Chief Joseph Freedom Index

Chief Joseph Freedom Index

“Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think, and act for myself.”
Chief Joseph, 1879

Chief Joseph’s famous quote does not just focus on civic freedoms. In fact, it mostly is a call for economic (market) freedoms—“free to work, free to trade where I choose…” This reflects a want to not only be free of a heavy-handed control of one’s personal actions, but also a freedom to engage in the market and to use one’s own intelligence, skills and circumstance to improve peoples’ well-being. The Chief Joseph Freedom Index explores the importance of economic freedoms on Indian reservations and in the context of tribal governments, and discusses the usefulness and practicality of measuring such freedoms.

Read the paper here.

Explore the data with this interactive map.