“First step” is how many advocates, relatives, and other stakeholders are reacting to the Interior Department’s initial report about its investigations into America’s troubling legacy of Indian boarding schools. Art Hughes shares some of the voices who weighed in on this emotional and historic document.
Totem pole tour creates awareness for Snake River dam campaign
A killer whale totem pole has made its journey through the Pacific Northwest to raise awareness of calls to remove dams from the Snake River. Through May, it made stops in tribal communities and cities, as Eric Tegethoff reports.
The Spirit of the Waters Totem Pole Journey began at the beginning of May in Bellingham, near the Lummi Indian Reservation where it was carved. Since then, it’s traveled through Oregon, Idaho and back to Seattle. Jewell James with the Lummi Nation’s House of Tears Carvers is its head carver. He said the pole is 16 feet long, weighs three-thousand pounds and sits on two carved, eight-foot-long salmon.
“A killer whale that has a baby whale on its nose to reflect Tahlequah, the whale that lost her calf and carried it around Puget Sound for 17 days and over 1,000 miles trying to get the message to us, the human beings, that we are killing them off.”
James says the journey is supporting the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ call to remove four dams on the lower Snake River in southeast Washington, which are impeding salmon migration. The salmon’s population drop in the Columbia River Basin in recent decades also has starved Southern Resident orcas in Puget Sound. Dam supporters say they are integral for barging and irrigation in the region. But James says there’s growing disappointment among tribes and conservation groups with lawmakers’ inaction as salmon near extinction.
“They’re more prone to protect the interests of corporations than they are the general public, and we find that a little frustrating.”
The journey has brought together tribal members, conservation groups and the faith community to call for the restoration of the Snake River.
Lakota elder Marcella LaBeau remembered as war hero, health policy leader
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Lakota elder and health advocate Marcella LaBeau died on Nov. 21. She is seen here in 2019 holding a picture of her great-grandfather, speaking on behalf of the effort to rescind medals from solders who participated in the Wounded Knee Massacre (Photo: RepDebHaaland Twitter post).
Noted Lakota elder Marcella Labeau has died. She was a decorated World War 2 veteran serving as a nurse in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps where she helped soldiers injured during the Normandy landings. A citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe she served on that nation’s council for four years in the early 1990s. She was inducted into the Native American Hall of Fame on Nov. 6, 2021 at age 102. She told Native America Calling producer Andi Murphy how much she appreciated the recognition.
“I’ve had many honors in my life. But to be honored by Native American people is the greatest honor I’ve received,” LaBeau said.
Labeau served as the director of nursing at the Eagle Butte IHS hospital. Among other things she was known for her leadership in health policy and wellness. In a written statement, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wrote: “As a proud member of the Lakota, Wigmunke Waste Win (Pretty Rainbow Woman) served both her community and her country as a member of the Greatest Generation. Her service as a nurse during World War II has been chronicled by historians. Her dedication as a nurse in the Indian Health Services for more than 30 years has left a legacy that will live in our hearts and minds forever.”
In 2020, USA Today profiled LaBeau as one of the Women of the Century.
In recent years she was also a champion of the effort to rescind the Medals of Honor awarded to the soldiers who participated in the Wounded Knee massacre on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1890. At the Frank LaMere Native American Presidential Candidates Forum in 2019, she asked each of the candidates the same question: whether they would support the Remove the Stain Act.
“On the Cheyenne River Reservation, there is a pervasive sadness because of Wounded Knee and what happened there,” LaBeau told the candidates at the forum. “There has never been closure” she said, and taking away the medals would go a long way toward healing. Flanked by then-Representative Debra Haaland, she made the same case to lawmakers in Washington, D.C.
Labeau celebrated her 102nd birthday in October before traveling to the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma where she was inducted with seven others into the Native American Hall of Fame. She died Sunday, Nov. 21.
A broken system: Why the number of American Indian and Alaska Natives who have died during the coronavirus pandemic may never be known
By Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, Sunnie Clahchischiligi, Christine Trudeau
From medical health privacy laws to a maze of siloed information systems, a true accounting of COVID-19’s impact on Indian Country is impossible to know.
This story is produced by the Indigenous Investigative Collective, a project of the Native American Journalists Association in partnership with High Country News, Indian Country Today, National Native News and Searchlight New Mexico. It was produced in partnership with MuckRock with the support of JSK-Big Local News.
