US Indigenous Communities: About Health, Art, and Identity

An interview with Dr. Rebecca Hernandez Rosser, Director of UC Santa Cruz's American Indian Resource Center, about a range of issues facing indigenous communities in the United States, including lack of access to opportunities for higher education. She addressed the health struggles, both physical and mental, facing Native communities and other communities of color and about the food justice movement. She spoke about the People of Color Sustainability Initiative, which is a project out of the UCSC American Indian Resource Center committed to broadening the discourse of sustainability. Dr. Rosser also discussed indigenous cultural representations through art, including the challenges facing Native artists within an art market that has a limited image of who makes up indigenous communities.  we also discussed the  troubling statistics regarding the incarceration rate of Native peoples, and her plans for the upcoming academic year with the center.