A 2013 paper [1] shows that, using school IEP categorization data, Native American children are about half as likely as White children to be categorized to have autism? An IEP category is not a diagnosis, but it’s telling that the vast majority of studies we’ve come across on autism diagnosis by race leave out Native populations entirely, although they’ve been showing that African American and Hispanic children are catching up to White children.
While it’s likely that part of this difference is due to lack of access (a sizeable percentage of reservations are rural, with limited educational options and few or no service providers, and often with high poverty rates), there are also cultural differences at play, along with generational trauma related to schools and western medicine. Evaluators also have biases – the same study shows that emotional impairment, specific learning disability, speech & language disability, and cognitive impairment categorization are more common than in White peers.
[1] Travers, J. C., Tincani, M., & Krezmien, M. P. (2013). A multiyear national profile of racial disparity in autism identification. The Journal of Special Education, 47(1), 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022466911416247
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