In May of 2020, the Navajo Nation reported one of the highest per-capita COVID-19 infection rates in the United States. Since that milestone, official data reveals that the Navajo Nation has been one of the hardest-hit populations during the pandemic. The Navajo Nation boasts the largest population of any Indigenous nation in the United States, and thousands of Navajos live outside the nation, in towns along the border, cities across the country, and in other parts of the world, making it difficult to tally the virus’ impacts on Navajo citizens.
It’s made worse by a labyrinthian system of local, state, federal and tribal data-reporting systems that often do not communicate with each other or share information. In an effort to come up with a more reliable fatality count, reporters with the Indigenous Investigative Collective made multiple public-records requests for death records held by state medical examiners of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Those requests focused on the counties on or adjacent to the Navajo Nation where many Navajo families live. The states rejected those requests, citing privacy concerns, preventing independent analysis of those records to determine death rates. Experts also cite pervasive misidentification of race and ethnicity of victims at critical data collection points, making the true toll of the pandemic on the Navajo Nation impossible to ever know.
The Indigenous Investigative Collective has found that those data problems extend nationwide. As of June 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 6,585 American Indians and Alaska Natives have died from COVID-19 — the highest rate of any ethnic group in the United States. That estimate likely falls far short of the actual death toll.
“Even though right now we’re showing as having some of the highest death rates, it’s a gross undercount,” said Abigail Echo-Hawk, Pawnee, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute based in Seattle, Washington, one of 12 nationally recognized tribal epidemiology centers in the country.
That undercount leaves researchers and epidemiologists completely in the dark when creating practices and policies to deal with future pandemics.
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When the coronavirus hit the Navajo Nation, Utah Navajo Health System (UNHS) was at the forefront of providing testing. The private, not-for-profit corporation is tribally run and provides services to the Navajo Nation as well as rural Native and non-Native Utah communities. From the start of the pandemic, the UNHS data team reported its information to the state of Utah, local Indian Health Service (IHS) units and the Navajo Nation’s epidemiology center.
“We pretty much tracked anything that we were doing,” Verlyn Hawks, director of health information systems for Utah Navajo, said. “The scope of what we could handle is basically what we did.”
At first it was just test results, then deaths, and now vaccines. Hawks said he and his team reached out to neighboring health-care facilities like Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock, New Mexico, to ask for COVID-19 data from their service area and would provide them with data. From there, he said, data was reported to the state of Utah and then passed to the CDC.
“But we really don’t have a good way to know where our numbers are going and what’s happening from there,” Hawks said, adding that the process for the Indian Health Service was equally opaque. “There’s no sharing between states.”
On the Navajo Nation, efforts to track cases, vaccinations and deaths are also complicated by the fact that community members move freely between health-care facilities, registering at different hospitals and clinics.
“Patients on the Navajo reservation tend to be kind of transient, meaning they go to different places for care,” Utah Navajo’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Jensen said.
Take for example a patient at Utah Navajo who tests positive for COVID-19, becomes ill, and seeks treatment at that Utah Navajo health center. If that patient becomes critically ill, Utah Navajo would transfer the patient to a nearby hospital, and if that patient were to die from COVID-19 complications, the hospital they were transferred to may or may not report the death back to Utah Navajo, where the patient originally registered. The same is true for vaccines and COVID-19 results.
“Our systems can gather all kinds of data and run reports every way but sideways,” Jensen said. “But the transient part of that makes it more challenging, and obviously if somebody passes in an inpatient facility, we’re not notified unless we follow up with the family or the doctor calls.”
Tracking Indigenous COVID-19 patients accurately would involve the entire health system, which is made up of IHS health facilities, tribally owned facilities, tribal hospitals, urban Indian health programs, private clinics and other non-IHS health facilities, like city, county or private hospitals. No agency is consistently or reliably doing that.
IHS, which collects data from Indigenous nations that volunteer to share, instead relies on the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System, which receives its information from states. “We’re not [tracking COVID-19 deaths] because we want to avoid any underreporting,” said IHS Acting Director Elizabeth Fowler, a Comanche citizen and a descendant of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
The CDC, however, is also likely undercounting. For the Urban Indian Health Institute’s Echo-Hawk, a reliable database is the APM Research Lab, which reported at least 5,477 Indigenous deaths as of March 2, based on figures from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Around the same time, the CDC was reporting 5,462 deaths.
