If love is the answer, Amarie is acing the test. Mom, aunties, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins — her sprawling Eastern Shoshone family — brims with it. Her ready wide-eyed smile reflects the abundance, and she lavishes it on her favorite dolls. As a natural-born performer, the 3-year-old is pretty good at getting it elsewhere, too. It would take a hard heart to keep from melting when she dons her trademark grin, and her tiny jingle dress, and dances with the big girls.
Watching Amarie chase a cousin across her grandparents’ yard, it’s hard to imagine a future for her that’s anything but happy, healthy, and full of opportunity. Toddler energy is infectious that way. It makes the dispassionate world of vital statistics — numbers that describe a Wyoming where Native Americans die young — feel inconsequential. But, the numbers are real, they are sobering and they cannot be ignored.
[For more of this story, written by Matthew Copeland, go to http://www.wyofile.com/special...health-depends-kids/]
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