1909: Dollars allocated but promised health care remains distant

Congress appropriates $12,000 for a national health program for Native Americans. The government organizes campaigns against tuberculosis, trachoma (a serious eye infection), infant mortality, house flies, alcoholism, and tooth decay. Still, reservations lack clinics, hospitals, doctors, and nurses.

The medical facilities that do exist for American Indians—asylums for the mentally ill and sanatoriums for tuberculosis patients—are located in cities far from reservations. Native persons who need care travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from their homes, breaking the extended family ties that are central their cultures.

Theme

Federal-Tribal Relations

Region

Arctic, California, Great Basin, Great Plains, Northeast, Northwest Coast, Plateau, Southeast, Southwest, Subarctic