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AIDS EPIDEMIC AMONG AMERICAN INDIANS
leeson_k@CUBLDR.COLORADO.EDU
Fri, 4 Feb 1994 14:03:14 -0600
ANTHROPOLOGIST WARNS OF AIDS EPIDEMIC
AMONG AMERICAN INDIAN PEOPLE
Charles Cambridge, an anthropologist and member of the Navaho
Tribe, recently completed his dissertation directed by Dr. Deward E.
Walker, Jr., professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado at
Boulder. Dr. Cambridge's dissertation is titled: "An Anthropological
Study of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Among American Indian
Populations"
As has happened numerous times in the last 500 years, an Old World
disease has been introduced into American Indian populations and, like
prior epidemics, threatens to eradicate whole tribes. This disease is
known as the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The full impact
of this disease among American Indian people is not yet apparent, but it is
now spreading rapidly as the virus is rapidly becoming self-perpetuating
in Indian communities. Introduction of the AIDS virus into different
groups of American Indians has been varied and has resulted in different
cultural responses. For example, some Indians infected with the AIDS virus
have been greeted with fear, avoidance, and banning. In turn, AIDS
infected Indians have turned to traditional healing in attempts to seek a
cure not available from Western medical science.
Dr. Cambridge's dissertation illustrates the expanding AIDS
epidemic among American Indians, with statistical data and with ten
individual cases of AIDS infected individuals and makes a number of
predictions about the future course of this epidemic. A number of needed
reforms are recommended in existing programs of identification,
prevention, and treatment of AIDS among American Indians If these reforms
are not made the epidemic will continue to run its course, possibly ending
in the eradication of large numbers of Indian people and their tribal
cultures..
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