Native American Health Crisis: Underfunding and Cultural Gaps
This paper investigates the ongoing health crisis affecting Native American communities in the United States, tracing its roots to historical trauma including forced removal, assimilation policies, and broken government promises. The paper argues that the Indian Health Service, established in 1955 to serve Native Americans, remains chronically underfunded and inadequate to meet community needs. Beyond fiscal constraints, the paper highlights how healthcare providers' lack of cultural understanding—particularly regarding holistic, spiritually-centered approaches to health—exacerbates the delivery of mental health services. The paper documents alarming statistics on suicide, alcoholism, and poverty on reservations and concludes that addressing both funding and cultural competency is essential to improve health outcomes and honor the trust between Native American tribes and the federal government.
- Historical Context and Broken Promises: Colonial removal, assimilation, and IHS establishment
- Underfunding and Access Barriers in the Indian Health Service: Budget cuts, policy barriers, geographic distance, poverty
- Cultural Misunderstandings in Healthcare Delivery: Holistic health views, spiritual dimensions, provider-patient disconnect
- Mental Health Crisis and Social Consequences: Suicide, alcoholism, trauma, lost traditions, vulnerable youth
- Addressing the Crisis Through Reform: Integrated solutions, tribal relationships, national responsibility
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What makes this paper effective
- Combines historical narrative (Indian Removal Act, boarding schools, Trail of Tears) with contemporary policy analysis to show causation rather than treating health disparities as isolated problems.
- Uses concrete data points and individual case studies (Joanna Quotskuyva's mastectomy decision, Standing Rock poverty statistics) to ground abstract policy failures in lived experience.
- Incorporates primary research findings from the Yurkovich study to demonstrate that cultural competency gaps are not anecdotal but evidence-based, shifting the conversation beyond funding alone.
- Maintains a persuasive arc: establishes historical injustice, documents systemic failures, identifies a second layer of institutional failure (cultural misunderstanding), then calls for integrated reform.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper exemplifies causal argument synthesis—linking multiple types of evidence (historical, statistical, and qualitative research) to build a claim that Native American health crises stem from interconnected failures: colonial legacy, chronic underfunding, and provider-level cultural incompetence. Rather than treating each as separate, the paper shows how they reinforce one another. The Yurkovich research serves as a turning point that reframes the problem: even adequate funding cannot produce good health outcomes if providers misunderstand patients' holistic definitions of health and spirituality's role in wellness.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a compelling thesis statement framing health disparities as a modern consequence of historical injustice. It then moves backward in time to establish that legacy (Indian Removal Act through boarding schools to IHS creation), then forward to evaluate IHS performance through fiscal and policy lenses. The middle section pivots to cultural competency research, introducing a second explanatory layer. The penultimate section synthesizes these causes into observable social pathologies (suicide, alcoholism, poverty, trauma). The conclusion reframes the issue as a national responsibility rather than a tribal problem, arguing that reform benefits all Americans. This structure models how to use historical context not as background but as causal evidence.
Historical Context and Broken Promises
Social injustice is not a new issue in our world. But for the Native American tribes who have lived in the United States for generations, it seems to be the never-ending story of their culture. Their lives were torn apart centuries ago by newcomers who took their land, leaving them with nothing to live off. To this day, their needs—specifically their physical and mental health needs—are still being neglected. High rates of suicide, alcoholism, and unemployment are carryover effects of underfunded health facilities that cannot properly serve Native American citizens. The very institutions that took their land and promised to help them are now turning their backs on them. The Native American community is in a state of health crisis, and attention must be brought to their situation.
To understand the current state of Native Americans, we must understand how they arrived there. During the 19th century, Native Americans became increasingly wary of the United States government and its desire for the expansion of America—expansion that came at their cost. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 encouraged reluctant tribe leaders to reconsider signing treaties with the American government in exchange for their homelands. Native Americans were convinced, being told it was Manifest Destiny—a belief among whites that expansion was not only good but inevitable and certain. For Native Americans, Manifest Destiny was simply a way to justify the removal of their land and their forced relocation. Removing them from their land also removed them from their culture. The Indian Removal Act paved the way for the migration of tens of thousands of American Indians to the West, an event known as the "Trail of Tears," a resettlement of the Native population to reservations where they could be more easily separated from traditional life and pushed into European-American society.
After a series of violent Indian wars in the late 19th century, the United States began the assimilation process of Native children by establishing boarding schools where they were pushed toward European cultures and forbidden from practicing their Native language and beliefs. They were also severely mistreated and abused. It was not until 1924 that the United States government signed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to all Native Americans. Once granted citizenship, Native Americans began to reclaim their power. Approximately 44,000 Native American men served in the United States Army during World War II. Tribes began building their own schools and college institutions in hopes of preserving and reviving their culture. Most importantly, the granting of citizenship entitled Native Americans to receive health services provided by the government. The Indian Health Service (IHS) was established in 1955 by the United States Health Services with the goal of providing health services to tribe members living on reservations.
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