All deaths, regardless of where they occur, are reported to the state, but the states have refused to release those details. The Indigenous Investigative Collective requested dates, cause and location of death, race, ethnicity, age, gender and a specific request for COVID-related information, including whether or not the infection may have occurred at a work site. Those requests were rejected by records custodians in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, citing privacy and protected health information, obscuring information for COVID-19 deaths in dozens of tribal communities in those four states combined.
New Mexico, in particular, further explained the denial of public records, stating, “The information contained in the responsive records consists of protected health information and information reasonably believed to allow identification of patients.” New Mexico Department of Health Records Custodian Deniece Griego-Martinez said even with names and case numbers redacted, patients could still be identified. “Since this information is identifying on its own and in combination with other publicly available information, it is not possible to redact the responsive records.”
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Gaps in states’ COVID-19 data often begin right after a person has died. The process for determining and recording the cause of death varies from state to state. In Minnesota, for example, cause of death is registered by medical certifiers such as physicians, medical examiners and coroners. If a person dies from COVID-19, the cause of death on the certificate may say respiratory or heart failure — the reasons for those failures are not included.
Minnesota funeral director Robert Gill, who is Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, said when he sits down to fill out vital statistics forms with a deceased’s family members, most of the work is straightforward: legal name, address at the time of death, social security number, next of kin, parents, children, siblings and details of funeral arrangements. Where it can get tricky is when he needs to include the person’s race and ethnicity.
“They could say, ‘I’m Swedish, African, German, Native American, Hawaiian, Puerto Rican all mixed in one,’ so then I’d ask the family, ‘Well what would you like? What are you, what would you legally consider yourself?’” Gill said. There’s no limit on how many races or tribes can be written down, and often everything is included. He also doesn’t differentiate between individuals who are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe or are descendants or simply community members.
“I write down what they would consider their race. Whether it gets recorded as that, I don’t know,” he said. “I send that into the state and I don’t know what they do with it.”
In Gill’s facility, identifying American Indian or Alaska Native people is part of the job. But in other parts of the country where medical examiners or funeral homes have no knowledge of Indian Country, those individuals can be identified as Hispanic, Asian or any other incorrect ethnicity, because medical workers, funeral home directors and coroners simply look at the body and make a decision. While no data exists for death-certificate undercounts of Indigenous people, a 2016 report from the National Center for Health Statistics concluded that of everyone who self-identified as American Indian or Alaska Native on the U.S. Census, 48.6 percent were classified as another race on their death certificate.
“There are so many different ways that these death certificates are improperly categorized for race and ethnicity,” Echo-Hawk said. “But the number one issue ends up being nobody asks the family.”
The CDC website states that “cause-of-death information is not perfect, but it is very useful.” While the agency estimates that 20 to 30 percent of death certificates have issues with completeness, the agency adds: “This does not mean they are inaccurate.” The agency did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
The IHS has tried to correct the problem and continues to do so, with little success so far. In a 2020 COVID-19 response hearing, the chief medical officer for the IHS, Rear Admiral Michael Toedt, testified that the agency was working with the CDC to address the issue of racial misclassification through training. However, Toedt stressed that the main problem with collecting good, timely data for American Indian and Alaska Native deaths rested almost entirely on how the death certificate was filled out.
In short, death counts of Indigenous people, no matter how they died, are woefully inaccurate — and correcting that is likely impossible without a unified system for tracking health issues in Native communities, and regulations requiring death certificates to accurately reflect a person’s Indigenous citizenship, race and ethnicity. Experts who spoke with the Indigenous Investigative Collective could not give an exact number for the undercount.
A 2021 Urban Indian Health Institute report card that grades the quality of collecting and reporting COVID-19 data for Indigenous people gives most states a C grade or lower. The states were graded on the inclusion of Native people and statistics on state health dashboards, as well as accurate CDC data for Indigenous people. That information, Echo-Hawk said, helps leaders make decisions and scientists think through vaccine allocations, and helps measure success or failure in the health system.
The omission of data on Native communities, Echo-Hawk said, is “data genocide,” contributing to the elimination of Native people in the public eye and aiding the federal government in abandoning treaty laws and trust responsibilities. In other words, no data on Native people means no need to meet obligations or provide resources.
