Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXXXIII): Native Americans

I've written previously about coronavirus impacts on the Navajo Nation, and I'm re-visiting the topic today because of major media coverage by both the New York Times and Washington Post.  Some of that coverage, especially from the NYT, goes beyond the Navajo to discuss impacts on a wide range of tribes across the United States.  Both stories note delays in getting tribes the $8 million promised them in the CARES Act from late March, and like this story from Medium, these reports are attuned to the long history of the federal government neglecting its commitment to Native concerns.  

Simon Romero and Jack Healy report for the NYT from Albuquerque, with a dual focus on the closure of casinos, a huge source of tribal revenue, and the illness and death toll in Indian Country.  Here's an excerpt that provides an overview primarily of the latter:

Across Indian Country, more than 5,200 cases have been confirmed in communities from Arizona to Minnesota — a number that might seem small compared with those in major urban centers in New York and Los Angeles, but which in many cases represents significant local clusters that are challenging the limited resources of tribal clinics and rural hospitals.

On reservations in the Dakotas and Montana where good housing is scarce, extended families have been forced to shelter together in tiny homes with no clean water and no internet. On the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, the Northern Arapaho Tribe opened its casino as a quarantine site.

And here's more on the magnitude of the impact that casino closures are having on tribes:

In an interview, the Harvard scholar Joseph Kalt likened the far-reaching devastation caused by shutdowns of tribal businesses around the country this year to the demise of the bison herds in the 19th century and the contentious attempt in the 1950s to disband tribes and relocate Native Americans to cities.

Kalt, a co-director of Harvard's Project on American Indian Development, comments:

You’d have to go back to the 50s for something of this magnitude.  

Robert Klemko reports for the Washington Post from Crystal, New Mexico, population 311, in the Navajo nation.  His story is headlined, "Coronavirus has been devastating to the Navajo Nation, and help for a complex fight has been slow," and he writes:

If the novel coronavirus has been cruel to America, it has been particularly cruel here, on a desert Native American reservation that maybe has never felt more alone than during this pandemic. There's a lack of running water, medical infrastructure, Internet access, information and adequate housing. And as of Wednesday, as the Navajo tried desperately to take care of themselves, the promised help from the U.S. government had, as usual, not yet arrived.

Prior posts touching on the coronavirus and Native issues are here and here.  Coverage of the death from COVID-19 of a prominent young Navajo leader, Valentina Blackhorse, is here and was also featured on NPR's weekend edition about 10 days ago  Other posts out of New Mexico are here and here.

And don't miss this story out of Farmington, New Mexico also in today's New York Times.  "For a City Already in a ‘Death Spiral,’ What’s After Lockdown?" is by Nicholas Casey.  Farmington, population 45,877, is in the same corner of the state as the Navajo nation, right in the so-called four-corners area of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.  The mayor of Farmington, which voted for Trump by a margin of 2 to 1, has resisted the (Democratic) governor's orders, saying they created an economic emergency.  Casey quotes Democrat Bill Richardson, who previously represented this corner of New Mexico in Congress:

The welfare of the people over the economy has been a winning issue — but that’s now starting to fray.  You can’t defy the law, but I can understand the pain of small towns. These are good people.

Richardson says he believes "the challenge of this moment is pushing rural voters even further away from Democrats."