from Indian Country Today
Indian Country Today collaborated with the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health to provide comprehensive data and maps to the public.
Source: New maps show pandemic impacts on Indigenous people in the U.S.
Category Archives: indigenous health
Opinion | How Covid-19 Threatens Native Languages
Ms. Archambault is a Hunkpapa and Oglala Lakota woman and former special assistant to the president for Native American affairs under President Barack Obama.
from The New York Times
The average age of Lakota and Dakota speakers is 70. We are running out of time to save them.
Many scientists believe that DNA holds the cure for disease. That poses a problem for some Native Americans.
from The Washington Post
Geneticist Rene Begay hopes to improve health outcomes for her community. But as a Navajo woman, she wants to protect her people from a repetition of past colonial injuries.
Covid had spared Alaska’s most remote villages. Not anymore.
from The Washington Post
Almost 20 percent of residents in one town have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Source: Covid had spared Alaska’s most remote villages. Not anymore.
‘There are no words’: As coronavirus kills Indigenous elders, endangered languages face extinction
from The Washington Post
Tribal leaders and linguists from Brazil to India to Australia race to record dying languages.
Source: ‘There are no words’: As coronavirus kills Indigenous elders, endangered languages face extinction
For the Navajo Nation, a Fight for Better Food Gains New Urgency
from The New York Times
As the pandemic has brought home the importance of the global movement for food sovereignty, members are planting and sharing.
Source: For the Navajo Nation, a Fight for Better Food Gains New Urgency
A Native American tribe plans to build an opioid treatment center, but neighbors have vowed to block it
from The Washington Post
Tribe Chairman Ron Allen, standing at the site of the proposed opioid treatment center in Sequim, wants to be “part of the solution” to the opioid epidemic in his community. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
A classic ‘not in my backyard’ fight has erupted in the Pacific Northwest over a recovery center for an area hit hard by addiction and overdose deaths.
Native Communities Need Your Help
Please consider supporting one or more of these organizations during the Covid-19 Crisis in Indian County.
Click the Link for More Information.
Source: @keinfoshop | Linktree
Food Insecurity in Native Communities
In this post, The Repatriation Files offers links to some of the most recent reporting on the effects of the pandemic on food insecurity in Native American communities.
“Native communities (both urban and rural) are often invisible in “normal” times. This is exacerbated in times of crisis. Native communities are ripe for the effects of COVID-19 to intensify at extraordinary levels”
As the website Health Affairs reports:
Native Americans have many of the risk factors that put them at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19. Heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, and diabetes are leading causes of death among AI/AN and lead to a life expectancy that is 5.5 years less than that for the US all-races population. Natives are twice as likely as whites to have diabetes. Native people die from diabetes at a rate that is 189 percent higher than that for other Americans. In addition, 28.6 percent of AI/AN under age 65 do not have health insurance.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200331.659944/full/
Marlysa D. Gamblin, writing for Bread for the World, reminds her readers,
Although they were the first communities in what is now known as the United States, Indigenous communities in urban and rural areas are often the last remembered in public policy. This is true particularly in times of crisis, including the current COVID-19 pandemic. As of April 14, 2020, the Indian Health System had confirmed more than 1,100 cases of COVID-19 and more than 20 deaths. In addition, Indigenous people living in urban areas, including Salt Lake City, San Jose, and Seattle, are contracting the virus at high rates. These statistics are expected to continue to worsen.
https://www.bread.org/blog/race-hunger-and-covid-19-impact-indigenous-communities
Olivia Chan and Jamila Taylor of The Century Foundation write,
Although racial data on testing, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 are still incomplete, early warnings and reports have shown that low-income, Black, Hispanic, and Native communities have been hit the hardest. Many in these groups are frontline and essential workers who are put at risk when they use public transportation or go to work. Many also live in multigenerational homes, where a working-age adult exposed to the virus could pass it on to seniors and others in their household.
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/covid-19-lays-bare-vulnerabilities-u-s-food-security/?agreed=1
Click this link for a PDF from First Nations Development Institute: https://www.firstnations.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID19-and-Native-Communities-4.17.20_DIGITAL_IS.pdf
How Native Americans Are Fighting a Food Crisis
From the New York Times
At Pine Ridge Reservation, Milo Yellow Hair is growing seedlings of hearty corn to plant in people’s yards. Milo Yellow Hair.
As the coronavirus limits access to food, many are relying on customs, like seed saving and canning, that helped their forebears survive hard times.