Advocating for Social Justice for Native Americans

Originally recorded in December 2020, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof and Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health Co-Director Allison Barlow discuss the struggle for social justice in Native American communities.

“The Bureau of Indian Education schools only have a 53% high school graduation rate! We are failing them way before they fail us,” suggests Kristof. “One of the greatest prides for parents on a Native reservation is to celebrate their child’s high school graduation. If children there aren’t graduating from high school, it’s because of generations of trauma on top of a really ineffective education system,” Barlow says.

“We as a country have had this narrative that when people struggle, it’s because of a lack of personal responsibility and bad choices. When a child born in a certain county has a life expectancy shorter than that of Cambodia, that’s not because that infant is making a bad choice. It’s because we as a society are making bad choices about healthcare, education and jobs,” adds Kristof.

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