Nope, it’s not Black Friday.
The day after Thanksgiving is Native American Heritage Day. Instead of buying more stuff (we all need to be consuming less anyway), let’s honor this day by shining a light on the health of indigenous peoples and take a look at how Native American communities are affected by climate change.
Climate change affects all of us in some way, but many American Indian and Alaska Native communities share characteristics that can affect their ability to prepare for, respond to, and cope with the impacts of climate change. For example, they may live in rural areas or other places seeing the greatest effects from environmental changes, such as along the coast. Many of these same communities and tribes rely on natural resources for food, cultural practices, and income. And many are coping with higher levels of existing health risks compared with other Americans—the result of a long history of substandard education, disproportionate poverty, and discrimination in the delivery of health services. American Indians and Alaska Natives born today have a shorter life expectancy than the general US population and die at higher rates from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes mellitus, unintentional injuries, assault/homicide, intentional self-harm/suicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases.
The Indian Health Service (IHS), an agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for providing health services for approximately 2.6 million of the nation’s 5.2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. But the agency is chronically underfunded by Congress. According to a 2018 dispatch from the American Bar Association, funding would have to nearly double to match the level of care provided to federal prisoners, for example, and much more than double to match the benefits guaranteed by programs like Medicaid.
In 2018, the American Public Health Association, in collaboration with the Tribal Public and Environmental Health Think Tank, released a report, Priorities in Tribal Public Health, highlighting six public health priority issues for American Indian and Alaska Native communities: climate and health, food sovereignty and access, infrastructure and systems development, resource extraction, clean air, and clean water. In addition to the report, here are some other resources you can look at if you’re interested in learning more:
- The Disproportionate Impact of Climate Change on Indigenous Communities – KCET
- Climate Change and the Health of Indigenous Populations – US Environmental Protection Agency
- Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: A Synthesis of Current Impacts and Experiences – US Department of Agriculture
- The Resilience of Indigenous Peoples to Environmental Change – One Earth