“We definitely are in a situation where we are not capturing all of the impacts, and we are not capturing all of the deaths for American Indians and Alaska Natives. So we know that the picture, the true picture, is actually worse than what the data tells us,” said Carolyn Angus-Hornbuckle, who is Mohawk and the chief operating officer and policy center director of the National Indian Health Board. “That information is needed because like every other government that’s facing this crisis, our tribal nations need to have real-time, accurate data so that they can protect their citizens.”
Meanwhile, infection rates and deaths in the Navajo Nation are improving, but Utah Navajo Health System CEO Michael Jensen said their work continues. “We’ve done our own contact tracing to find out where it started and who those people are interacting with. We’ve tried to share that publicly — for deceased rates, I think communities should know what’s going on,” he said.
“I hope everybody would want to provide the most accurate and true numbers possible.”
Sec. Haaland: “Getting everyone’s voice” at the table
By Antonia Gonzales
On her first day on the job, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland promised to specifically reach out to tribes.
“I think speaking to tribes and fully involving them in decisions that we make will be one way to ensure that we’re getting everyone’s voice and everyone’s perspective at that table,” said Haaland. “So, I look forward to having a full list of issues that I know need to be worked on and I will look forward to that.”
Her comments came during an online video briefing with news outlets, including National Native News, that lasted a little more than 30 minutes. It was among her first acts after being sworn in as the first Native American presidential cabinet member. Haaland opened with remarks touching on a number of issues ranging from the environment and sacred sites to the COVID-19 pandemic. She talked about the disproportionate impacts COVID-19 has had on tribes, and President Biden’s American Rescue Plan investing $900 million in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and $850 million in the Bureau of Indian Education. As the new leader of the agency that manages public lands and tasked with upholding treaty and trust responsibilities, Haaland said she will take tribal consultation seriously, including when it comes to complicated issues such as federal acknowledgement re-petitioning and land into trust.
Haaland’s decision to hold her first press briefing with Indigenous reporters drew praise.
“The nature of her reaching out to tribal media first and recognizing the Indigenous reporters are on the ground and know these issues better than any other journalists working in the country speaks to one of (the Native American Journalists Association’s) main goals ,” said Graham Lee Brewer, associate editor for Indigenous affairs at High Country News. Brewer is also secretary of the NAJA board.
“Sec. Haaland proved today by giving us access before any other reporters is that, that kind of diversity in the newsroom adds value. It gives you greater lived experiences and greater access to Indian Country,” Brewer said.
Brewer said he hopes Haaland will continue to give access to tribal media.
10 members of the Native American Journalists Association were presented the opportunity to have a“pen and pad” briefing with Sec. Haaland. In attendance-National Native News, Indianz.com, Indian Country Today, Navajo Times, Mvskoke Media, FNX-First Nations Experience, High Country News, Arizona Republic, Tulsa World, CBC Indigenous
Northern Cheyenne pen pal program keeps elders connected during pandemic lockdown
When Activities Coordinator Silver Little Eagle, 23, first put a call out on the Northern Cheyenne Tribe’s Elderly Program Facebook page for pen pal participants, she didn’t know what to expect. Then letters started pouring in.
“When they first got their letters they were kind of surprised that they got that much attention,” said Little Eagle. “They were thinking they were about to get a few letters or so. But each person got around 40 letters in the first batch of mail.”
And that was just the first round.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, as community after community went into lockdown, social media played a big role in keeping people connected, through apps like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and new efforts like the Social Distance Powwow Facebook group. But innovative cyber hangouts often left elders and Indigenous communities without internet access behind. Six months into the pandemic, Little Eagle decided she needed a way to engage the Northern Cheyenne elders, who were also largely cut off from visitors for their own safety.
Typically, the program’s Facebook page is focused on local outreach around the Northern Cheyenne Tribe’s reservation of roughly five thousand people and the surrounding community of Lame Deer, Montana. Little Eagle thought they’d mostly get replies from people who utilized the Elderly Program who lived off site, as dining hall meals and social activities had all been cancelled for several months by then.
“We were just trying to keep our elders social while we’re in this social distancing area,” Little Eagle said. “So, we decided to do the pen pal program with residents of the Shoulderblade Complex, which is an independent living facility.”
