A new report by the U.S. Congress explores “persistent structural barriers” that limit economic opportunity in Indigenous communities.

“Across metrics of economic well-being, Native Americans are disproportionately underserved, economically vulnerable and limited in their access pathways to building wealth,” according to a report by the Joint Economic Committee, a body that includes both members of the U.S. Senate and House.

“These long standing inequities have left Native communities much more vulnerable than their counterparts to the negative impact of economic shocks and public health crises.”

The report, “Native American Communities Continue to Face Barriers to Opportunity that Stifle Economic Mobility,” was released Friday morning.

The report “puts a lot of the socio-economic conditions of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, American Indians, in perspective,” said Randall Akee, one of the authors of the report and an associate professor at the University of California Los Angeles. Akee is Native Hawaiian. “And it really does a great job of summarizing a number of different outcomes, a number of different domains, and puts it into a language that's digestible and understandable for, you know, a broad swath of the population so that it's not … caught up in jargonistic-type terms.”

Read the full article on Indian Country Today here.