American Indian Health Issues

Tradition and Culture

American Indians and Alaska Natives are the descendants of the indigenous peoples of the lands now [Page 26]occupied by the 48 contiguous states and Alaska in the United States. Anthropological evidence suggests an Asian origin for native North American people, with migration waves across Bering Strait land bridges beginning well over 15,000 years ago. Hundreds of distinct tribes each with their own unique and overlapping traditions have been located on North American lands from time immemorial. Well over 200 distinct languages have been distinguished.

Over the centuries, American Indian cultures have reflected local geographic and climatic conditions. Migrating societies thrived through subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering of plant materials, while sedentary groups relied largely on cultivation of crops and hunting and lived in villages both large and small. Groups appeared, shifted, and regrouped over the centuries. For example, around 1250 AD to 1540 AD, there were significant shifts during what is termed the Southwest Pueblo IV period. Through migration, the entire Pueblo world's demography shifted east from the Four Corners region, causing dramatic demographic, social, economic, and political reconfigurations.

Complex tribal social and religious structures included clans, clan families, birth families, father's clan, kiva groups, and other medicine and priest societies, and other connections such as a spiritual father. Social and religious roles and duties were carried out through dance, music, and storytelling. In some groups, music was reserved for sacred activities and rites. A common thread was a holistic integration of practical day-to-day life with nature-based spirituality.

In the past and continuing today, most tribal groups recognized physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual balance in harmony with nature as the core of health. Sacred medicine wheels, hoops, or other symbols portray tribal beliefs about health across the life cycle. Illness reflected imbalance with self, relationships, or nature. Healers were recognized as medicine people, midwives, bone pressers, stomach massagers, or members of medicine societies. Each had special knowledge of practical and spiritual methods for treating injury, illness, and emotional disturbances. Ceremonies, botanicals, including herbs and tobacco, visions, stories, and songs were used to restore balance and health.

European Contact

The American Indian population in 1492 is estimated broadly by historians and demographers to have been from 1 to 18 million. It declined precipitously following European Columbian contact. The decline was due to deaths from epidemic disease and warfare. Entire villages and tribes were annihilated as smallpox, measles, and other infectious diseases for which American Indians had no immunity and no effective treatment swept across the continent. Epidemics weakened the ability of American Indian communities to respond politically or militarily to early European settlement pressures and subsequent U.S. actions for removal to designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

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