Dr. Walt Hollow:
A Pioneer on the Frontlines of Native American Medicine

"So, here you are, forced onto Indian reservations, you can't live the way you used to, and at that point in time it was even illegal to live that way, so how do Indians get themselves out of that economic quagmire that, unfortunately, was the result of this? Indians basically were unemployed, didn't have a job, and it was a struggle to just put food on the table to feed the family. And so, it was a real struggle for Indians on Indian reservations.

"It wasn't until 1934 and a number of studies that went on in the 1920s, that the federal government recognized that the Daws Act was a failure," he says, "and so they passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, and that's what established tribal councils, which is what we deal with right now."

Food rationing for Indians started in the 1800s, he says, and by the 1940s food rations were staples in Indian Country because of the high unemployment. The rations Indians got from the federal government unfortunately, was not the best kind of food.

"They were high in calories, high in fat. And Indians stopped being active and farming and doing traditional things. And as they became more and more sedentary and had this high-calorie diet they started to gain weight and become overweight, which then started to raise the rates of diabetes, of heart disease, of hypertension and so these chronic diseases started to blossom and become more of a problem on Indian reservations as a result, partially, of the food rationing and the poor food quality that we were given back in the '40s and '50s. And it's understanding that kind of information that'll help these future physicians in here become better physicians once they get out to an Indian community. And so the Indian Health Pathway allows these students to learn this information to help prepare them to go out to an Indian community to practice medicine."

The Indian Health Pathway also offers a traditional Indian medicine clerkship, where a traditional healer that he brought onto the faculty teaches students who want to learn about traditional Indian medicine.

"We're not trying to teach them how to be traditional healers, but we're trying to teach them a strategy how to collaborate with healers in the care of the Indian patients' healthcare problems. So they go on rounds with the healer. They'll go into ceremony with the healer, and they will see how the healer approaches the health problems that the patient he is seeing."