Life expectancy for Native Americans lower than other races: CDC study

• Native Americans had a life expectancy of 71 years, according to a recent CDC study — compared to Hispanics at 82 years, whites at 78.8 years, and Blacks at 74.8 years.
• Heart disease was the leading cause of death for Native people in 2019, followed by cancer, accidents, chronic liver disease, and cirrhosis and chronic respiratory diseases.
• American Indian and Alaska Native people were also killed at five times the rate of whites, half the rate of Blacks and more than twice the rate of Hispanics, the study showed.

When she was in kindergarten, Erica Littlewolf of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe remembers several of her fellow Native friends were already losing their parents.

Then she started losing those friends and classmates.

“Pretty much by high school, I had lost a big portion of my friends,” said Littlewolf, adding she was startled to learn some of her white friends weren’t also going to funerals.