I'm Dr. Celine Gounder. From 2017 up until the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, I spent time working

at Indian Health Service and Tribal Hospitals and Clinics. Work that's taken me from the

southwest to the far northeast of the United States. I bore witness to many of the struggles

indigenous communities face when it comes to health and wellness. These health disparities culminated

in one of the deadliest COVID outbreaks in the United States. In the early months of the pandemic,

the Navajo Nation had the highest SARS-CoV-2 infection rate per capita in the country.

And what's happening with this crisis is that the lack of funding and the lack of resources

isn't new. The coronavirus pandemic is sort of highlighting where the system is broken.

To many living on the reservation, this was not surprising. The health problems that

indigenous Americans face don't exist in a vacuum. They are the result of centuries of structural

violence and lack of investment in the most basic of infrastructure. When you have a nation

of 175,000 tribal members without access to water, without access to electricity, without access

to broadband, you have to ask yourself, how is this occurring? In our next season of American

diagnosis, we're going to look at the history that shaped the health of indigenous communities,

things like the repercussions of toxic uranium mines on native lands.

We have health reports on newborns being born with trace elements of uranium in their system,

and so this has gone from the miners to their families, and now we're seeing

the fourth generation being impacted by uranium. Struggles to access healthy and culturally

appropriate foods. Simply not having access to sufficient quantities of food and natural

resources to be self-sufficient had profound lasting impacts that we are still reeling from

today. The lack of access to quality medical care. I should say you can wait in the waiting room

so long it will heal yourself and just walk out. And how the weight of centuries of oppression

...