Are You Aware? COVID-19 in Indian Country
This is part IV in our “Nation to Nation” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here.
The effects of COVID-19 in Indian Country have been devastating.
COVID hit Indian Country later than many other places in America. The Navajo Nation was the first. The Navajo reservation is the size of West Virginia, making it the largest reservation in the United States. With 170,000 people living there, it is sparsely populated.
The Diné (their preferred name) keep themselves fed and warm by sheep herding. The sheep are used for food and sheared for the wool to make yarn for weaving. Known worldwide for their beauty, Navajo rugs are both treasured and sold as a livelihood. The land is not abundantly gifted with food for the sheep, so large spaces are necessary for each household to keep its sheep fed. There are often miles between households.
The areas between the homes or small communities are incredibly remote and unpaved. In the winter, the snow and ice make the roads virtually impassable. Many people are shocked to learn that one in three Diné households are without running water or electricity. The huge stretches of land also make cell coverage impossible in many areas.
COVID came to steal the lives of the Diné by way of a Nazarene revival. Hundreds of people packed the benches in the church. Patient zero was present, and by the time the hundreds of people loaded into vans and buses to return to their homes, it was too late. COVID went home with them.
In spite of the remote distances, COVID was spread to hundreds of households.
To understand why Navajo had infection and death rates higher, by percentage, than New York and New Jersey, we need to travel back in time to the signing of the treaties in the 1800s. The U.S. government promised the tribes that if they would stop fighting the military and settlers over the land, they would provide a place to live (reservations) and give the Native people food, shelter, and, ultimately, medical care and education.
It should surprise no one that the federal government has either failed to keep the treaty promises or has done a poor job supplying the needs of the Native people. The treaties continue to be in effect because the promises made said, “Each tribe or band shall have the right to possess, occupy, and use the reserve allotted to it, as long as grass shall grow and water run, and the reserves shall be their own property like their horses and cattle.”
Two particular points associated with these (deliberately) poorly kept treaty promises have led to incredibly high infection and death rates of Native Americans — on and off the reservation.
One issue is the poor quality and the remoteness of the land now left to the Indigenous people after the government took more and more of the treaty lands. “Food deserts” exist where there is extraordinarily little or no real access to healthy food. On my own reservation, Rosebud, there are two very small grocery stores. You will pay up to five dollars a pound for apples. When there is little money, it is easier to turn to the highly processed and inexpensive foods. The result of this broken promise means more Native Americans have diabetes, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and autoimmune diseases. All these problems add to both the high infection and death rate from COVID all across Indian Country. These death and infection rates remain high for Native Americans on or off the reservation.
Another broken promise is health care. Health care is provided to reservations and urban Indians through a federal program called Indian Health Services. The program is the least-funded federal health program by more than half. You will receive better-funded health care if you are an inmate at a federal prison. The lack of funding leaves Native people with few places to receive health services, and the few hospitals and clinics that are available have fewer doctors and nurses due to the inability to pay decent wages. The care is substandard, and providers are poorly equipped. Many Native people refuse to go to the hospital because they believe they will die if they go. The saddest part is they are not wrong. It is a travesty. The result? Many sick and dead Native Americans.
My tribe, Sicangu Lakota or the Rosebud Sioux tribe, has its reservation in South Dakota. When the pandemic hit the Navajo Nation, my tribe did not have any cases of COVID, and it was not infecting many other tribes.
As my Navajo brothers and sisters began to die, I said, “I cannot — I will not — stand here and let them die and do nothing.”
And I began to sew masks. From there I was connected with Tyrone White Horse, who was gathering masks for elders. From that small start, in just a couple of short months we blossomed into a nonprofit organization we called Protect Native Elders.
We are providing PPE (personal protective equipment) to hospitals and first responders because the federal government has failed to provide protective equipment to their employees at Indian Health Service facilities. We are also providing critical supplies to the communities. We are always keeping in mind the protection of the elders.
For most Indigenous people, our elders are everything to us. They carry the knowledge and the wisdom of the people. They hold our past, and they hold the knowledge of our tribes. One thing we don’t say often is that they also hold our future.
Without them — without their wisdom, without their guidance — we will not know which way to go. Without them, we lose our way. And in doing that, we lose part of who we are. Saving our elders is everything. To keep our elders healthy, we need to be healthy. Masks and hand sanitizer (especially in areas without running water) become literally life-saving.
Our high death rates are not new information. What COVID has done is ripped the cover off. Now the world is seeing the tragedy of America’s relationship with the Native people.
The poor treatment, lack of healthy food, and little to no access to decent health care has become visible, and many people are asking why the Indians are dying? America is being shamed, and it is affecting America’s relationship with other countries. We are Protect Native Elders. We are inter-tribal and diverse. We are all volunteers. We are now serving tribes all over the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. We serve all indigenous people who reach out, and we do as much as we possibly can.
If you are reading this, you care. Please care enough to do something.
There are many organizations providing help on many Indian reservations. Please. Lives hang in the balance.
We say, at the end of a prayer, Mitakuye Oyasin. It means “all my relatives,” and that doesn’t mean just people — it means everything. Every leaf, every breath of wind, every rainbow, every drop of water, every deer, every little tiny mouse is all of us. Please know, we are a part of everything. Mitakuye Oyasin.
Please feel free to visit our website. We have a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsorship, so if you need documents for tax write-offs we can provide those.
Jo Overton has a BSW in social work with an emphasis in medical social work. She will have been married for 40 years in August. She has 6 kids and 12 grandchildren. She is the co-founder of Protect Native Elders and a proud member of the Sicangu Lakota. Jo is a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
