Alaska Natives and American Indians combined have the highest rate of military service of any group of Americans, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski noted during a congressional hearing on health care for Alaska Native veterans in Anchorage on Friday.
Some Alaska Natives have died while serving in Iraq, and many more have been wounded, Murkowski said. And yet when those same soldiers, airmen and Marines return home to rural Alaska, they find themselves without ready access to standard VA health care -- which is offered in clinics in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Kenai but nowhere in Western Alaska.
"So are we offering them a viable benefit?" Murkowski asked participants in the Senate Indian Affairs field hearing in a small room at the Egan Convention Center.
The answers that followed -- from soldiers, tribal health officials and Native leaders alike -- amounted to a collective "no."
Some rural veterans have to pay as much as $1,000 to fly from their villages to Anchorage and back simply to get a check-up, said 1st Sgt. John Flynn, a member of the Alaska Army National Guard unit based in Bethel.
But that's not necessarily new, added Alaska Federation of Natives vice president Nelson Angapak, who served in the military during the Vietnam War.
"Some of our returning troops from Vietnam survived the bullets of the other side -- only to be killed by the bullets of red tape," Angapak said. "The VA has absolutely no presence in rural Alaska. Absolutely none."
The VA is trying hard to change that situation, said Alexander Spector, director of the Alaska VA Healthcare System. His agency recently signed a memo of understanding with the state to ensure "seamless delivery of health care services to rural veterans" in Alaska, including the creation of mobile outreach teams.
And more money has been appropriated to pay for transportation for the Alaska vets who live beyond the road system, Spector said. But at present, such payments are only available to disabled veterans (with at least a 30 percent disability rating) who earn less than $12,000 a year.
That would rule out a lot of vets, Murkowski noted.
Natives make up about one-sixth of the Alaska Army National Guard, according to Brig. Gen. Thomas Katkus, the Guard's commander.
In October, when nearly 600 guardsmen in the 3rd Battalion, 297th Infantry Regiment returned home from a one-year deployment in Kuwait and Southern Iraq, its members fanned out to more than 80 communities in Alaska.
Alaska's citizen soldiers served honorably in the war effort, said Col. David Osborne, the battalion commander.
"We didn't really have days off," Osborne said. "You were working seven days a week. It was 140 degrees many of the days, and you're wearing all the body armor that's required to cross the border into Iraq."
Whether they were in Kuwait or Iraq itself, stress was always there, added Katkus.
"Those soldiers were at war every day."
Some of it is following the troops home to Alaska, the Rev. William Nicholson, an Army chaplain and local pastor, told the hearing.
"I don't think we should minimize the problems that our vets and our families are suffering," he said. "In the last month and a half, I have dealt with families that are disintegrating -- that are suffering because of deployments to Iraq."
There are about 6,000 Alaska Native veterans statewide, and a majority of them live beyond the road system -- as do about 25 percent of all Alaska veterans.
It would be far more cost-efficient to allow rural veterans to be treated at some of the 180 small village health centers around the state, said Valerie Davidson, a director at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
All it would require is for the VA to devise a way of compensating the Indian Health Service for the health care the village or rural hub clinics provide to veterans, Davidson said. That would deliver the health care the rural vets deserve.
"We have to do them proud, just as they did us proud," she said.
Murkowski agreed, adding that it would be "prudent" for the VA and the tribal health service to partner. She urged Spector to communicate that need to other high officials in the VA system.
"We need them to get the picture," Murkowski said, "so we can get the funding."
Find George Bryson online at adn.com/contact/gbryson or call 257-4318.
