COVID-19 even greater threat to First Nations

It was a serious threat and we held our breath. Isolation and security checkpoints had been doing their job, but it took a work camp in Alberta to undo all the good work in the north.

The La Loche area now has more than 50 cases of COVID-19, all of which are traceable to an oilsands work camp north of Fort Mcmurray, Alberta. Two elders have passed on as a result.

This was the news we dreaded. If the virus spreads throughout northern communities, it may have disastrous results. Northern communities have crowded housing, distant health services and low standards of living, all of which combine to create a vulnerable population.

Northern communities like La Loche have been neglected and underserviced for years. Employment is seasonal and often requires travel to northern mines or construction sites. Housing is poor and overcrowded, and government services fall short of what is required. Instead the government preferred to warehouse people on welfare.

Requesting that people isolate in their homes becomes impossible when three generations and more than 10 people live in a three-bedroom home of around 1,000 square feet. This is not the exception but more often the rule in northern communities.

A new hospital was built for La Loche in 2001. Prior to that, health services consisted of a temporary facility of connected trailers. I recall going to La Loche in the 1990s when the newest government building in town was the liquor store. It was a jarring contrast to the real need.

Throughout the province, First Nations and Aboriginal communities have complied with the government requests to isolate. Most reserve communities have security checkstops barring outsiders and keeping tabs on residents. The security providers also patrol the community, watching out for large groups or house parties that are in violation to social distancing.

My reserve has security checkstops on the roads leading to the community, but the surrounding towns and villages have no such protection. This leads me to wonder how serious outside communities are about preventing the spread of COVID-19.

South of the border, a similar situation is playing out. People of colour, especially African Americans, are experiencing exceptional numbers of cases.

The Centres for Disease Control released information showing that while African Americans are 13 per cent of the population of the country, they represent 40 per cent of the COVID-19 patients. In Wisconsin, for example, African Americans are 12 per cent of the population but account for 40 per cent of the deaths; in New York, the death rate for African Americans is double that of their white peers.

The report concludes that in the United States people of colour are victims of longstanding structural factors of economic and health disparities between whites and people of colour. Does this sound familiar?

The Navajo Reservation, which occupies parts of Arizona and New Mexico, has 2,000 COVID-19 cases and 71 deaths, according to their newspaper, The Navajo Times. The newspaper reports the same living conditions found in Indigenous communities on both sides of the line, including a lack of running water, electricity, grocery stores, infrastructure and low numbers of emergency and medical personnel.

According to at the University of Arizona, 35 per cent of the 357,000 residents of the nation lack running water in their homes. These are the same conditions that exist on most Canadian Indigenous communities.

COVID-19 is considered both a health crisis and an economic crisis, but it is also revealing a human rights crisis that highlights the disparity between people of colour and the rest of society.

As First Nations people we have treaties that recognize our right to universal health care as well as assistance in times of “pestilence and famine.” But while we have treaty rights, we also have a human right to social justice.

Low employment levels, high rates of poverty and second-rate services from both the federal and provincial governments are human rights failures that have existed in our communities for years. When this nightmare is over, we must build a new relationship between First Nations and Canada that is based on both the treaties and social justice.

We cannot go back. We can only go forward.