Originally recorded in December 2020, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof and Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health Director Allison Barlow discuss the struggle for social justice in Native American communities, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Bureau of Indian Education schools only have a 53% high school graduation rate! We are failing them way before they fail us,” suggests Kristof. “One of the greatest prides for parents on a Native reservation is to celebrate their child’s high school graduation. If children there aren’t graduating from high school, it’s because of generations of trauma on top of a really ineffective education system,” Barlow says. “We as a country have had this narrative that when people struggle, it’s because of a lack of personal responsibility and bad choices. When a child born in a certain county has a life expectancy shorter than that of Cambodia, that’s not because that infant is making a bad choice. It’s because we as a society are making bad choices about healthcare, education and jobs,” says Kristof.

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