Michelle Obama To Native Youth: The Obama Administration Has Your Back; Huffington Post, 7/9/15

Rebecca Klein, Huffington Post; Michelle Obama To Native Youth: The Obama Administration Has Your Back:

"The White House Tribal Youth Gathering is part of the Obama administration’s Generation Indigenous, an initiative that aims to provide more resources for this population of young people. Indeed, they face a set of unique and particularly daunting challenges including disproportionately high suicide rates, low high school graduate rates and high rates of drug use and alcoholism.

The gathering provides an opportunity for youths to interact with high-level government officials and express the ways they think the government could better serve them. Indeed, at a panel before the first lady’s keynote address, Marilyn Fox of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe told Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council Cecilia Muñoz and U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) that she wished the Indian Health Service was more effective. The IHS provides federal health services to Native Americans throughout the country."