Indianz.Com > News > Book Review: Indian health issues in 'Broken'

Book Review: Indian health issues in 'Broken'
Friday, October 2, 2009
Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment

"Author Lisa Jones describes the postapocalyptic conditions in which Native Americans live today. Imagine a country owning the rights to the air we breathe, or the right to sleep. This is the way Native Americans once viewed the earth. They could not conceive of government control and ownership of the land. "Nowadays, the dislocation and violence of the white occupation of the continent still plays out on the reservation," writes Jones. They are often victims of violent crime at rates more than twice the national average.

The CDC reports that "Native Americans 19 years and younger are at greater risk of preventable injury-related deaths than others in the same age group in the United States. Compared with blacks and whites, this group had the highest injury-related death rates for motor vehicle crashes, pedestrian events, and suicide. Rates for these causes were two to three times greater than rates for whites the same age." Substance abuse figures prominently.

The central figure of Lisa Jones's book, Broken: A Love Story is Stanford Addison. He too is one of the victims of a motor vehicle crash. During the heydays of his wild youth, Addison became a quadriplegic after surviving four near death experiences, the result of a collision between a herd of horses and a truck he was in. For over 20 years Addison has been wheelchair ridden. His world renowned fame lies in his ability to gentle horses using intuition rather than breaking them with harsh methods. His calling is as a healer of disease and emotional angst to those who come to him.

Author Lisa Jones went out to the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming after being nudged by Zia Parker, who insisted that there was an incredible story worth telling up at Stanford Addison's corral. There she spent four years immersed in the Northern Arapaho culture."

Get the Story:
Kelly Jad'on: 1.2 Million Native Americans Under 18: At Greater Risk Of Injury, Crime (Basil & Spice 10/1)