Indigenous Life Tables: A Joint International Collaboration

• Activity Number: 123
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 5, 2013 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights
• Author(s): Fritz J. Scheuren*+ and Malcolm King*+ and Lisa Jackson Pulver*+ and John Waldon*+ and Teshia Solomon*+
• Companies: Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health and NORC at the University of Chicago and University of Arizona and University of New South Wales
• Keywords: Life Tables ; Indigenous people ; American Indian ; Differential Mortality

Abstract

American Indians have had an unspeakable past since contact with Europeans. That contact has repeatedly created epidemics among them (e.g.., initially smallpox). Prior to European contact American Indians had a unique relationship with Mother Earth. This way of life was taken away through assimilation and what some would say was a form of cultural genocide, similar to the cultural genocide that occurred when African-Americans were brought here as slaves. This mistreatment has led to intergenerational trauma, brought on in part by the boarding schools begun in the late 1800's to "mainstream "Indian children. Even today health problems (alcohol, domestic violence, teen suicide, diabetes) continue at rates in excess of the rates of Americans of European stock. Indigenous peoples from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have difficulties similar to those of the indigenous (aka American Indians) in the United States. This session describes attempts in each country to create improved mortality data, including life tables, for their respective Indigenous peoples.