Statistically speaking, the poor health of Native Americans living the Great Plains of the United States rivals many developing countries. Diabetes, alcoholism, and depression rates are frighteningly high. Suicide rates are 10 times the national average. I traveled to the Rosebud Indian Reservation to research and see first hand how these statistics came to be. What I found was a toxic mix of causative factors: isolation, poverty, poor nutrition, poor education – each of which has its roots in history. What became strikingly clear during my visit to the federally funded Rosebud Indian Health Service Hospital on the reservation was that the United States government has never kept its promises, made in multiple treaties, to provide health care to Native Americans in exchange for land. The story delves into some of that history, including the forced relocation of Native American children to faraway boarding school which led to “cultural distortion, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and the ripple effect of loss of parenting skills and communal grief,” a government study states. Hope on the second poorest county in the country is a struggle to find. But it’s there, particularly in the strong bonds of the community itself:
