Jim Inhofe: “This amendment takes the amount of money that was increased--increased--to the National Endowment for the Arts and…”

“This amendment takes the amount of money that was increased--increased--to the National Endowment for the Arts and transfers that to a fund for Indian diabetes. It is the Indian Health Service for Diabetes. Probably the least understood illness in this country is that of diabetes among Indians. It is a chronic disease. It has no cure. There are two different types. Type II is what we are addressing, diabetes among adults. Among American Indians, 12.2 percent of those over age 19 have diabetes. This is the highest risk of any ethnic group. One Pima tribe in Arizona has the highest rate of diabetes in the world, about 50 percent of the tribe between the ages of 30 and 64. In Oklahoma, a lot of people are not aware, during the 1990 census, preliminary figures show the largest percentage of Indian population and the largest number of Indians of any of the 50 States. We spent a lot of time talking to our Indian population and looking at the problems that are peculiar to that population.”