“In so many ways, Native people are like the canary in the coal mine,” said Dr. Joe Hobot, president of the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center in Minneapolis. A catalog of social ills, he said, from the opioid crisis to police brutality, acutely affect Native people, but these are often overlooked until it’s no longer “just” a Native issue. “In part, it’s because we are such a numerically small community, but I also think part of it is a sense of defeatism.”
