Click the images below, or the following links, to expand the view or download a PDF: American Indian Heritage Month Timeline and American Indian Heritage Month Facts & Figures.

American Indian Heritage Month

1600s – 1700s

1614 Pocahontas marries English Jamestown colonist John Rolfe in Virginia, bringing temporary peace between English settlers and Algonquians
1758 First North American Indian reservation is established in New Jersey

1800s

1824 Bureau of Indian Affairs is established
1830 Indian Removal Act gives president the power to negotiate removal treaties for American Indians to move west of the Mississippi. About 4,000 Cherokee die as a result.
1834 Congress bans alcohol sales on American Indian lands
1851 Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 gathers American Indian tribes and places them on reservations
1871 Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 dissolves the status of Indian tribes as sovereign nations
1887 Congress passes Dawes Act, dividing reservation lands into privately owned parcels
1890 Roughly 300 Sioux are killed at Wounded Knee in last battle with federal forces

1900s

1912 Jim Thorpe, an athlete of the Sac and Fox tribe, wins two Olympic gold medals
1924 Indian Citizenship Act classifies American Indians as “citizens”
1929 Charles Curtis becomes the 31st vice president of the United States, the first person with significant acknowledged American Indian heritage to reach this level of the executive branch
1930 Apache Scout William Major becomes an officer of the 25th United States Infantry
1934 Congress passes Indian Reorganization Act to protect American Indians from loss of lands and provide funds for economic development. Also helps re-establish tribal governments
1963 Lyndon B. Johnson bestows the Presidential Medal of Freedom on its first American Indian recipient, Annie Dodge Wauneka of the Navajo Nation.
1968 Indian Civil Rights Act grants American Indians most protections under the Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment
1972 The American Indian Movement seizes the Bureau of Indian Affairs national headquarters and presents a 20-point list of demands
1973 American Indians occupy Wounded Knee in South Dakota
1978 American Indian Freedom of Religion Act allows “American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut and Native Hawaiian [people] … inherent right” to free exercise of their traditional religions
1980 Supreme Court orders U.S. government to pay $122 million to Sioux Indians for land illegally taken in South Dakota in 1877
1982 Supreme Court supports tax levied by the Jicarilla Apaches in New Mexico, allowing tribes to tax production of oil, natural gas and other minerals on reservations
1988 Congress passes Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, protecting American Indians’ gaming rights
1989 National Museum of the American Indian opens in Washington, D.C.
1990 First National American Indian Heritage month is celebrated (November)
1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act provides process for museums to return American Indian remains and artifacts to tribes upon request and protect their grave sites
1990 Native American Languages Act protects “the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice and develop Native American languages”
1992 Foxwoods Casino opens on Pequot Reservation in Connecticut
1997 U.S. military allows American Indian soldiers to use peyote in their religious services

2000s

2000 The U.S. Mint issues a dollar coin with the image of Sacagawea, the Shosone woman famed for guiding the Lewis & Clark expedition through the western United States
2002 U.S. Navy Commander John Bennett Herrington, a Chickasaw citizen, visits the International Space Station, becoming the first American Indian astronaut in space
2005 National Collegiate Athletic Association bans use of “hostile and abusive” American Indian mascots in postseason tournaments
2009 Federal government settles dispute with American Indians, claiming they were swindled out of billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the U.S. Department of the Interior since 1887
2009 Congress passes and President Obama signs Native American Apology Resolution
2011 Judge clears New York state to tax cigarettes sold on American Indian reservations
2012 Senate approves the HEARTH Act that allows tribal governments to lease
tribal lands
Kevin Washburn of the Chickasaw nation is nominated by President Obama as the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs

The post American Indian Heritage Month Facts & Figures appeared first on DiversityInc.

Chiropractic clinic was not a tribal business. Even though all stock was owned by the Cherokee Nation, a chiropractic clinic was incorporated under the state laws of Oklahoma. It operated off of the reservation, contracted to serve a U.S. Army base. It was open to business for all of the service members and civilians on the base and others, overwhelmingly non-Cherokees. A fired technician filed age-discrimination and Title VII suits. The clinic moved for dismissal, claiming Sovereign immunity. The court denied the motion: A “separate legal entity” status incorporated under Oklahoma law precluded it from sharing in the Cherokee Nation’s sovereign immunity. Somerbolt v. Cherokee Nation Distributors (10th Cir., 2012).

Salvation Army waived immunity when it took federal money. Many organizations have a legal or constitutional exclusion from suit, but when you take the money, you take the rules that come with the contract. Even though the Salvation Army is clearly a religious organization and immune from many employment laws, it can be sued by a rejected job applicant with a disability. It took federal money to provide social services. The Rehabilitation Act applies to all contractors who receive federal funds. Taking the money was a voluntary waiver of any immunity from suits under that act. Doe v. Salvation Army (6th Cir., 2012).

Bob Gregg, a partner in Boardman & Clark LLP, shares his roundup of diversity-related legal issues. He can be reached at rgregg@boardmanlawfirm.com.

The post Who Can’t Be Sued for Discrimination? appeared first on DiversityInc.

The report, Putting Men’s Health Care Disparities On The Map: Examining Racial and Ethnic Disparities at the State Level, documents the persistence of disparities between white men and men of color—and among different groups within men of color—on 22 indicators of health and well-being, including rates of diseases such as AIDS, cancer, heart disease and diabetes, as well as insurance coverage and health screenings. It also documents disparities in factors that influence health and access to care such as income and education.

This new analysis provides state-level data for men of many racial and ethnic populations that have not been available before. Among the findings:

• American Indian and Alaska native men had higher rates of health and access problems than men in other racial and ethnic groups on nearly all health indicators. They also had the highest poverty rate and second worst educational attainment, unemployment rate and incarceration rate.
• More than four in 10 Latino men lacked insurance (46 percent) and a personal health care provider (49 percent), and more than a fifth (22 percent) had no doctor visit in the previous year due to cost. Latino men also had the lowest median household income, the largest wage gap compared to white men and the lowest educational status.
• Black men had much higher rates of poverty and incarceration and lower rates of high school graduation than whites. The most striking health disparity was that nationally Black men were more than seven times as likely as white men to be newly diagnosed with AIDS, with a rate of 101.5 new AIDS cases per 100,000 Blacks ages 13 and older compared with 13.5 new cases per 100,000 whites. The disparity was even larger in some states, such as Nebraska,Pennsylvania, and Maryland, where the rate of new AIDS cases was more than 10 times as high among black men compared to whites.
• Nationally, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander men had the lowest rate of health problems and the fewest barriers to access of all subgroups of men, even white men.
• While white men fared better than minority men on most access and social indicators, they had higher rates of some health problems than men of color, such as higher rates of smoking and binge drinking. For example, inWisconsin35 percent of white men reported binge drinking compared with 20 percent of minority men.
• Some of the states with the greatest access disparities between white and minority men included Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., all of which also exhibited some of the greatest disparities in income between white and minority men. Several states with relatively large Native American populations—Arizona,North Dakota and South Dakota—also had large disparities in access between white and minority men.

The full report, including detailed state-by-state data tables and related fact sheets, is available online.

A companion report released in 2009 examines similar racial and ethnic disparities among women, and includes state fact sheets and interactive data tables, also is available.

For more on decreasing disparities in healthcare, watch the video below on WellPoint’s innovative Community Ambassador Program:

For closed captioning, press the “CC” icon in the YouTube player.

Also read:

Eliminating Healthcare Disparities: How Kaiser Permanente & Trinity Health Close Racial Gaps

The Business Case for Diversity in Healthcare

Can Culturally Competent Healthcare Close Disparities Gaps?

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