Oh god. Just when you think things can’t get worse —
I’ve been wondering about the tribal people so I was horrified to see the situation is even worse than I had feared. So many Native Americans suffer the kind of diseases that make coronavirus worse, but also there is isolation, poor access to health care, sometimes overcrowded housing with multiple generations often in small houses — so the vast lands of the Navajo Nation for example are only an illusory defense. There is little running water in some areas, so the frequent hand washing recommended to slow the spread of disease is impossible. And of course there has been snafu upon snafu getting aid and equipment to the people.
From Washington Post, this long piece is a must read. It’s free, so please read it and maybe resourceful Kossacks can figure out some ways to help. It would just add to the horror of this situation if we had a genocide on top of our American agony, which already afflicts poor people so directly and disproportionately.
This is all just a CRIME. A crime. The Trump Administration didn’t cause the virus but their inexcusable bungling and lassitude in the face of this threat and the GOP determination to destroy our government, which we desperately need, are responsible for the vast suffering and death that is unfolding before our eyes in this gorgeous land.
My heart is breaking.
LUMMI NATION, Wash. — They hastily piled all the dumbbells and treadmills in the back of a gym to make room for 23 extra hospital beds. The beds aren’t needed yet, but on a reservation where residents suffer high rates of diseases that exist throughout Indian Country, the Lummi Tribal Health Clinic is taking every precaution to prepare for the deadly coronavirus.
Two thousand miles away at the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, where 11 people have tested positive for the virus as of Friday and one has died, Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said: “We’re preparing for the worst." Health workers plan to move hospital beds into a nearby university and a job-training facility shuttered because of the pandemic. “This is the worse public health crisis we’ve had in a generation.”
At the Navajo Nation that crosses three western states, 270 people were infected as of Saturday with 12 fatalities, the most in Indian Country. Police started issuing citations to anyone who violates a stay-at-home order.
The article goes on to detail the situation of many tribes around the country and highlights their vulnerability and the challenges confronting the First Nations.
This is catastrophic, and given that some tribal groups only number a few hundred souls it’s literally an existential threat. Their loss would be incalculable to all of us who love America — not the construct — but the people and the animals and the waters and the land.
The history of native peoples and infectious disease is all too fraught. So this echo of disaster is particularly painful and frightening.
And within the nations there is such a high regard for family, respect and love that is so missing, really from the brutal capitalist culture that can regard seniors as disposable and wish us dead to help the economy. The old people of the First Nations carry the origin stories, the old languages, the wisdom of the ages. They are living links to the past and gateways to the future of their people, and now all may be lost.
I weep.
“It’s such a strong reverence for elders, but it’s also terrifying,” she said. “Elders have a different meaning from other communities. They are the speakers of the native language. The meaning of this virus in tribal communities is incredibly traumatizing.”
www.washingtonpost.com/...