, when seasonal construction work disappears and the South Dakota prairie freezes, unemployment among the Sioux can hit 90 percent.
Poverty has loomed over this land for generations. Repeated attempts to create jobs have run into stubborn obstacles: the isolated location, the area's crumbling infrastructure, a poorly trained population and a tribe that struggles to work with businesses or attract investors.
Now the tribe – joined by a few entrepreneurs, a development group and a nonprofit – is renewing efforts to create jobs and encourage a downtrodden population to start its own businesses.
"Many, many people make these grand generalizations about our communities and poverty and 'Why don't people just do something, and how come they can't?'" said Eileen Briggs, executive director of Tribal Ventures, a development group started by the tribe. "It's much more complicated than that."
The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, created in 1889, consists almost entirely of agricultural land in Ziebach and neighboring Dewey County. It has no casino and no oil reserves or available natural resources.
Most towns in Ziebach County are just clusters of homes between cattle ranches. Families live in dilapidated houses or run-down trailers. Multicolored patches of siding show where repairs were made as cheaply as possible.
Families fortunate enough to have leases to tribal land can make money by raising cattle. Opportunities are scarce for almost everyone else.