Navajo Nation Needs Medical Supplies NOW
We are the Wang/Long family in San Francisco. We have a family member in Beijing who is connected to a PPE factory and is able to ship KN-95 masks and protective clothing. The masks are around $3 apiece, including shipping.
We are collaborating with UCSF doctor Sriram Shamasunder, the co-founder of the HEAL Initiative, a health workforce in Navajo Nation and nine countries around the world. HEAL currently has over 130 fellows, half of whom are Native American and from low and middle income countries.
As you know, there is a bottleneck on medical supplies, and it is critical that marginalized communities such as Navajo Nation receive support immediately.
After New York and New Jersey, Navajo Nation has the highest number of per capita COVID-19 cases in this country. Decades of uranium extraction and the legacy of settler colonialism have left generations with major health problems. The mortality rate is over 31% higher than the national rate, with heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and substance abuse contributing as major health threats. The impact of COVID-19 varies by social, racial, economic conditions, and Native Americans are being hit hard.
To give you a sense of Navajo Nation—
The largest land-based indigenous territory in the country, Navajo Nation covers around 27,000 square miles across portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Rural and remote, much of the territory lacks immediate access to healthcare facilities. The majority of the roads are dirt and unpaved; there is no public transportation. One in ten households doesn’t have electricity; 40% do not have running water or indoor plumbing. Hunger and poverty are common.
Roughly the size of West Virginia, there are 13 full-service supermarkets in Navajo Nation, and one closed on April 1 after an employee tested positive for Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19 (as COVID-19 is translated). The tribal healthcare system is typically resource-starved, with 400 hospital beds, 50 isolation rooms and fewer than 30 ventilators. A traditionally matriarchal culture, multiple generations live together, making it more difficult to quarantine the elders and sick.
Volunteer crews are delivering food, water, wood, and medicinal herbs. Kim Smith, 36, who runs a relief operation from a farm in Hogback, New Mexico says, "This is what we're here for, as young people, to be able to sacrifice ourselves, sacrifice our well-being, so that more people don't get sick. Our ancestors sacrificed so much more for us to allow us to continue to be here.”
They are doing all they can. And they need help.
We are living in a country founded on the genocide of Indigenous people. We are struggling as a species to find a way to live with the Earth rather than at war with Her; and we have so much to learn from Indigenous ways of being. Please give generously, and FORWARD this request to others.
Thank you and stay safe.