interviews
The Federal Government and Native American Health
by Sarah Stern
July 7, 2020
This interview with Sarah Stern, a Health Educator at John Hopkins American Indian Health (JHCAIH), was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Native American populations have been disproportionately impacted by COVID. I am curious about what the current reality of tribal healthcare infrastructure looks like and the history that has played a role in shaping it?
Sarah Stern | The reality is that tribal healthcare infrastructure has been and remains underfunded and understaffed.
The Indian Health Services (IHS) has been vastly underfunded since it’s creation in 1955. The Snyder Act of 1921 was the first federal agreement to even allow Native people to receive medical care. We see facets of American history that are not even 100 years old. I stress this as a reminder that while Native people have always existed in the United States, there are far more years of physical and cultural genocide against Native people within American history than years of serving, protecting, and advocating for Native lives.
IHS remains the last in line to receive federal funding to aid the health and wellbeing of Native people. The National Indian Health Board (NIHB) released tribal budget recommendations showing that the IHS spends on average only $3,332 per capita on each patient, compared to a national average of $9,207. In comparison to the Veterans Administration (VA), which is also underfunded, the VA remains about 14 times as funded than the IHS. Highlighting these gaps creates dialogue for both Native people and allies to engage in political pressure to increase funding for healthcare and save lives.
From my understanding there was a "Self-determination Era," which came about in the 1960s, giving tribal governments greater control over local government operations, including healthcare and health clinics. Can you go into the history of that era?
The “Self-Determination Era” allowed Native people to use federal funds as they wanted, but the caveat was (and remains today) that Native people had to report how they wanted to use funds and keep records of the cash flows using systems developed by non-Native people. This created a newer opportunity to add in ‘western’, or non-Native educational programs. School-based teachings of Native cultural values or language were not allowed until 1975, which is less than 100 years ago. Public services, workforce creation, and health care facilities were more developed as Native people were granted the federal ability to allocate funds into these things, alongside education.
It is important to recognize Native people have always utilized the act of self-determination to keep community members, especially children and elders, safe from harm’s way, even before the “Self-Determination Era”. We have worked persistently to protect our land, people, and allies since time immemorial. As Native people proved in many ways to survive physical and cultural genocide, the United States eventually allowed Native people to use federal funding as they saw fit, which was not the case before the 1960s. Basically, the onslaught of Native people cost the United States so much time, money, and non-Native causalities that they eventually folded and decided to stop murdering on stolen land.
Native people also began to have more rights for self-governance, which allowed for leadership among the facets the people wanted funding applied to.
As we see in successful public health initiatives today, when communities have voices at the table representing what the needs and realities are, more positive opportunities take place.
Without Native leadership, the “Self-Determination Era” would not have been as successful nor propelled us to where Native communities are presently.
How can the federal government effectively help in this crisis while also ensuring levels of continued self-determination?”
The federal government can listen to Native leadership directly. Native community leaders have the means to communicate what their people need during this time. This is the most direct way for the federal government to help.
Another way that the federal government can help is to increase public health funding to health programs and educational opportunities. JHCAIH is committed to providing national leadership in training Indigenous scholars in health care and public health science. JHCAIH has awarded over 1,500 scholarships to people representing 45 tribal communities around the nation. Linked below is more information on the public health training programs and online application for scholarships.
Online Application for Scholarships
Is there a specific piece of that history and its effects that you are thinking about most right now?
Treaty rights, and the broken treaties this country participates in.
Broken treaties impact all aspects of Native American communities. Broken treaties account for the fact that some Native people are not federally or state recognized, which in turn impacts the ability to apply for education, housing, health, and infrastructure assistance. Broken treaties have taken away Native lands and water rights.
Broken treaties have created health disparities we see across Indian Country.
