KAREN:  So was being a health aide a job that was sought out, that people wanted? 

ROY:  To some degree, to a great degree, if you were in health, you loved it and you stayed there and you delivered it, but it was a hard job. 

Being a health aide in those days meant working long hours, meant not getting paid very much at all, it meant listening to the gripes and complaints of people who felt you didn't do a good job. 

It meant being awakened in the middle of the night because someone was badly injured in the village.  It meant that sometimes drunks would -- would harass you and wake you up and demand things that were unreasonable. 
And so it was not an easy life.  You were on call 24 hours a day.  And you had to really love the -- love the labor in order to do -- to do the job. 

So not an easy life.  Those who were there liked it.  Many -- there were several who burned out, though, that just couldn't -- couldn't reconcile their families' demands and needs and be on call 24 hours a day. 

KAREN:  And I wonder --

ROY:  And often, you know, the village politics is such that, you know, the village council's relative is making unreasonable demands, but the village council is not going to do anything because he's the president's brother or the president's relative. 

And so it's a hard life, you know.  You don't get the help when you need it sometimes.  And so I -- I listened to a lot of those complaints when I was chief of the health aide program. 

But they made it through it all, and the program's still alive today and doing well, just as well as it always has, I think. 

KAREN:  Do people still come and talk to you about what's going on in the programs? 

ROY:  Occasionally.  I see some health aides that are still there and it's like, what is it that's -- it's like 30 -- over 30 years later.  Yeah.  Yeah. 

KAREN:  Yeah, I was -- that was one of the things I was wondering is how the program is functioning now.  Is it the same?  Has it changed?  And also in terms of the people who take the jobs, is it still a sought-after job or --

ROY:  It pays better now.  It's better organized in terms of village relations.  I think these people, instead of being employed by the Village Council, now are being employed by the health corporations, so that makes a big difference.  They have benefits now they didn't have then.  They are still not paid very much, but they at least have some benefits and they are somewhat immune from -- from local tyranny. 

KAREN:  I have heard some people comment that more and more the health aides are becoming non-Native people coming into the village instead of people from the community. 

ROY:  Oh, I haven't heard that. 

KAREN:  You haven't heard that? 

ROY:  No.  But then again, I haven't heard much about the program since -- in the recent years. 

KAREN:  At the time you were involved, or I don't remember reflections on it, how do you assess the program's strengths and weaknesses? 

ROY:  Well, I think the greatest strength of the program when I was there were all of the people who were involved and their great enthusiasm about this -- about this project. 

It was a very contagious enthusiasm that we all adopted, and I consistently say that those were some of the most -- those were some of the happiest working years of my life because of the -- the going home at night and saying, we're making a difference.  We're making a real difference in the lives of these people.  And I think everybody else in the program were feeling the same way about it. 

So the strength was really the enthusiasm of all of the people that were involved from the -- from the medical directors to the trainers to the health aides themselves to the administrators, everybody was very excited about this program.  That was, to me, the greatest strength.  Everybody went the extra mile.