HIV and AIDS Threaten Native People

New York City continues to be the epicenter of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in America, and that status is enhanced by the highly transient nature of so many city dwellers. People of all backgrounds come to the Big Apple for work, school, vacation, family and to find themselves. That means many opportunities to spread infection. It also means that many people arrive with misinformation and stigmatized beliefs about the problem, especially if they moved from isolated rural areas, according to Larenia Felix (Dine [Navajo]), 32, a community educator at the American Indian Community House in NYC.

From 1991 to 2004, the number of American Indian AIDS cases across the country steadily rose from 322 to 2,996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As a group, American Indians are now ranked third behind African Americans and Hispanics in terms of per capita AIDS rates in the U.S. In 2003, the CDC reported an estimated 1,529 deaths among American Indians and Alaska Natives with AIDS.

Native Americans also have the second highest rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis in the U.S.

Another major concern is that American Indians with AIDS have shorter life expectancies than whites, Asians and Hispanics. However, according to Felix, this trend is less pressing in the Northeast. “Being in the city, people have better access to medication, doctors and decent nutritional intake than in rural areas or reservations,” said Felix, who has lived in New York about six years, and currently resides in Soho. She was born and raised in Arizona.

According to Felix, lack of education on the issue is one reason for the relatively high rates of HIV infection among native peoples, including in New York. Other reasons are resistance to getting tested, higher poverty rates and more prevalent drug abuse, which contributes to greater risk of infection through needle sharing and increased engagement in unprotected sex. The rate of illicit drug use is highest among American Indians or Alaska Natives (12.3 percent) and those of two or more races (13.3 percent) versus whites (8.1 percent), Hispanics (7.2 percent), African Americans (8.7 percent) and Asians (3.1 percent), according to 2004 data published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In order to address the AIDS crisis, the AICH launched a pioneering program in 1990, which provides culturally relevant education and prevention services, and assists native people living with the devastating disease in accessing the care they need. Among other things, the project created the first-ever safe sex teaching curriculum for American Indian men. The program’s head office is in Syracuse, and regional centers are in Buffalo, Akwesasne (Mohawk territory on the New York-Canada border) and New York City.

“The offices upstate are around different reservations, but we don’t have a reservation in New York City, so I just try to blanket the area,” said Felix about her outreach work. She sets up a table at native cultural events around the city, and talks to at-risk people in parks and on the street.

Kevin VanWanseele (Kumeyaay, see Two-Spirit) is also working to confront HIV. He recently served as a NYC coordinator of the Honor Project, a pioneering study on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive American Indians. “It was an anonymous study taking a look at Native American sex practices, drug use, emotional trauma and generational trauma,” VanWanseele explained. “Because it was flagged as LGBT, there was a lot of pressure from the Bush administration to cut funding, but it is a triumph of the project organizers that it was able to continue.”