Daily coronavirus cases were in the single digits, down from a springtime peak of 238 that made the
Right away, tribal members accused their government of allowing them to be guinea pigs, pointing to painful times in the past when
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Yet, few of the country's 574 federally recognized tribes have signed on for the studies, a hesitation often rooted in suspicion and distrust. Many tribes also require several layers of approval for clinical trials, a challenge researchers aren't always willing to overcome and don't face in the states.
While vaccines from
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She was assured that wasn't happening and let the words of her parents and grandparents guide her: Don’t let our struggles be your struggles, begin with our triumphs.
“What else am I supposed to do? Just sit back and say, ‘No, I don’t trust them’ and not try something new to see if we can find a breakthrough?” Peshlakai said. “We have to do something, we can’t just sit by and wait and hope and pray.”
She overcame her fear of needles to get the doses and keeps track of her well-being daily on an app. As trial participants, the family can get the vaccine if they initially received a placebo.
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Vaccine trials nationwide have been moving quickly, which doesn’t always align with tribal guidelines on considering research proposals.
“It must be done with respect for tribal sovereignty and knowing that each individual has truly been given informed consent,” said
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He expects to get approval from a newly seated tribal council but for now, plans to set up a mobile unit outside the reservation.
“We refuse to do this type of research or any research within the boundaries of a tribe without having explicit approval from the tribe," Henderson said.
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“I expect a slow start to it, and we have to get a few brave people who are comfortable with it and then people to follow,” he said.
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Initial hesitation among the tribe stemmed from a researcher who took photos of Lummi children years ago to develop a tool to diagnose fetal alcohol syndrome but didn't offer any ways to address it, said Dr.
“I had already known and was certainly aware of certainly some distrust with any kind of research within our community,” Lane said. “But I also knew the only way out of this pandemic was with access to vaccines.”
Other stories about the sterilization of Native American women, noted in a 1976 federal report, and military testing of radioactive iodine on Alaska Natives have bred distrust.
That case came to mind when
“There’s this historical distrust when it comes to any type of experimenting,” she said. “It’s just experience, I don’t know that there are many families out there who haven’t been touched by some sort of experimentation (or) biological attacks on tribal communities.”
Brown has mixed feelings because she previously participated in a vaccine trial with
It was related to research that determined the first generation of vaccines for bacterial meningitis was less effective among Navajo and
Researchers and doctors in Native American communities also have found that standard doses for medications like blood thinners weren't always the best fit for tribal members.
For
“We can't wait for this to trickle down," said O'Leary, director of Missouri Breaks, a small Native American-owned research group on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation. "It seems like in Indian Country, we keep chasing the ball of health and we never get ahead of it.”
Fonseca is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FonsecaAP.
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