The request for letters included the Northern Cheyenne Elderly Program’s mailing address and images of the ten Shoulderblade Complex residents, along with their names and their interests, like “Fred, interested in Bingo,” and “Adeline, interested in language preservation and revitalization.”
In the months since, every two weeks, each elder has received upwards of 40 letters from places as far away as Germany and Ireland.
“We have a lot from Canada, and a lot of the Canada ones are from other Indigenous communities,” Little Eagle said. “And a lot of them send stamps with them. It’s pretty crazy. We’re gonna get a map where we’re going to pin down where each letter came from.”
What started as a way to keep social connections for isolated elders quickly grew into a global community. Four days after the pen pal program launched, popular social justice activist collective, Seeding Sovereignty, reposted the Elderly Program’s Facebook post on it’s Instagram page which has 230,000 followers. It received 46,886 likes.
“It kind of surprised us when we saw it on Instagram,” Little Eagle said. “A lot of people began sending things that were needed for COVID-19, like boxes and boxes of sanitizer or things on our Amazon wishlist.”
The extra supplies came just as COVID-19 cases began to surge in their area.
“The past month we had, I think, 200-something cases on the rez, which is pretty small. But our rez is also pretty small, so there’s a large percentage,” Little Eagle said.
In the beginning of the pandemic, the Elderly Program began doing curbside meal pick-up for elders. Later into the summer, as COVID-19 cases rose, they switched to doorstep delivery. They apply the same level of caution with the letters pouring in.
“We distribute every two weeks,” Little Eagle said. “We usually sort them first and use the PPE…and then we place them in Ziploc bags to quarantine them, because we saw online that (the coronavirus) stays on paper for a day, or 24 hours, so that’s why we quarantine our mail, and then hand them to the residents in Ziploc bags.”
It’s a lot of work for the nine staff members to keep up with, Little Eagle said, as the mail piles in, they also have to keep up with their other programs.
“It’s been hard to fit it into our daily schedule with everything else we do here,” said Little Eagle. “We have a feeding program, which feeds about 180 elders a day, and we deliver those meals to door steps. We also have a distribution program for PPE, and a food box/grocery run.”
But Little Eagle is quick to add that the payoff of the program is invaluable for them, elder residents, and communities beyond.
“We’ve been in contact with the Oglala Lakota Elderly Program, and we don’t know how yet, but we’re planning to set up a program with our outside elders, so the ones that utilize our feeding program and the elders that utilize their feeding program,” she said.
Right now the Elderly Program is getting a flier out to poll the elders that use their program to see if they’re interested in participating.
“I think this really just opened our eyes on how to address different levels of health, besides our feeding program,” Little Eagle said. “We have to make sure their mental health is okay and their physical and emotional health, and that just comes with checking in with them, and making sure that they’re happy, and that’s just the biggest part in this COVID-19, is being sure they are happy and their well-being is okay.”
Little Eagle said she looks forward to a time, post pandemic, when elders can start to socialize in person once more.
“I can’t wait until we open again,” she said, “because I was on a roll with activities.”
Meanwhile, letters and donations continue to roll in, as staff post regular updates to their Facebook page. The latest donation made this week was from Indigneous punk band “1876,” donating all the profits from a recent album release “Pow Wow Punk Rock,” for food and household items.
Family support and adjusting expectations help Native grads facing historically high unemployment
by Christine Trudeau
At 26, Megan Heller has not one, but two master’s degrees from Eastern Washington University. But after classes moved online early and a virtual graduation in the spring because of the pandemic, Heller had no luck finding a job.
“I probably applied for about fifty jobs,” Heller said. “I got a lot of ‘positions were canceled due to funding limits.’ Entry level jobs that I applied for said I didn’t have enough experience or I didn’t meet the qualifications or they just didn’t get back to me.”
Heller, a citizen of the Kalispel Tribe of Indians near Spokane, Washington, moved back in with her parents following graduation. She was able to save a little money living rent free and babysitting for family members as they went to work. Like many graduates this spring, Heller was left with very few options.
Donna Feir, a Research Fellow with the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said that those entering into the labor force just out of school are doing so at a particularly bad time.
“Obviously unemployment rates rose dramatically in April after the onset of pandemic,” says Feir, “this is particularly challenging for Indigenous Americans where unemployment rates increase much more dramatically than any other demographic group.”
