Window Rock, Ariz. – The leaders of the Navajo nation took turns taking turns with the highest head of the health of the American government while they moved along a sandstone crest overlooking their rural city and desserts before the too hot morning sun.
Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo nation, paused at the edge with The Secretary of Health and Social Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Below them, the tribal government buildings, the houses and the juniper sprinkled the bronzed and deep red landscape.
Nygren said he wanted Kennedy to examine the capital for the nation of around 400,000 registered members. The Tribal President underlined an obsolete health center that he hoped that federal funding would help replace and describe life for the thousands of premises without running water due to delayed government projects.
Katheryn Houghton / Kff Health News 
Nygren said Kennedy had already done a lot Mainly economy The Indian health service for a series of recruits reduces the federal government.
“When we started to hear about layoffs and gels, you were the first to defend the Indian country,” he said his decision to lose the federal agency responsible for providing health care to the Alaska and natives of Alaska.
But Nygren and other Navajo leaders said that federal health programs outside the Indian health service hurts the Amerindians.
“You disturb your real life,” said Kff Health News, Cherilyn Yazzie, a delegate from the Navajo Council, Kff Health News.
Kennedy has repeatedly promised to prioritize the health care of the Amerindians. But the Amerindians and the health officials of tribal countries say that these openings are overshadowed by the collateral damage of the massive cuts to federal health programs.
Balayage discounts have led to financing reductions directed to or invoked disproportionately by the Amerindians. The endowment cuts, according to the tribes of health heads, led to miss data and poor communication.
The Indian Health Service provides free health care in its hospitals and clinics to Amerindians, which, as a group, are faced with higher rates of chronic diseases and die younger than Other populations. These inequalities are attributable to centuries of systemic discrimination. But many tribal members do not live near an agency clinic or a hospital. And those who do it can Faced with limited services, Chronic under-funding and staff shortages. HAS Work with these shortcomingsHealth organizations are based on other programs funded by the federal government.
“There may be a false idea among part of the administration that the Indian country is only affected by changes in the Indian health service,” said Liz Malerba, an expert in tribal policy and citizen of the Mohegan tribe. “It’s just not true.”
The tribes have lost more than $ 6 million in subsidies from other HHS agencies, the National Indian Health Board Written in a May letter in Kennedy.
Janet Alkire, President of the Sioux Rock Standing Rock in the Dakotas, said during a hearing of the Senate committee on May 14 That these subsidies paid for community health workers, vaccinations, modernization of data and other public health efforts.
The government has also canceled the financing of programs which, according to him, violated President Trump’s ban on “diversity, equity and inclusion” Amerindian youth interested in science and medicine and another which helps several tribes Increase access to healthy foods – Something Kennedy said he wanted to prioritize.
Tribal health officials say that federal staff reduced has made technical support and money more difficult for health projects funded by the federal government they lead.
The layoffs have cut or eliminated personnel from the related programs Prevent overdoses In tribal communities, Use of traditional food and drugs Fighting chronic diseases and helping low -income people Allow yourself to heat and cool their houses Thanks to the low -income energy program.
The Oglala Sioux tribe is in southern Dakota, where the Amerindians who have trouble heating their houses died of hypothermia. In mid-May, the tribe could not access its last payment of the energy program, said John Long, the chief of staff to the tribe.
Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of Urban Indian Health Institute of Seattle Indian Health Board, said the government had sent its organization of incomplete health data. This includes statistics on Amerindians at risk of suicide and substance consumption disorders, which the center uses to shape public health policy and programs.
“People will die because we don’t have access to data,” said Echo-Hawk.
Its organization also has trouble administering a federal subsidy of $ 2.2 million, she said, because the agency giving money with the employees with which it worked. The subsidy pays public health initiatives such as stopping smoking and vaccinations.
“It is very confusing to say that the prevention of chronic diseases is priority 1, then eradicating the support necessary to deal with the prevention of chronic diseases in the Indian country,” said Echo-Hawk.
HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Kennedy aims to combat chronic diseases and improve the well-being of the Amerindians “through culturally relevant and community solutions.”
Hilliard did not answer questions on the specific Kennedy levels for the health of the Amerindians or the concerns concerning changes in financing and endowment and endowment.
While Kennedy hike along the leaders of the Navajo nation, Kff Health News asked how he would improve and protect access to care of tribal communities in the middle of the rollbacks within his department.
“This is exactly what I do,” replied Kennedy. “Make sure that not all cuts affect these communities.”
Kennedy said that his accent on Native American health arises from personal and family experience, which he repeated in the management of Navajo. As a lawyer, he worked with tribes on environmental health proceedings. He was also editor -in -chief at ICT, a major Native American media.
The secretary said that he was also influenced by his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and his father, the American prosecutor Robert F. Kennedy, who were both murdered when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a child.
“They thought that America would never be up to its moral authority and its role as an exemplary nation in the world if we did not look back and do not remedy or attenuate the original sin of the American experience – the genocide of the natives,” Kennedy said during his visit.
Some tribal leaders say the recent cuts and the way the administration has made them, violate the treaties in which the United States has promised to support the health and well-being of the tribes in exchange for their land.
“We were not consulted significantly on any of these actions,” said Malerba, director of legislative policies and affairs for the sovereign protection fund of the southern and the east of the United States, which defends Texas tribes in Maine.
Alkire said at the Congress hearing that many Amerindian health organizations sent letters to the health department asking for consultations, but none has received an answer.
The tribal consultation is legally required when federal agencies pursue changes that would have a significant impact on tribal nations.
“It is not only a moral question of what we owe to the natives,” said senator Brian Shatz (D-Hawaii) during the hearing. “It is also a question of the law.”
Tribal chiefs are concerned about the additional proposed changes, in particular Financing cuts at the Indian Health Service And a reorganization of the Federal Department of Health.
Esther Lucero, president and chief executive officer of the Seattle Indian Health Board, said that maneuvers remind her of the level of daily uncertainty she had felt through the COVVI -19 pandemic – only with fewer resources.
“Our ability to serve those who are desperately in need feels in danger,” said Lucero.
Among The most urgent concerns are cuts proposed by the Republicans of the Congress in Medicaid, the main health insurance program of the government for people with income or low disabilities.
About 30% Native American and Alaska under the age of 65 are registered in Medicaid, and the program helps keep an Indian health service afloat and other tribal health establishments.
Amerindian adults would be exempt Since Medicaid work requirements Approved by the House Republicans on May 21.
After Kennedy was the rock rock with the leaders of the Navajo nation, the tribe organized a prayer ceremony in which they blessed it in Dine Bizaad, the Navajo language. President Nygren stressed how significant he was for the country’s health secretary to walk alongside them. He also reminded Kennedy the list of priorities they had discussed. This included maintaining the federal low -income energy assistance program.
“We are impatient to restore and protect some of the services provided by your department,” said Nygren.
In mid-May, the Trump administration had Proposed elimination The energy program, which remains without staff.
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