The Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., made a Facebook show From his meeting with the indigenous leaders of the American Indians and Alaska last month, declaring himself “very inspired” and is committed to improving the Indian health service, which, according to him, has “always been treated as the Rousse steps” by his agency.
Now Aboriginal leaders have questions for him.
Why, they would like to know, did he dismissed employees in programs aimed at supporting the natives, such as the initiative of the Healthy Tribes of Centers for Disease and Prevention? Why has he closed five regional offices from the Ministry of Health and Social Services which, by the estimate of a tribes defender, cover 80% of the country’s Indian population?
Why did five senior advisers for tribal problems in the department of the department for children and families, all Indians or Aboriginal, let go? Why are all these changes made without consulting tribal chiefs, despite the attractive bonds, as well as presidential decreesdemand it?
But the final unworthiness, say that the indigenous leaders came last week, when Mr. Kennedy reassured high -ranking health officials – including a married bioethician in Dr Anthony S. Fauci, a tobacco regulator, a human resources manager and others – in the locations of the Indian health services in the American West, when what the Aboriginal service really needs.
“They aim for their obligation of confidence in the Indian tribes by all the scams they make,” said Deb Haaland, the former interior and deputy secretary, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and Democratic candidate for the post of governor of the New Mexico. “It’s terrible, it’s shameful and it’s not good.”
This week, Mr. Kennedy will visit native health providers and will meet tribes chiefs in Arizona and New Mexico to highlight his commitment to Indian health. The secretary, who also has been invited Preventing before the Senate health committee on Thursday to testify to the deletions of jobs and the vast reorganization of his department, has often talked about his long -standing commitment and his family towards the Amerindians. The coalition of large tribes, a plea group, gave its appointment His highest approval.
“I spent 20% of my career working on native problems”, ” Mr. Kennedy told Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, during his confirmation audiences in January, adding that his father and uncle, former senator Edward M. Kennedy, “were deeply critical of the functioning of the Indian health service in 1968 and 1980, and nothing has changed”.
He swore that if he was confirmed, he would call on an Aboriginal as an assistant secretary “to ensure that all the decisions we make in our agency are aware of their impact on the First Nations”. The department has a tribal advisory committee of the secretary, who met Mr. Kennedy last month.
THE Indian health service, A network of hospitals, clinics and health centers, some exploited by tribes themselves, flows from a series of treaties and court decisions which oblige the federal government to provide health care to the Indians of America and Aboriginal people – an obligation which can be traced in 1787, when the Constitution recognized “Indian tribes” as sovereign countries. The people she serves have profound health challenges.
Amerindians have long had shorter life expectancy and higher disease rates than other ethnic groups. According to a Analysis published last year By the National Health Council of Urban Indians, whites born in 2021 should live an average of 11 years more than their native peers in the American and Alaska. The Amerindians die disproportionately from chronic liver diseases, diabetes, homicide and suicide, according to Indian health service.
A spokesperson for Mr. Kennedy noted that the service itself had not been affected by the latest layoffs and said it was not planned to consolidate any of its offices. (A tribal chief, the payment of Aaron of the Chippewa Indians of Sault Ste.
The spokesman said that the transfers proposed were volunteer, although legal experts said that those who refused would be subject to dismissal without any starting indemnity. The spokesperson would not say how many employees have been affected.
But in the interviews, more than half a dozen leaders of Native American groups have used words as “cruel”, “dishonest” and “offensive” to describe the proposed transfers. Cruel because the administration gave workers one day to decide to uproot their families in order to keep their jobs; Dandinaire because the movements seemed to get rid of highly efficient employees who could otherwise be difficult to dismiss; And offensive because they play in the racist trophy that the regions served by the program constitute a stir.
Some have chosen their words carefully, fearing that if they are angry with Mr. Kennedy or President Trump, it would worsen things for the people they represent. AC LOCKLEAR, who heads the National Indian Health Board, a non -profit organization representing the country’s 574 tribes, was invited to consider transfers of recent jobs as a serious effort to improve the health of the Amerindians.
