Artwork by Robin “Rex” Roat

American Indian women are diagnosed with breast cancer at the same rate as the overall population, but die from it much more frequently.

Breast cancer is the second largest cause of cancer deaths among women of all ages.

All women are at risk for breast cancer. However, women in the U.S are twice as likely to develop breast cancer than they were a century ago.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women between the ages of 35 and 54.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer for women in the world and is on the rise everywhere. However, rates are highest in industrialized countries.

One in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime.

Mammography is the best tool we have for detecting breast cancer.

Since 1960, more than 960,000 women have died from breast cancer. That is double the number of Americans who died in the following wars combined:

World War I

World War II

Korean War

Persian Gulf War

Vietnam War

The following graph shows the age distribution of breast cancer cases for Montana Native American Women:

186,000 women learned they had breast cancer and 46,000 died from it in 1996 alone!

The five-year survival rate for Native American women is approximately 46.2 percent, which is much lower compared to non-native women who have a survival rate of 85 percent. Much of this lower percentage rate has to do with the lack of early detection measures such as proper mammography equipment.

Today, there are approximately 2.6 million American women living with breast cancer. There is no way to predict how long any individual woman will survive.

Although mammography is currently the best detection method for breast cancer, it does have significant drawbacks. For instance, it fails to detect as much as 20 percent of breast cancers in women over 50, and as much as 40 percent in younger women. It also uses invasive radiation, which is known to be a carcinogen that can have cumulative effects on the body.