Where is blackwater az

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Lowest Priced Homes. Most Expensive Listings. Largest Homes. Blackwater, Arizona is on Facebook. To connect with Blackwater, Arizona, log in or create an account. Log In or. Blackwater, Arizona. Get Directions. It is part of the Gila River Indian Community. The population was at the census. See More. There were housing units at an average density of The racial makeup of the CDP was 0. For elderly people there are free meals and organised trips to the cinema.

For all that, Blackwater has been, by one measure, the poorest — or at least the lowest income — town in the country.

It is the final stop in a series of Guardian dispatches about the lives of people trying to make a life in places that seem the most remote from the American Dream. She was one of the women working at a centre in Blackwater that provides free lunches for elderly people.

The casinos changed a lot of things. The majority of people here struggle to get by. Facilities in Blackwater are few beyond tribal offices. No cafes, bars or restaurants. The new houses paid for by the casino revenues, clustered together in their own neighbourhoods, stand out from the crumpled homes that have endured decades of desert winds.

There is a stillness about the place during the day. Those who work are at the casinos, in the fields or have commuted to one of the towns off the reservation. It is the geography of this small corner that has delivered the promise of a different future.

Gila River joined the band of Indian communities that got into the casino businesses after the justices said state governments had no authority to stop or regulate them. The luxury resort now includes a concert venue, golf course and a motorsports race track. The high-priced cocktails and luxury cars — and the wads of cash lost on the turn of a card — reflect a lifestyle those who live in Blackwater only glimpse if they trouble to venture to the other end of the reservation.

Half of those have an income that is less than half the level set as the poverty line. About one-third of the working-age population is unemployed.

Yet the numbers are only part of the story. Gila River reservation has had its fleeting moments of fame — and infamy. It was the site of an internment camp for thousands of Japanese Americans during the second world war, over the objections of the tribes. He is in the far left of the photograph as the American flag is lifted over Iwo Jima during the battle with the Japanese for the island. Within days, three of the six soldiers in the picture were dead.

Years later, his life story was told in a film, The Outsider, where a white man, Tony Curtis, played the Native American hero. The sparkling waters of the Gila river made the tribes who lived around it successful farmers. The river irrigated beans, corn and cotton.

The Spanish brought new crops, wheat and watermelon, and cattle in the 17th century. By the s, the tribes were prospering selling food and cotton to white settlers and miners.

The US government encouraged whites to trek west and populate Arizona territory by promising free land on condition it was cultivated. That required the settlers to irrigate from the Gila river.

As their numbers grew, so more of the river was diverted, until it was reduced to a near trickle by the late 19th century. Drought was the final blow. The tribes were forced to rely on food from the US government.

It sent lard, white flour and canned meats, changing the eating habits of the Native Americans. Today, bread fried in lard is not only popular but regarded as traditional. The small game and birds their ancestors hunted gave way to fatty beef.

They are radiant and smiling. They are also what clothing manufacturers would describe as on the plus size. Half of all working-age adults within the GRIC have type 2 diabetes. Among teenagers 15 to 19, the rate is more than 10 times that of the Native American population as a whole in the US. Close to nine out of 10 residents will be diagnosed with the disease by the age of Diabetes increases the risk of heart attacks and kidney failure.

At the elderly centre in Blackwater, Lidya said that of the people she served lunch to every day, a dozen were on dialysis. Not only do Mexican Pima eat more healthily but they do more physical activity as farmers. People on the reservation sometimes feel as if they are part of one large clinical study. The National Institutes of Health arrived five decades ago to try to account for the levels of obesity and diabetes. Almost all of the population is now involved in the research.

An extraordinary number of academic papers have been written. Theories have come and gone, including of a gene that developed in the Pima to store body fat to cope with periods of famine, which has made it hard to shed excess weight.

The tribal authorities have responded with relentless health campaigns. Stark warnings about diet spring from the community newspaper. There is no caption. Everyone understands. The soft drinks and sugar industries would probably have pounced on such a graphic warning by any other public authority, but the same political rules do not apply on the reservation. That kind of stuff. It makes a difference for some people.

Not everyone. Blackwater was diagnosed with the disease in the s. Practically everybody does. Eating the wrong kind of food, I guess. I eat the right kind of food now. I changed that. Blackwater has lived within the Gila River community his whole life.

He said it had always been beset by problems common to other reservations. When he was young, it was routine for men to leave to look for work.