Banding Together

The effects of the pandemic were really magnified in Native communities. There were significant losses of elders, as well as people between the ages of 20 and 50. We all know someone who’s passed away or gotten really sick. That’s the hard part.

Fortunately, tribes and Native health authorities have been able to rely upon the tight social networks and existing ways to deliver health care within their communities to get the vaccine out and slow the spread of Covid-19. As a result, they have done fantastic jobs with the vaccine rollout in ways that you didn’t see anywhere else. By June 2021, the Navajo Nation, a tribe of about 400,000 people in the Southwestern U.S., had fully vaccinated more than 70 percent of its adult population. Around the same time, about 40 percent of the U.S. population had been vaccinated. Many tribes were the first to offer vaccines to all eligible age groups and share with neighboring populations, including people outside tribes.

The U.S. recognizes 574 American Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages as sovereign nations with their own systems of government. These tribes are responsible for maintaining the public health of their members just like the federal government, states, or counties would for its citizens. To accomplish that, the U.S. government is responsible for providing tribes with resources, like public health infrastructure. That allows tribal communities to evaluate, plan, and respond to public health threats like disease outbreaks. It allows tribes to collect data about their members’ health, have access to laboratory testing, and provide medical care. But because the federal government wasn’t investing in the tribes’ public health infrastructure, some tribal health authorities didn’t have the necessary resources, training, or staff to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

Indigenous peoples in the U.S. have suffered a long history of discrimination and oppression, for example, being forced off their ancestral lands and onto distant reservations. In these rural communities there can be limited access to healthy food. As a result, Native people are more likely to suffer from underlying health conditions—like heart disease and diabetes—that can worsen Covid-19. A lot of industrial activity and mining has taken place near Native communities because of their remote locations. These activities can contaminate water supplies and lead to additional health issues.

The federal, state, and local health authorities collect public health data about populations in the U.S. This information helped government authorities make important decisions during the pandemic, like: Should we require people to wear masks? When will we reopen restaurants? Who needs care after hospitalization? But during the pandemic, the CDC and some states wouldn’t share their data with tribes—highlighting coordination issues between tribes and federal and state agencies. According to the CDC, sharing the data was a privacy risk. Meanwhile, this data was being freely shared among the CDC and U.S. state health authorities.

Additionally, many states don’t collect or report detailed information about race or ethnicity in relation to Covid-19 cases. Because of that, the data we did have didn’t reflect how Indigenous people specifically were being affected by Covid-19. That’s a problem. Without data that describes a population accurately, we can’t make life-or-death decisions. For example: Which hospitals need access to important medical equipment, like ventilators?

Some tribes have prioritized vaccinating Native language speakers. That’s because when you lose language, you lose culture. Language contains knowledge of ceremonies and traditions. It links us to our roles and responsibilities within communities and strengthens the relationship between people and the land. Language isn’t just words—it also teaches ways of thinking. There are some things you can say in one language but not another.

In many tribal communities, only a small percentage of people are Native language speakers. Nearly all of them are older. Many tribes are in the process of revitalizing Native language, working to introduce online learning for adults and organize preschool programs taught in the Native language.

Looking back at how the U.S. colonized, or established political control over, Native American communities, many of the actions that harmed Indigenous peoples broke down the fabric of our society. As well as moving people to reservations far away from their homeland, the government also forcibly removed Native children from their families and placed them in boarding schools. These actions destroyed community bonds. But language can reconnect people. So, when we lose elders with this knowledge, we’re losing part of what holds our communities together. To vaccinate them is to protect our communities. To vaccinate everyone is to protect our peoples.