Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he wants to make right with Native Americans about the quality of their health care.
Tribal leaders are starting to have their doubts.
The health secretary has become impassioned about the need to do better by America’s Indigenous people whenever lawmakers have asked him about it this year. He’s stressed his famous family’s long history of concern and his own involvement in founding a newspaper covering tribes.
His apparent earnestness prompted the Coalition of Large Tribes, whose members include the Navajo and Blackfeet nations and the Oglala Sioux, to call him “the most qualified nominee there has ever been, from any Administration, to carry that mantle of responsibility” three weeks before the Senate confirmed him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
