By Susan Montoya Bryan
The Associated Press
A sea of people wearing blue baseball caps marched around the heart of Albuquerque on Wednesday in the opening salvo of a war aimed at improving Native Americans' health.
The crowd was led by professional golfer Notah Begay, who said he was particularly worried about the high rate of diabetes among his fellow Indians. About one in four have the disease.
"We need to walk, we need to exercise so we can show our children how to walk into a brighter future," Begay told the crowd of about 100 people. "We're walking toward improvement and we're going to create a better environment for our kids to grow up in."
The march around the city's civic plaza was part of the first Native American Health and Fitness Day and the 60th annual National Congress of American Indian conference.
Tribal leaders watched as Dr. Charles Grim, director of the Indian Health Service, and representatives from Nike signed an agreement to promote healthy choices among Indians.
"We know that a lot of the diseases we're facing are diseases of behavioral and lifestyle choices and we have to get our community making positive choices," Grim said.
Grim noted glaring disparities that revealing the health challenges facing tribal communities. For example, Indian alcoholism death rates are 770 percent higher than in the rest of the nation, diabetes death rates 420 percent higher, accidents 280 percent higher, suicides 190 percent higher and homicides more than 200 percent higher, Grim said.
Tribal leaders have voiced concerns this week that federal officials seem to have a grasp on the problems but have failed to provide resources for improvements. They pointed at underfunding for the Indian Health Service.
Access to health care and the poor condition of facilities available to Indians are also concerns. For example, Grim said, the average age of IHS buildings is 32 years compared to eight to 10 years in the private sector.
Grim said the Bush administration is committed to eliminating disparities for Indians. He pointed to $50 million in federal grants for special diabetes programs and a request moving through Congress for an additional $20 million for safe drinking water projects.
Tribal leaders also got an update Wednesday on the federal government's trust reform efforts from Ross Swimmer, the Interior Department's special trustee for American Indians.
A federal judge has ordered the agency to account for royalties that were supposed to be collected from oil, gas, timber and grazing on Indian lands for more than a century. Lawyers for the Indians insist that, with interest, the account should be as much as $176 billion. They claim the government squandered billions of dollars that is owed to the Indian landowners.
Swimmer described trust reform as one of the most critical issues for tribes.
"It has both benefits and it certainly has its downside as far as having to manage the trust and keep up with what the court wants us to do, as well as what Congress wants us to do and what the tribes want the department to do," he said. "We basically have three bosses."
In reorganizing the trust, Swimmer said the department doesn't want to diminish the trust responsibility owed by the federal government to tribes through treaties and acts of Congress.
The department has scheduled four meetings over the next two months to gather more opinions about the reform plans. But tribal officials are concerned the department has already made up its mind about the direction the reforms should take.
Daryll LaCounte, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs trust re-engineering project, stressed to tribal leaders that they must continue to take part in the process.
"For us to fix something that took 200 years to get where we're at today, to expect us to fix it in a year, in two years, in three years and do it right, just isn't realistic," he said. "It needs to be done right and to do it right you've got to have all the players."
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