Date of Award

5-2017

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Anthropology

Advisor/Committee Chair

Lawrence Schell

Abstract

The research question is: Have the Mohawk people been affected by the obesity epidemic that has occurred in this country and globally? My research compares the data on height, weight, and skinfold thicknesses collected from 1979 by Dr. Susan Pfeiffer from Native American youth (10 to 15 years of age) of the Akwesasne tribe, located at St. Regis, with similar data collected by Gallo and Schell, from 1996-2000. I performed t-tests to compare the same measurements from the two studies. There is a significant difference in weight, triceps skinfolds, and subscapular skinfolds in all male age groups except for age 13. There is significant difference in height in the 12 year old group. In females, there are almost no significant differences, however, the number of females available for comparison is very small. From these results I have concluded that there is a difference in adipose tissue amounts between the two populations, but only in males. A discussion on why it has affected males more dramatically will be discussed in the paper.

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