A simple walk to the grocery store can be dangerous on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.
With logging trucks regularly speeding along busy Hwy. 2 at 65 miles per hour, residents who can't afford a car put themselves at risk by walking to the store along the road's narrow shoulder.
In the past five years, five pedestrians have been killed on roadways on the sprawling northern Minnesota reservation, according to tribal officials.
"That's their mode of transportation," said Art Chase, the Leech Lake Band's transportation director. "We want to save lives. One death is too many."
A recent study found that pedestrian safety is a critical but underrecognized issue on reservations, with residents who walk to get to their destinations at a greater risk of getting struck by a car than those living in other rural Minnesota communities.
"Outside the reservations, it's been received with some surprise," social science researcher Kathy Quick said of the report, adding that it confirms what tribal members already knew about pedestrian safety. "It's a really high-stakes public issue."
Quick, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and anthropologist Guillermo Narváez spent four years analyzing national transportation safety data and interviewing residents on four of the state's 11 reservations — Leech Lake, Red Lake, Fond du Lac and Mille Lacs. The study was conducted for the Roadway Safety Institute, a consortium of Midwestern universities that researches issues related to traffic safety.
Nationally, vehicle crashes are the leading cause of unintentional injury for Indians under the age of 44 — a rate higher than any other ethnic or racial group in the United States.