Plight of Indians During Epidemic and Who is Helping
About a month ago I wrote on the COVID 19 plight of the Navajo Indians in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham requested military field hospitals to be set up to handle the fast moving virus. Trumps comment was, “Wow, that’s something.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Emergency Management Agency together constructed three reservation field hospitals to be used as alternative care sites according to the tribe earlier in the month of April..
Experts say more than 5 million people who identify as American Indian and Alaskan Native are especially vulnerable.
Most recent :
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — The Navajo Department of Health in coordination with the Navajo Epidemiology Center and the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, reported 85 new cases of COVID19 for the Navajo Nation and a total of 79 deaths as of Tuesday. The total number of positive COVID-19 cases for the Navajo Nation has reached 2,559. A total of 15,651 COVID-19 tests have been administered with 11,609 negative test results.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez: Today, the federal government announced that they intend to release a portion of funds appropriated by Congress over one month ago to tribes to help fight COVID-19, but I’ll believe it when I see it. We’ve had to file a lawsuit to get what states received weeks ago. We couldn’t sit around and wait for those dollars, so we’ve had boots on the ground in nearly 20 communities giving out food, water, fire wood, protective masks, and other supplies using our own dollars and contributions from outside entities. This will help many families, but we need to continue to do our part as individuals by staying home as much as possible to flatten the curve.”
Another donation to the Navajo Nation is coming from overseas.
“More than 170 years ago, the Choctaw Nation sent $170 to starving Irish families during the potato famine. A sculpture in County Cork commemorates the generosity of the tribe, itself poor. In recent decades, ties between Ireland and the Choctaws have grown.
Hundreds of the people of Ireland are repaying the kindness shown to them during the potato famine by giving to a charity drive for two Native American tribes suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic. As of Tuesday (5th), the fund-raiser has raised more than $1.8 million to help supply clean water and food and health supplies to people in the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Reservation, with hundreds of thousands of dollars coming from Irish donors.
The generosity of the Choctaw came not long after the United States government forcibly relocated the tribe and several other American Indian tribes from the Southeastern United States to western parts of the US in a march of thousands of miles known as the Trail of Tears that left thousands of people dead along the way.
Obama says White House response to coronavirus has been ‘absolute chaotic disaster’
Ken:
Are you spamming AB? Same message three times on different posts.
Didn’t mean it that way. Thought it was apropos in each case. The problem is the incapability, the lack of leadership, self-centeredness… of the Trump Admin.
A disaster with a greater disaster in the making,…
Hey Ken:
It would not be the first time someone’s email was hacked. 🙂
I skipped by this article when I first read the title because it referred to “Indians” rather than native Americans. I came back to it because I do respect the Hindus, just no so much as my own people. On that note, I was also relieved to find no mention of the Cherokees. I became disconnected from a good friend that lives in Muskogee because he gave up on Facebook after just two months, which I fully understand but in his case find regrettable. His dad was once a chief.
Ron:
I drew notations from several news outlets which did use the word Indian to describe native Americans. The last citation was about the Choctaw helping the Irish and a return of the help to the Navajo. If you have an objection, please state it.
Ron
please don’t be p.c. on us. Language grows wild. Forcing it into cages of political correctness is…unnatural. All of us know the Indians are not people from india. Nor are they relatives of Amerigo Vespucci (“Americans”… unless you want to use the language we all speak as it evolved.)
I said “they”, maybe I should have said “you”, but ,hell, these days i often say “you” when i mean “me,” or “one”…which almost no-one says anymore. I also say “they” when I mean “him or her” because they won’t let me say “him” when i mean he or she (yes i know i got that backwards) but i can’t see why girls should object to having a pronoun of their own and get to share another one with boys, who don’t have one of their own.
God, it’s hard enough to talk…say what we mean, understand what you mean…without getting a new book of rules every time we open our mouths.
Run,
No so much an objection which would require a value judgement placing one’s values above another, but rather a narrative of my experience derived from your semantics choice.
Coberly,
Not PC – not judging, but precisely describing the train of though that I experienced in response to a situation. Also, I have no intention of apologizing for my greater sentiments regarding native Americans as compared to Hindus, which are fine people that I respect from a distance while still being foreign to me and my own life.
Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders has sent a team to the Navajo Nations
If we had a government (sung to the tune of If I Were a Rich Man)
It would see that people weren’t hungry, help the sick, had housing, …hand out: masks, hand sanitizer, soap, toilet paper, and food during a pandemic, …