R.F.K. Jr’s Plan to Send Health Officials to Indian Country Angers Native Leaders

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show on Facebook of his meeting with American Indian and Alaska Native leaders last month, declaring himself “very inspired” and committed to improving the Indian Health Service, which he says has “always been treated as the redheaded stepchild” by his agency.

Now Native leaders have some questions for him.

Why, they would like to know, did he lay off employees in programs aimed at supporting Native people, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy Tribes initiative? Why has he shuttered five regional offices of the Department of Health and Human Services that, by the estimate of one advocate for tribes, cover 80 percent of the nation’s Indian population?

Why were five senior advisers for tribal issues within the department’s Administration for Children and Families, all of them Indian or Native people, let go? Why are all of these changes being made without consulting tribal leaders, despite centuries-old treaty obligations, as well as presidential executive orders, requiring it?

But the final indignity, Native leaders say, came last week, when Mr. Kennedy reassigned high-ranking health officials — including a bioethicist married to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a tobacco regulator, a human resources manager and others — to Indian Health Service locations in the American West, when what the chronically understaffed service really needs are doctors and nurses who are familiar with the unique needs of Native people.

“They are breaching their trust obligation to Indian tribes by all of the scams that they’re doing,” said Deb Haaland, the former interior secretary and congresswoman, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and a Democratic candidate for governor of New Mexico. “It’s terrible, it’s shameful and it isn’t right.”

This week, Mr. Kennedy will visit Native health providers and meet with tribal leaders in Arizona and New Mexico to spotlight his commitment to Indian health. The secretary, who has also been invited to appear before the Senate health committee to testify about the job cuts and the vast reorganization of his department, has spoken often of his and his family’s longstanding commitment to Native Americans. The Coalition of Large Tribes, an advocacy group, gave his nomination its highest endorsement.