Toward a Story Powerful Enough to Reduce Health Inequities in Indian Country The Case of Diabetes

What, within Indigenous modes of health and wellness, can structure a story powerful enough to reduce health inequities in Indian Country? Health inequities in Indian Country have resisted improvements despite considerable effort. Many inequities have stabilized with a few inequities worsening. This article seeks to document the movement of stories for health inequities, focusing in particular on the online presence of wellness programs for diabetes in American Indian communities. Stories, health care providers, those who suffer with diabetes, families, bodies, communities, limbs, tribes, insulin, and traditional medicines all act within a larger narrative that envisions Indian Country without the ongoing devastation of diabetes. The practice of storytelling, as evidenced in each of the wellness programs, itself is an intervention in a health care system that would rather uplift the physicians’ stories of the patients than the patients’ stories of themselves. By considering websites of multiple wellness p...