ANN ARBOR—Native Americans’ life expectancy is 5.2 years less than the general population. The suicide rate for young Native American males is two to three times the national average.

The Native American community has significant public health concerns, and Sherman James hopes a series of discussions April 3-5 at the University of Michigan School of Public Health will help the University in its efforts toward improving the general quality of life and longevity of Native Americans. James is director of the three-year-old Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH), which is hosting Vine Deloria Jr. for the Center’s annual Distinguished Lecture on Public Health and Human Rights.

Deloria, recognized as a leading Native American spokesman, scholar and advocate, is slated to give a talk titled “Daily Life on American Indian Reservations” 3-3:45 p.m. April 5 at Rackham Auditorium, with question and answer time following.

[Central campus map, Rackham Building left center]

Deloria has been executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and is a past chairman of the Repatriation Committee of the National Museum of the American Indian. Deloria is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of Fort Yates, N.D., Deloria earned the Native Writers Circle of the Americas 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Deloria is a prolific author on subjects dealing with Native American history and contemporary issues. Among his works is the well-known book “Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto.” One Web site (http://www.indigenouspeople.org/natlit/vine.htm) citing his biography quotes him: “In recent years we have come to understand what progress is. It is the total replacement of nature by an artificial technology. Progress is the absolute destruction of the real world in favor of a technology that creates a comfortable way of life for a few fortunately situated people. Within our lifetime, the differences between the Indian use of the land and the white use of the land will become crystal clear. The Indian lived with his land. The white destroyed his land. He destroyed the planet earth.”

During his two-day visit, Deloria will meet with a variety of student groups and University officials to discuss curricular issues involving Native Americans.

CRECH chose Native American issues for its major public event this year because the public health concerns of Native Americans have yet to be adequately addressed by public health academics, James said. “In academic public health settings, Native Americans tend to be invisible. This needs to change.”

Part of the reason Native American needs have not gotten as much attention as, for example, African Americans or Hispanics, is because of the lack of Native American students and faculty in schools of public health, James said. He hopes Deloria’s visit will bring more focus to their issues, not only in public health but also in other academic areas.

James, who has almost three decades of experience studying minority health issues, established CRECH to work on issues that need greater attention by academic public health, and to encourage both sustained discussion and action to improve the health of all groups in American society. The annual lecture on public health and human rights is part of that mission.

“Progress for any one group would need to be linked to progress for all other groups that have been historically disadvantaged,” James said.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington St. in Ann Arbor. To register for the lecture or to learn more about other events planned during Deloria’s visit, contact Lynda Fuerstnau at CRECH, (734) 647-6665 or ljfirsti@umich.edu.

For more information on CRECH: http://www.sph.umich.edu/crech/

To learn more about the many publications of Deloria, visit http://www.ipl.org/cgi/ref/native/browse.pl/A31

Sherman JamesCentral campus mapNational Congress of American IndiansCuster Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifestoljfirsti@umich.eduhttp://www.ipl.org/cgi/ref/native/browse.pl/A31