Broken treaties have fueled stereotypes against Native people and treaties continue to be broken to this day. For example, in February, the current administration demolished Tohono O'odham Nation’s sacred burial lands without consulting the tribe. Members of the Mashpee Wampanoag community are currently battling the federal administration for seizure of land granted by a federal trust. Land has life. Land connects to Native creation stories, it holds memories, it gives protection, and when land is seized, people hurt. I encourage you to find out what Native land you live on, who the Native people are in your area historically and presently, and how you can show allyship to Native people during this time. Allyship can help combat broken treaties.
How do the economic crisis and health care crisis particularly feed off of each other?
Both crises increase panic. Health care requires money. Lack of economic opportunities diminishes ability to pay for health care costs and decreases the ability to fund health care initiatives.
Collapse of economic ventures impacts everyone, regardless of whether the business is run by Native people or not. This will vary by community, but Native leadership works diligently to ensure that community members have the means to purchase essentials, like food and water, and as they are able, they create plans for how business can run with social distancing procedures at the foreground. Protecting the health and lives of people is the best practice to begin re-opening businesses during the pandemic.
interviews
Border Voices
by Veronica Escobar
October 15, 2019
Veronica Escobar is a two-term El Paso County Judge, the current Congresswoman representing TX16, and proud El Pasoan.
Rhetoric, from both politicians and the media, laid the groundwork for the immigration policy that we are seeing today. Congresswoman Escobar discusses how the simple act of listening to the stories of people who live at the border can begin to repair the immigration narrative.
This interview was conducted and condensed by frank news and originally ran on July 5, 2018.
EL PASO —
Tatti: As someone born and raised here in El Paso, as someone who raised your kids here, and is running for Congress here, what is your experience with immigration on day to day basis?
Veronica: I'll tell you, in the New York Times piece, my original draft was much longer. One of the points I really discussed in depth in my first draft was what we're seeing today, what we're witnessing on the U.S./Mexico border with the separation of children from their families and what has sort of become our moral rock bottom, was a long time coming. You get the sense of that in the piece, I think, but I really drilled down in my original draft on how border security has just been this club...used over and over and over. And some politicians, I think without knowing it, have helped dehumanize the border and dehumanize immigrants. That's what's brought us to this point. When there are huge swaths of the country, of Donald Trump's base, who are perfectly okay with what's going on. They have no compassion for migrants who are fleeing their country and fleeing violence and poverty.
I made the mistake the other day of reading the comments beneath a CNN article and I was stunned. I was absolutely stunned that my country and members of my country could have such little compassion. But the fact of the matter is, it's been decades in the making.
There was a point in time when people in our country were totally okay with a wall. When George Bush introduced the wall and asked Congress for funding, good Democrats voted for that wall and said, "We need border security before we can talk about immigration reform."
There will always be a way for them to up the ante and we're never going to get to comprehensive immigration reform until we have an absolute change in the White House, in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate.
We need to begin to tap into and reconnect to our compassion. Along the way, there's a huge task. We've got to rehumanize the border and rehumanize immigrants.
The one thing that gives me the most fear right now, is that the public will eventually become numb to the inhumanity that's happening at the hands of the Trump administration. Or, that the media and good journalists will move to something else, which inevitably will happen. When the focus and the spotlight is taken off of the horrific way that people are being treated right now, and have been, then we, again, are going to feel alone.
Tatti: One can only feel sad for so long.
Veronica: Right. Like, I've seen the horror. I don't wanna see it over and over again.
Tatti: Yeah, exactly. What’s the reality like? What is it to really live along this border?
Veronica: It's such a beautiful, complex, challenging, infuriating thing. It's beautiful because nowhere else do you get an international feel this way. You know what I mean? There are other parts along the U.S./Mexico border, but this is a massive metroplex. The connectivity is beautiful. The deep roots that go under and through the Rio Grande are beautiful. Familial roots. Economic roots. All of that.
But, the thing that's so complex is that there's so many different types of immigrants. There's those who can very easily come back and forth and have a visa and can attend the university; who live in Juarez and they make our lives richer and they make their peers experience richer. They sometimes have no problem. Their biggest problem is the wait times at the border.
