@JLeslie – sorry I missed your last response. I don’t think the situation here correlates to Applachia, seems as if there the people are poor and undereducated because of their circumstances, not by choice. The Aboriginal people here have so many opportunities (many of which are open only to them, if they were open only to white people the cry of racism would reverberate around the world) but most do not choose them or encourage their children to choose them.
There are many educated prosperous Aboriginals, some take leadership positions and are often disliked by the others and a lot of non indigenous as well because they rock the boat and want to make education, hygiene for children etc. mandatory for the indigenous as it is for the rest of the population. Also there are a lot of indigenous leaders who are getting rich in the process of “helping” their own people out of this downward spiral. It is a most complicated problem.
The saddest part though is the children. Kids who should be removed from irresponsible, incapable parents are left in their homes because of the implications of the Stolen Generation, or because there are not Aboriginal families to foster these children. The worry being that if they are placed with white or non indigenous families, they will lose their “culture.” Never mind that at this point in time, it is their culture that is killing them, figuratively and all too often literally.
I live in USA for over 50 years but always on the east coast and I was never really aware of the situation with Native Americans, but from what I read now the situations are similar.