At the moment when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to take the stage, the governor of the Gila River Indian community is still on the podium, making clear concerns about recent Trump administration moves.
“Let's repeat that. We spent a great role this year and provided education on why tribes have a political position not Day,” Gov. Stephen Law Lewis said in a room of 1,200 people who greeted applause and cheered.
Regarding the reductions sought by what is called government efficiency, he said, “we need a female rather than a chainsaw approach to making these changes.”
Gila River Wild Horse Pass Resort and Casino in Chandler, Arizona, owned and operated by two tribes, was the latest stop on Mr. Kennedy's Healthy Tour of America through three Southwest states. Kennedy was scheduled to hold a “Chat Beyond the Fireplace” at the Tribal Autonomous Conference, an event celebrating 50 years of tribal sovereignty under India's Self-Determination and Education Support Act.
Passed by Congress in 1975, the law marked a transition from federal administration, allowing native communities to implement their own programs based on their own cultural needs.
Kennedy has long expressed a specific enthusiasm for improving tribal health, citing a long history of advocacy for his family, his childhood trip to American Indian reservations, and a portion of his own environmental career.
But the encounter came at a troublesome moment. Kennedy's agency fired a senior advisor to federal administration's tribal affairs for children and families, fired employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Healthy Tribal Initiative, and shut down five regional offices that served a large strip of Indigenous people.
Kennedy's recent decision to reallocate high-ranking officials to remote health services locations seemed more like a kind of political expulsion than a serious attempt to support native groups.
When Kennedy was welcomed on stage for a chat – pink and yellow lights swirling the auditorium – took care of him to shake hands with all the tribal leaders on the table. He began the discussion by announcing that some of India's health services will be exempt from several recent executive orders.
This tone was a colleague as authorities discussed strategies to improve the health of tribal communities. Kennedy explained his concerns about high obesity rates among native groups. “If we really change public health with reservations and end this crisis, we need to deal with what is causing the crisis, the food system,” he told tribal officials. His words were met with applause.
Still, there was a moment of cutting. Kennedy was heading towards a story about his childhood, citing Martha's vineyard poww, which his father took him to taste “some of the best oysters.”
And it was announced that Kennedy had planned to test “robot nurses” with Indigenous groups. This is the voice of AI that serves as an alternative to human healthcare providers by calling patients as a way to avoid the challenges of providing healthcare.
“We're going to deploy such a system in the Indian country. We want to create an Indian country pilot program for this type of system,” he says, causing boos from the crowd.
“Well,” he added. “There are some places where doctors are not accessible, for example, remote locations in Alaska.”
Kennedy's work on behalf of Indigenous communities dates back to the 1990s and represented various groups in negotiations to halt dam construction projects, oil development and industrial logging in several countries. He was also one of the first editors of the country in India, the largest Native American newspaper in North America.
During the confirmation hearing, Kennedy pointed to multi-generational complaints about the tribal group's healthcare. He testified that his father, Robert F. Kennedy and uncle, President John F. Kennedy, were “deeply critical of the functioning of Indian health services between 1968 and 1980, and nothing has changed.”
In exchange for Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Markowski, Kennedy has vowed to tackle the unique cultural and logistical challenges of setting up native leaders at the department's secretary level and providing high quality health care using tools such as telemedicine.
But Murkowski spoke out loud through many health issues, including depression, substance use, hypertension and stroke, where Native Americans are far behind other ethnic groups. She also rattled out the infections the group has proven to be vulnerable to hepatitis A, B, meningitis, wapping cough and measles, and asked Kennedy to use his influence to build confidence in the vaccine.
He did not directly address the request.
On Tuesday, Kennedy visited Native Health, a federally qualified health center that serves Native Americans in the Phoenix area through four primary care clinics and food pantries.
The secretary staff said his tour would bring more outreach to tribal groups, including a Wednesday visit to a charter school in New Mexico, which mainly serves native students, and a hike with Navajo leaders.
Kennedy concluded the day with a press conference at the Arizona State Capitol, where he defended his agency's response to the ongoing measles outbreak in West Texas by calling it a “model of the world.”
When the reporter approached the microphone and began to inquire about his views on the MMR vaccine, the reporter was retired from his parents and other attendees.
