Transcript: Allison Kelliher, M.D.

Boarding schools created a cycle of dependence due to broken families

[Kelliher:]: During the days when people were taken to boarding schools, I think that there had developed a little bit more of a concept of dependence on a system to support you, and I think it’s a really complicated answer, but the way that I think about it is there are a group of people in the Alaska Native population who maybe aren’t as independent and caring for their own selves and are relying upon the system because of broken family, broken communities, and in that way there is a cycle that’s being perpetuated that leads to health outcomes I think that we can see today.