Fighting Invisible Enemies (from "Another Burden to Bear")

Decades of physical and cultural genocide robbed Native Americans of their traditional diets and lifestyle, leaving them susceptible to infectious disease, particularly tuberculosis, which ravaged communities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Starting in the 1920s, field nurses sent by the government traveled from reservation to reservation to help reduce the number of deaths from disease. Historian Clifford Trafzer, author of Fighting Invisible Enemies: Health and Medical Transitions among Southern California Indians, tells Brian how western health care workers and Indigenous communities worked together to fight tuberculosis, and developed an appreciation of each others’ medicine ways.