Then, you have folks...like, I'm mentoring this young woman, who shall remain unnamed, but she's a high school graduate. She's waiting to enroll in one of the local colleges and she is a dreamer. Both her parents are undocumented. Her parents are afraid to go places together because of the fear that they will both be deported at the same time. I can't even imagine growing up like that... in fear, that when one of my parents leaves ... because not both of them are gonna leave at the same time... they may not come back. That we may not know where they are or what's happened. That they've been deported. Then, the grueling experience of living in two different countries and not being able to be reunited, then that happens.
She was also the victim of domestic abuse by her boyfriend who knew that she was undocumented and who used it over her. Used it as a weapon. And now, with a president who essentially has said, "We're not gonna allow asylees to claim domestic violence as one of the allowable methods for entry”, what does that say to young women like her? She's survived this horrific relationship, a near death experience, and you have a president who doesn't place a premium on saving her life. Everybody's experience is different, but living here and knowing people like that...And I'm a citizen! I'm a third generation El Pasoan. My family's been here for well over 100 years, so I had the good fortune of being born on the other side of that skinny little river.
All of these experiences really enrich our humanity and our compassion and it's part of what, I think, has made El Pasoans different. And when people who don't have those experiences, and they don't have someone they care about who's afraid that their parents will be deported, it gives them the excuse to be without that compassion. But having grown up here with those very diverse experiences all around me, has made me a better human being. I think it's made my kids better human beings.
Tatti: This conversation becomes very complicated when you begin to conflate Honduran refugees with Mexican economic migrants with Homeland security’s job to deter threats. There are all these different angles and we're just lumping them together.
Veronica: We are. And I'll tell you, I have my own concerns about my own side. Like, people who I'm politically aligned with. With the new calls for abolishing ICE, for example. I just wrote this long essay on my Facebook page, letting people know, in El Paso and on the border, we've been dealing with issues regarding ICE and Customs Border Protection and Border Patrol for a long time. Abolishing ICE doesn't get to the heart of so many other complex issues.
As an example, Border Patrol is now using this weird multiplier effect to document attacks against them. So, if you have five Border Patrol agents and there's three kids who threw two rocks ... Even if those rocks didn't hit any of those agents ... Border Patrol in south Texas is now taking the number of agents ... so, five agents, times the three kids, times the number of rocks. That's happening so they can help ratchet up the fear mongering of the border being unsafe. That's a huge issue. Abolishing ICE doesn't impact that.
As somebody who's grown up here and who has become intimately familiar with a lot of these issues, I get concerned when we try to distill things down to a very simplistic, superficial solution. The other side is already doing that. You know? And this is a huge mess. There are issues that are deeply entrenched in the culture of federal law enforcement that we have to get to.
I just feel that it's important for people to listen to border voices. And to listen to people who've been on the front lines and people who have lived through this, in their own communities, for a long time. Because only then will we really get to the root of the problem. And the root of the problem is, frankly, in terms of ICE...that the Obama administration tripled their budget so that they could quickly deport a lot of people. Many of us on the border were infuriated by that and we raised our voices. And even then, the rest of the country was mostly silent.
Tatti: Listening to border voices is so important. It seems to me that Texan politicians should be leading this conversation, and there feels like a lack of it. If you could prompt the highest elected officials in Texas to answer questions on immigration what would you ask them?
Veronica: One of the things I've been curious about for a long time is how do they define border security? Specifically. What does a secure border look like? Very specifically.
For many of them, they'll dance around it. They'll say, "Oh, we've got such a porous border." And what that tells me, is that they want a border that's completely sealed. And I think they need to be nailed on that. Or, it needs to be sealed to people they deem undesirable. So, tell me who's undesirable? It's mostly brown poor people. That's who's undesirable to them.
We need to drill down with them to expose, I think in many cases, what is policy rooted in bigotry. You're creating a bottleneck to trade and people and you're not even truly catching all the drugs. And then you look at our outdated drug policy. It's too complicated to solve the problem and it's too easy for them to feed in to the bigotry of their anti-immigrant base.