An August report by Feir found that despite a slight rebound to the employment rate since April, employment for Native Americans is still well behind that for the white workforce. Feir’s survey focuses on people over 25 years of age. She said through no fault of their own, young people having difficulty finding work might be affected throughout their careers.
“Unemployment rates generally rose very dramatically and we know if you are an individual who is entering the labor force in an economic downturn this can sometimes have a permanent impact on your wages and attachment to the labor force throughout your life course,” Feir said.
Across the country tribes and Native communities are pulling together,
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Ashley Nicole Hamilton, 22, with her new dog, Winnie, works remotely this year from her parents’ home in South Sioux City, Neb.
accessing traditional family and community support to cope with the virus threat and the ongoing economic setbacks. Food donation and delivery drives, youth-led initiatives to provide masks, hand sanitizer, and information on social distancing and other preventative measures, and tribal officials closing reservation borders have all helped keep people alive and afloat.
Heller counts herself among those relying on that family support. So does Ashley Nicole Hamilton, who is also back at home after graduating from Harvard University in the spring. Unlike Heller, Hamilton, 22, had a fellowship lined up after receiving her bachelor’s degree in sociology. A citizen of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, Hamilton started in June as the Wilma Mankiller Fellow in Tribal Governance with the National Congress of American Indians.
“I recognize that I’m in a very unique situation to, one, get a job during a pandemic, but also be able to keep it and know that I’ll be able to have this job,” Hamilton said.
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. When Harvard closed down in March, college officials gave students living on campus five days to vacate their dorms. With no financial help from the school and unable to get storage nearby, Hamilton said it made more sense to rent a truck and drive to to her job in Washington, D.C. At the time, she thought she’d be starting her job in person, but NCAI decided she should work remotely for the foreseeable future. She returned to South Sioux City, Neb. and says, in the months since, working from home has been good, allowing her to reconnect with family.
“I feel like I’ve healed in a way from the four years of being away,” said Hamilton. “Healing mentally, physically, and emotionally and learning more about myself. Like what situations I thrive in. What situations I don’t thrive in. Understanding that having my family, having a good community around is necessary. I’m not saying that at Harvard I didn’t have a great community of friends, I just think that the lifestyle of living in the dorms, not being able to cook my own food, not being connected to my food and to more of a home routine really affected me a lot. Being home has healed that in a way, and especially being close to my family.”
Hamilton also got a dog over the summer named Winnie, who has been a companion between work and occasionally grocery shopping.
“I think because Nebraska never really issued any sort of lockdown stay-at-home orders statewide, the pandemic has felt very consistent for me and in the sense that I’m still following the same guidelines that I was following in March,” Hamilton said.
Thankfully, Hamilton said, COVID-19 case numbers have remained relatively low for her tribe. When her fellowship finishes up in May, she has her heart set on studying Indian law, but remains cautious.
“I know with the pandemic anything can change in an instant, and so I want to start planning for options so I don’t end up in a position where I don’t have a plan or I don’t have a job or anything like that,” she said. “I just want to know what my options are, but I’m not really getting my hopes up on any of them because, you know, there’s a pandemic. So, I’m just ready for anything to change in an instant.”
Reconnecting with family and community is also a source of healing for Megan Heller.
“I’ve been trying to tell myself that it was an extended vacation, like a reset from school, because school was so stressful,” says Heller. “I would spend a lot of time outside, whether it’s just walking around or going for hikes in the nearby area.”
Washington was the first state hit hard by COVID-19. Gov. Jay Inslee enacted stay-at-home orders early. Heller credits the Kalispel Tribe for taking quick, providing antibody testing, giving out masks and other measures. When supplies were scarce, they organized donation drives to local food banks to help those in Spokane County, both tribal members and non-members alike.
“I think it’s been going relatively well, considering the situation,” Heller said. “My immediate family, we’ve all been safe as well as my extended family who are up here in Washington. Everybody’s been good about social distancing and wearing masks.”
Four months into her job hunt, fortunes finally turned. She started a new job as the Human Resources Compensation Specialist this week for her tribe. Though not her dream job yet, Heller says the position provides some financial security and a foot in the door. Down the line, she hopes the Kalispel Tribe opens a position for economic development and environmental protection when they are able to resume normal operations. Heller’s degrees are in public administration and urban and regional planning. Her thesis was on tribes planning for climate change. She is eager to put her passions to work and looks forward to the day she can help her tribe diversify economically and plan for a sustainable future. But for the moment she’s just glad to get back to work.
