Federal Indian Policies and Health

The Native American Health Care Treaties was brought to my attention today. Our government has GROSSLY FAILED at funding adequately for decent Health Care for ALL Native American Tribes. This segment explains a little history between the Tribal nations and our federal government. I have typed a transcript of this 2 1/2 minute clip of a PBS documentary that aired in the Spring of 2008.

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When we look at social determinants of health for native American people, alot of that can be traced to federal policy and how the tribes have been treated historically. Unfortunately, I think there are many people in this country who do not understand the history of federal tribal relations.

There were periods of policy for the federal government that were really bad for the tribal communities. There was a period of removal for example where tribes were moved from their ancestral homelands to other areas. If you uproot entire cultures and place them in a foreign land essentially that's going to have an impact on health. That's going to have an impact on other social factors including self-identity and sense of disempowerment that we can't even live where my parents lived, my grandparents lived, where hundreds of generations before me lived. That has an impact on peoples self-esteem and health related behaviors. They also tried to assimilate people and have them moved to urban settings. When this policy was first implemented they were taking people from traditional native cultures and placing them in large cities where they faced all kinds of discrimination.

There was also a period of termination when the federal government essentially wanted to terminate tribes status. Tried to essentially say they don't exist because they want them to just assimilate. Recently there is a trend toward a period of self determination where the federal government is trying to work with tribal communities so that they can determine their own successes take over programs. For example take over Indian health service programs and have more self determination more local control of the types of programs that they operate.

But when you look at this from a historical perspective and when we think about the different periods of types of federal policy toward American Indians there's been a long history of significant social injustice and violation of civil rights. In many ways movement toward genocide of the original inhabitants of this land. Of course that has an impact on health and has an impact of social identity and it has an impact on one's sense of hope for the future. So when we think of social determinants of health those federal policies that were so destructive to tribal nations have a direct impact on behavior at the individual level and that's why we've seen so much despair historically.