Wyoming

Ethnic and Religious Affiliation

Wyoming is predominantly white (about 96 percent), with ancestry groups from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Scandinavia accounting for about two-thirds of the population. Most of Wyoming's nonwhite populations are concentrated in ethnic enclaves. The one Indian reservation in Wyoming, the 1.8 million-acre Wind River Reservation, is headquartered at Fort Washakie and houses approximately 2,300 Shoshone and 3,500 Arapaho tribal members. The Shoshone occupy the south-central, western, and northern portions of the reservation, with settlements at Fort Washakie, Wind River, and Crowheart. The Arapaho live in the southeastern area, at Ethete, Arapahoe, and St. Stephens. According to U.S. Census data, Native Americans intermarry at higher rates than any other group in the country; more than half of all Native Americans don't marry other natives. However, the Eastern Shoshone of Wyoming are required to be at least one-quarter Native American to be a tribal member. Under that requirement, intermarriage, and resulting children, could mean a loss of both population and identity and lead to a loss of federal benefits. In terms of cultural identity and tribal networks, continuing high rates of intermarriage dilution in Wyoming could threaten tribes' status as fully functioning nations with governments.

Cheyenne, the largest city, is the most diverse area of Wyoming, with sizable black (4.5 percent) and Asian (2.1 percent) communities in several neighborhoods. These communities, surrounded by such a large white majority, have strong social networks, often centered on predominantly black or Asian churches. The city is not large enough for nonwhite neighborhoods to support their own schools, and so the city's three high schools tend to have a similar demographic mix.

The state is largely Protestant (53 percent of the population). The single largest Christian denomination is the Catholic Church (16 percent), followed by the Wyoming Southern Baptist Convention (8 percent). Fewer than 1 percent of people in Wyoming identify with a religion other than Christian or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which is followed by 11 percent of the population. The LDS community in Wyoming is well established, dating to the early days of Utah when LDS settlers were spreading out across the western United States. The LDS community in Wyoming has constituted a strong social network for generations. Having faced discrimination in their early days, the LDS developed the habit of associating closely and looking out for one another. The Star Valley area in western Wyoming is a particularly strong LDS community, where many people have stories about great-grandparents who helped or were helped by neighbors in order to make it through the harsh winters.

...