Mr. Locklear, lawyer and citizen of the Lumbee tribe of Caroline du Nord, was silent for a long time. “I don’t know exactly how to answer this,” he said.
Legal experts say transfers are authorized under the law. The affected persons occupy positions within the senior Executive Service, a body of high -ranking government employees created by the congress in 1979 to give agency leaders more flexibility in the transfer of persons with executive skills.
Two employees who obtained transfer notices said they had been placed on administrative leave and cut off from their work messaging accounts. One said that she would consider reallocating, despite the difficulties of her family. Another said she had refused the offer. Both spoke under the cover of anonymity for fear of remuneration. Dr Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, refused to be interviewed.
David Simmons, Director of Affairs and Advocates of the Government of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, a non -profit organization in Portland, Oregon, said that it had seemed to him that the administration put pressure campaigns to push the senior leaders who did not know the Indian tribes in the jobs for which they are not suitable.
“It is a huge waste of time, and it is an ineffective and ineffective means of doing business,” he said.
He also said that his group had worked for years with the Department of Health to build a team of five advisers for native problems within the administration for children and families, an undergoing health service. He learned that the five had been dismissed as part of last week’s “strength reduction” which eliminated 10,000 employees.
“It’s an incredible loss,” said Simmons.
Tribal leaders have long worked to be treated as equal by American politicians. But, they say, they never fought as much as under Mr. Trump.
Even before Mr. Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Trump’s assault on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives exasperated the Amerindians, who felt forced to explain that the programs that serve them should not be eliminated. “We are not racial minorities; We are political minorities, ”said Simmons.
Mr. Trump Gel hiring And Mass dismissal of probationary employees guest a chain Letters from the National Indian Health Board, demanding that the Indian Health Service be exempt from the cuts. According to Abigail Echo-Hawk, Epidemiologist and citizen of the Pawnee nation who is a head of the Indian Health Council of Seattle, the tribal leaders “were able to educate secretary Kennedy” and 950 employees were reinstated.
But while the indigenous leaders expected such movements from Mr. Trump, many say they feel betrayed by Mr. Kennedy. As an independent presidential candidate, he visited the coalition of large tribes and spoke of his family trips in the Indian reserve of Rosebud Sioux, the Indian reserve of Pine Ridge and the Hopi and Navajo reservations while he was a child, according to the last Indians, a Press organization that covered the event.
“It was part of my youth,” he said, adding that his father, who was killed in 1968, presented himself to the presidency, “believed the treatment of indigenous peoples in this country-the Amerindians, those who, above all, can be called Americans-that it was the origin of our country.”
Payment, who sat on the tribal advisory committee of the secretary under three presidents, including during the first Trump administration, said in an interview that he thought that Kennedy was authentic. He blamed Elon Musk, who is carrying out an effort to revise the government. He Written on LinkedIn That even if Mr. Kennedy “cleans the good for his new role and had a college interaction” with the Committee, “the major reductions occur just under our nose with his consent”.
Ms. Echo-Hawk, who Make the headlines in 2020 When she criticized the CDC so as not to share data on the distribution of COVVI-19 among the native communities, said that she was particularly concerned about CDC Healthy tribes Program, which seeks to “respect and promote Aboriginal knowledge, traditions and cultural practices for health and healing”.
The program provides subsidies that support the work of Ms. Echo-Hawk. She said that she had learned through agency contacts that the head of healthy tribes and many of her employees were released and that the CDC tribal business office Would most likely be broken, its components transferred to other divisions.
As a “friend of the Indian country,” she said, Kennedy “said that one of his first objectives was going to be on the prevention of chronic diseases for American Indians and Alaska natives-that is why this decision is so confusing.”
Ms. Haaland, who said that she had used the Indian health service for her health care as a younger woman, used another word to describe reorganization, layoffs and transfers: disrespectful.
“It is disrespectful towards the IHS, it is disrespectful towards the people who have devoted their careers to HHS and our country, fighting the disease and regulating the things that must be regulated,” said Ms. Haaland. “I just don’t understand what they think they are doing.”