Back when all this started in the 70’s many of us tried to convince the local Treaty Tribes to take the health angle - everything then was ‘new age’ and novel health aid was very big. The tribes have a long history of natural healing medicine, but the ruling families chose the greedy way, throwing their minions to the dogs and encouraging alcohol and drug use to more degrade them in order to gain more cash and other free stuff.
The stuff you see in print is a careful set up by the tribes to make things appear terrible through no fault of their own. Somehow over a century of aid has done nothing to improve their lot ... except for the sometimes black magic practicing ruling families - a certain Wisconsin ruling tribal family gets 5K a month per person just because they are who they are in the tribe (told to me by a tribal member).
When I finished my paper I mailed it to him as I had promised. He had been replaced with another guy who called me and asked me where I had gotten all my information. I told him I had interviewed the previous director and I had found all the other info in a few libraries. The guy was not happy that I had scrounged up this info that stressed how important it was for people to rely on themselves and not the government for everything.
It was like stepping in a fire ant's nest by mistake.