“I’m eager to get back to having a routine, letting go of the stress and worries I was having about not knowing what the future will hold, ” Heller said. “Not that I know now, but about the way that bills weren’t going to be paid, or what I was going to do if I couldn’t find a job for a long time. Now I can focus on my professional development… and my professional goals, where I want to go one day within the tribe and the kind of career path I want.”
This story is a collaboration between National Native News and the Solutions Journalism Network
Native solutions to tackle COVID-19
Family support, adjusting expectations help Native grads facing historically high unemployment
Megan Heller has not one, but two master’s degrees from Eastern Washington University. But after graduating in the spring she had no luck finding a job. “I probably applied for about fifty jobs,” she said. “I got a lot of ‘positions were canceled due to funding limits.’ Entry level jobs that I applied for said I didn’t have enough experience or I didn’t meet the qualifications or they just didn’t get back to me.” New research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis finds those entering the labor force just out of school are doing so at a particularly bad time. Ever after a slight rebound, Native American unemployment rates remain well behind those for the population as a whole. Heller and other Native graduates find family support and a flexible outlook are helping them navigate through.
Navajo Nation marks significant COVID-19 milestone
Sept. 10, 2020
The Navajo Nation reported its second day of no additional COVID-19 deaths in three days. After months of strict lockdowns, curfews and public admonishments from tribal leaders, tribal health officials report dwindling numbers of new cases. Twice within a matter of days, the Navajo Nation marked a significant milestone that the Nation’s largest reservation hasn’t seen since March. It’s all the more important as the tribe continues to climb toward a total that nears 10-thousand COVID-19 deaths. The Nation once outpaced every state in the country for the number of deaths from the disease.
‘Unprecedented’ donation to offset student COVID-19 challenges
August 4, 2020
The American Indian Graduate Center is among the non-profits benefiting from a major philanthropic effort by writer MacKenzie Scott. The donation given by Scott, ex-wife to Amazon CEO, billionaire Jeff Bezos, is an unprecedented $20-million. It’s the largest individual donor gift in unrestricted funds over AIGC’s 50-year history.
UNITY conference goes virtual
July 8, 2020
The United National Indian Tribal Youth, organization, or UNITY, is going virtual for their annual conference this year because of the ongoing pandemic. UNITY Executive Director Mary Kim Titla says as Native youth continue to play a vital role in tribal communities combating COVID-19, it’s important for them to take time to connect with peers at workshops, share talents, and build on self-care techniques to help navigate stress and anxiety amid lock-downs and isolation.
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Salish and Blackfeet hip-hop artist Shadow Devereaux, known as Foreshadow from the video for the song “Protect Your People,” part of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ COVID-19 youth outreach initiative.
Musical initiative offers safety message to young people
July 6, 2020
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation collaborated with local musicians to launch a COVID-19 youth safety awareness campaign. So far, following the release of their second hip-hop song, they’re seeing a successful response in their community’s youth. The series, with a targeted social media campaign, is aimed at 12 to 18-year-olds. In a written release, CSKT officials say the song series was “driven by concerns that youth may not be responding to COVID-19 prevention guidelines.”
Suzan Harjo says she’s twice tested positive for coronavirus
June 18, 2020
First tested on May 19, prominent Native American rights advocate Suzan Harjo says she’s tested positive for Covid-19Suzan Harjo has recently tested again and came up positive a second time for the coronavirus. Harjo is currently making her way through her second round of quarantine.
“I have been reading and writing and talking to people and working; you just continue your life,” Harjo said. “You continue your life with more care for others and prioritize your time.”
White Mountain Apache Tribe is upping strict safety measures as positive Covid-19 cases rise
June 15, 2020
The White Mountain Apache Tribe reached 1,259 reported positive COVID-19 cases. The sudden surge, according to Tribal Chairwoman Gwendena Lee-Gatewood, is likely due an increase in testing and contact tracing. The tribe is on stay-at-home orders, with an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, and is closed to non-tribal citizens and tribal members not living on the reservation.
Overcoming potential COVID-19 barriers to voting
June 10, 2020
The Native American Rights Fund outlines ways to avoid potential voting barriers as states consider safety options during the COVID-19 pandemic. NARF organizers say any move to an entirely vote-by-mail system would be a big problem for Native voters, with the potential to disenfranchise many. They point out it’s not uncommon for items to get misplaced or delivered to the wrong person in the process of picking up and distributing mail from a shared PO box, making the wait to get mail delivered longer, sometimes taking up to a month.
