Memo: Voters Support Native American Healthcare and Treaty Rights
By Julian Brave NoiseCat and Ethan Winter
Executive Summary
Voters support five proposals aimed at improving healthcare in Native American communities. The most popular was increasing funding for the Indian Health Service, which enjoyed a 54-percentage-point margin of support.
Voters support holding the federal government legally responsible for failing to uphold treaty obligations with Native American tribes, by a margin of 54 percentage points.
Support for all five of these proposals is bipartisan. For example, Republicans support targeting federal aid to hospitals and other essential services used by communities of color and Native American tribes, by a margin of 23 percentage points.
The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately impacted Native American communities in the United States. The Navajo Nation has been especially devastated; as the Washington Post reported, “Nearly 2,700 people had fallen ill, and more than 80 had died, with the 350,000-resident reservation becoming one of the worst-of-the-worst American hot spots.”
