A panel of speakers discussed the lack of health services, a need for more funding and other problems Native Americans face in the U.S. on Tuesday night at the Student Center, concluding the events of Native American Heritage Month at Eastern Michigan University.
The panel consisted of Howard Kimewon, a teacher of the Anishinaabemowin language at the University of Michigan; Lorraine “Punkin” Shananequet, a community health representative for the Gun Lake Pottawatomi Tribe; and Judy Pamp, assistant director of the Ziibiwing Center, a museum in Mount Pleasant.
“We are underfunded at about $3,000 per tribal member,” Shananaquet said. “We have basically no dental care. The only way you may have access to dental care is if you need a tooth pulled.”
She said all health care is a major problem for Native Americans, and eye care needs to be updated badly.
“No Fendi, no Gucci, no Louis Vuitton frames are going to our people,” Shananequet said.
Shananaquet said seriously, all they want is to have health care that is up-to-date, and that prisoners in the U.S. have better health care than Native people.
She also discussed global issues she said needed to be addressed for the well-being of other people.
“We have to be more mindful of our place in the universe, our center,” she said.
Kimewon, the next speaker, talked about teaching the Anishinaabemowin language at EMU and his experience with problems Native Americans are facing. He only spoke his native language for the first seven years of his life before learning English.
He said his parents were farmers and lumberjacks, but he didn’t want to work that hard his entire life.
“At the age of thirteen, I was going to be something else,” Kimewon said. “As a teenager, I went into a world of white people. I used to get beat up every day. Somewhere along, I realized I’m a Native American, and I had to deal with it.”
Pamp talked about the diversity within each Native community and within each family, and also the high rate of suicide among young Native Americans.
She said many tribes say their biggest struggle is not with health care or some of the obvious concerns, but it’s keeping their children alive.
“I think, now, word is getting out about it,” Pamp said. “But we have had to deal with it constantly throughout our lives. They don’t see that there’s hope.”
Jasmine Culp, the president of the Native American Student Association at EMU, facilitated the discussion.
“We wanted to get more of a holistic view of what is going on, and more importantly, what is not happening,” Culp said.
Culp discussed in an interview some issues on campus that Native American students face.
“There are unmet needs for Native people at EMU, but many of the Native students that are on campus are those who have really overcome a lot of challenges to get an education,” she said. “For students who are here, more could be done to give them a sense of pride, identity and belonging here on campus.
“If an indigenous language was taught here (such as Ojibwe), if there were more Native faculty or staff, if there were more native-centric events outside of the month of November, if the connection to the native community outside the campus was further nurtured, and if recognition and respect within the campus buildings and grounds of the people who lived here for thousands of years before was visible, I feel that native students would experience a more positive academic and cultural environment.”
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a report in 2003 to look at the unmet needs of Native Americans in the US.
“A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country” found that: “Over the last ten years, Federal funding for Native American programs has increased significantly. However, this has not nearly been enough to compensate for a decline in spending power, which had been evident for decades before that, nor to overcome a long and sad history of neglect and discrimination.”
The study also noted the life expectancy is lower for the Native American population in the U.S. than any other racial or ethnic group.
“Yet, health facilities are frequently inaccessible and medically obsolete, and preventive care and specialty services are not readily available.”
