American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Health service provision has been an aspect of indigenous-United States relationships for over two hundred years, yet America's First Peoples continue to suffer from poor health outcomes when compared with other racial or ethnic groups in the United States. An important change over recent decades is that more and more tribes are managing their own health care services—a realignment of administration and authority that has the potential to substantially improve American Indian and Alaska Native health in years to come. This paper describes the history of health care provision to federally recognized American Indian tribes. It continues by documenting the sparse research literature on tribal management of health care services and identifying information still needed to bring knowledge of this topic up-to-date. Five challenges for tribal management of health-care services that should be considered by tribes and policymakers in their health-care efforts and brought to bear on future research are discussed. By addressing both tribal control of health-care services and the role of tribes in changes to federally provided health care, this paper adds the lens of tribal sovereignty to current discussions of the history and policy context for American Indian and Alaska Native health.

The treatment of American Indian place-names provides a window into the growth of American nationalism since 1776 and attitudes towards Indians by the new settler society. Originally ignored or erased by European colonists, Indian place-names became a subject of fascination and scholarship from the late-nineteenth century, at the same time that Indians themselves were marginalized to reservations. A large body of literature produced by non-Natives sometimes frames these place names as "romantic," and other times as distinctly unromantic. In the voluminous literature on this topic, the treatment of Indians and their place-names reflects diverse and shifting attitudes towards American Indians in United States culture, as elaborated by Philip Deloria and Robert Berkhofer. Drawing on approximately 120 texts on Indian place-names, this study uses the lens of romance, a polyvalent term with various implications, to examine how non-Native writings on these toponyms reveals attitudes towards Indians themselves and their place in the American nationalist imagination.

The Navajo Nation occupies more than 27,000 square miles in the Four Corners region of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Population is widely dispersed. The Navajo (Diné) People are isolated both culturally and physically from the mainstream population of the region. Unemployment rates consistently exceed 20 percent and nearly 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. In this unlikely setting a retail chain of supermarkets, Bashas' Diné Markets, is thriving. This study analyzes cross-cultural trade practices on the Navajo Nation from the early traders to today's supermarkets and the positive impact the Diné Markets have had on the Navajo Nation. The study also looks at the potential for the Diné Markets to serve as a model for niche marketing to similar cultural clusters.

This article identifies parallels between Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller and Almanac of the Dead, focusing on the recurrence of Yellow Woman, a figure of Keresan orature. Yellow Woman embodies female sensuality and its potential to incite social or structural change within communities, and I argue that in Almanac, Silko employs textual reinterpretations of Yellow Woman to demonstrate the importance of cross-cultural, indigenous-led movements toward decolonization. Finally, I compare Almanac to the current Idle No More movement, noting their similarities as vast transnational, transindigenous, and even transracial campaigns that model beneficial Native and non-Native ally relationships within the struggle against colonial oppression.

The Native American Research Centers for Health program was designed to foster research training and skill development for American Indian/Alaska Native trainees. Increasing the number of American Indian/Alaska Native researchers with advanced training in science is one strategy to help decrease health disparities in native peoples. Our NARCH program provided financial support and mentorship for professional and academic development of American Indian/Alaska Native award recipients. We report on an assessment of our NARCH training program that is directed toward increasing the number of qualified American Indian/Alaska Native researchers.

When Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. addressed to the World Summit of the Information Society in 2005, he called for greater indigenous participation in the internet, with universal indigenous connectivity to assert indigenous "values, languages, traditions, and sovereignty." I argue, however, that such aspirations should be pursued with caution, as there are risks associated with internet technology and nuances that users must understand in order to use it effectively. My argument draws upon the work of Eli Pariser, who sees personal internet search, specifically, as problematic for any group that uses the internet as a means of discourse to address problems common to all group members.