Protecting Human Rights and sovereignty during the pandemic
May 27, 2020
The Native American Rights Fund and the University of Colorado Law School have teamed up and launched a new online legal resource to help Tribal self-determination efforts during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Native domestic abuse line adds service to help survivors during pandemic
May 20, 2020
As Covid-19 safety restrictions amped up across the country in March, StrongHearts Native Helpline initially saw a dip in their calls. The organization’s director points to the possibility that survivors sheltering in place at home with an abusive partner find it difficult to make a phone call when they need help. StrongHearts launched a new online chat function to better assist Native American and Alaska Native people experiencing abuse.
Emergency aid for students helps with student housing, utilities and travel
May 15, 2020
When schools started shutting down back in March, the American Indian Graduate Center began a designated Student Emergency Fund outside of their initial awarded scholarship dollars.
“It comes down to student emergency needs,” Executive Director Angelique Albert said. “They are no longer on campuses, so they are no longer in the dorms, so they have housing needs, they have food needs, and we’re having to respond to make sure that they can just say in college.”
Native rights organization lists recommendations to fix voting barriers
By Christine Trudeau
This story is a collaboration with National Native News and the Solutions Journalism Network.
The Native American Rights Fund is outlining ways to avoid potential barriers for Native American as the nation prepares for the 2020 election. The recommendations in NARF’s new report address safety measures states are considering in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
NARF staff attorney Jacqueline DeLeon says an entirely vote-by-mail system would be a big problem in Indian Country, with the potential to disenfranchise many Native voters. DeLeon is co-author of NARFs recent voting rights report detailing multiple voting barriers that Native Americans face. Some states are considering a mail-only voting option to lower the chances of voters getting infected at polling places. DeLeon says inconsistent mail service makes that idea problematic for Native voters.
“The way mail works in Indian Country is if you’re getting mail at all, it’s likely gonna be at a post office through a post office box that you might be sharing with fifteen other people,” DeLeon said. “I mean, that is not unheard of just a lot of people sharing one post office box.”
She said that makes it easier for ballots to get misplaced or delivered to the wrong person, which could take weeks to correct.
In light of these and other challenges facing voters on access and safety, NARF is advocating specific changes that could help many Native voters, including maintaining in-person voting with the proper protections.
“An in-person voting option can be controlled,” DeLeon said. “You can have PPE sanitation practices; you can do curb-side voting. You can utilize Native community members and say that they’re the ones that are running the polls to reduce the introduction of outside people, and that kind of controlled environment is better than this hodge-podge way that people get mail in Indian Country now.”
NARF also recommends increasing the number of ballot collection boxes available through election day, allowing tribes to designate buildings to pick up and drop off ballots where they can also to register to vote if possible, allowing early voting hours for elders and people with compromised immunity, and creating a robust educational outreach campaign to tribal communities about any changes to the voting process.
Rapid City, S.D. caravan honors Indian Health Service workers
by Chynna Lockett
Rapid City, South Dakota community members held a drive-by car caravan to thank Indian Health Service employees for their work during COVID-19. People honked horns, waved out car windows and held signs thanking essential employees. Health care workers lined the sidewalks and waved back, their eyes grinning behind their face masks.
“We just wanted to find a way to thank and honor our friends and relatives who are working up here on the Sioux San Campus including the IHS, the Oyate Health Center employees and everyone else that has a job up here,” said Richie Richards, who organized the event.
Richards said healthcare can be especially stressful right now since people still have to show up to take care of medical issues not related to the pandemic. He decided the busy employees needed a morale boost and 30 cars showed up.
“And a good rally like this and showing support for them, it’s going to lift them up, lift their spirits up and give them that little extra motivation to come and show up like they do on a daily basis,” Richards said
The gesture was appreciated.
“Our job as administration is to give our front line workers the support and the resources they need to stay safe and to feel supported because they’re providing that to the community and they need that,” said Jerilyn Church, president of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board and Oyate Health Center on the Sioux San Campus.
Sioux San is taking steps to direct patients showing potential symptoms of COVID-19 to designated areas to prevent spreading it.
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