When the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to go on stage, the governor of the Indian community of the Gila river was still standing on the podium, articulating his discomfort around the recent moves of the Trump administration.
“Let me repeat this: we spent a good part of this year by providing education on why the tribes have a political status that is not of the”, said governor Stephen Roe Lewis to a room of 1,200 people, who applauded and applauded.
When it comes to cuts sought by what has been called the government’s efficiency department, “we need a scalpel and not a chain approach to make these changes,” he said.
The resort and casino of Gila River Wild Horse Pass in Chandler, Arizona, owned and managed by two tribes, was the last stage of the American Hales Make American Again tour of Mr. Kennedy through three southern states -Western states. Kennedy would have hosted a “fire chat” at the Tribal Conference of Autogoverno, an event that celebrated 50 years of tribal sovereignty pursuant to the law on self -determination and Indian education.
The law, approved by Congress in 1975, marked a transition from the control of the federal government, so that native communities could manage their programs based on their unique cultural needs.
Kennedy has long expressed a particular zeal to improve tribal health, citing the long history of defense of his family, his childhood trips to the American Indian reserves and parts of his environmental career.
But the meeting arrived at an embarrassing moment. The Kennedy agency fired senior consultants for tribal issues at the Federal Administration for children and families, closed the employees of the centers for the control of diseases and the initiative of the healthy tribes of Prevention and closed five regional offices that served as large bands of the indigenous population.
Mr. Kennedy’s recent decision to reassign high -ranking officials to the remote locations of the Indian health services seemed many more as a sort of political flag than a serious attempt to support native groups.
When Mr. Kennedy was welcomed on stage for the chat – pink and yellow lights that swindle through the auditorium – he took care to shake hands with all tribal leaders at the table. He opened the discussion by announcing that parts of the Indian health service would be exempt from several recent executive orders.
The tone was collegiate as officials discussed strategies to improve the health of tribal communities, often with consent. Kennedy described her concerns about high obesity rates between native groups. “If we really change public health on the reserves and the end to this crisis, we must face what is causing the crisis, which is the food systems,” he told tribal officials. His words were welcomed with applause.
However, there were moments of disconnection. Mr. Kennedy dried in stories about his childhood, citing Powwows on the Martha vineyard where his father led him to taste “some of the best oysters”.
And then the announcement that Kennedy had planned to ensure that indigenous groups tested “robotic nurses” – voices of artificial intelligence that could serve as a substitute for human health workers, calling patients as a way to get around the challenges with the provision of health care.
“We will try to implement systems like the one in the Indian country – we would like to create pilot programs of Indian countries for this type of systems,” he said, triggering whistles from the crowd.
“Well,” he added, “there are some places that do not have access to doctors. These are remote places, for example, in Alaska.”
Kennedy’s work on behalf of the indigenous communities dates back to the 90s, when it represented various groups in negotiations to stop damages of damages, oil development and industrial recording in different countries. He was also one of the first editors of the largest Native American newspaper in North America, today the Indian country.
At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy indicated a multignerational frustration for health care for tribal groups. He testified that his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, president John F. Kennedy, had been “deeply, deeply critical of the function of the Indian health service in 1968 to 1980 and nothing has changed. Nothing has improved,” he said.
In an exchange with Senator Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, at the hearing, Kennedy promised to install a native leader at the level of the assistant secretary of the department and to face unique cultural and logistical challenges to provide high quality health care to the tribes that use tools such as telemedicine.
But Mrs. Murkowski scored aloud through a series of health problems on which Native Americans remained far behind other ethnic groups, including depression, use of substances, hypertension and stroke. He also shocked the infectious diseases to which groups have proved vulnerable: hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningitis, cough and measles – and asked Mr. Kennedy to use his influence to build trust in vaccines.
He did not face this request directly.
Tuesday Kennedy also visited Native Health, a federal qualified health center that serves Native Americans in the Phoenix area through four primary assistance clinics and a food pantry to help patients with diabetes prepare indigenous recipes.
The secretary’s staff said that his tour will bring more awareness to tribal groups, including a visit on Wednesday in a Charter school in New Mexico who mainly serves native students and an excursion with the leaders of the Navajo Nation.
Kennedy concluded the day with a press conference at the Arizona State Capitol, where he defended his agency’s response to the morbarous epidemic in progress in the western Texas by calling him “a model for the rest of the world”.
When a journalist approached the microphone and began to ask for his opinions on the MMR vaccine, the journalist was whistled by parents and other participants, many of whom asked that the journalist was removed from the room.