A health educator from the Southern California Indian Centers' Job and Health Fair facetiously told a reported in the mid-90s, "We don't have an AIDS problem in the Native American Community. We don't have homosexuals and we don't use needle drugs." She stressed that this denial of a pending AIDS crisis in the indigenous population was what made the communities, already threatened by alcoholism and diabetes so vulnerable. Nearly two years later a Canadian study reports that while the majority of Aboriginal Canadian youths surveyed received HIV/AIDS information at school, seven out of ten reported having unprotected sex. The rate of AIDS among U.S. tribal communities is about 2,540 - over 2,000 of which are males.

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