LOOKING INWARD
Hit hard by COVID-19, Navajos push for return to traditions to combat systemic inequities
In 2014, as 13-year-old Yang Toledo sat on her grandmother’s couch in the Navajo Nation, she was struck with a vision: a vivid picture of Monument Valley rich with hogans — traditional Navajo dwellings made of logs and dirt — warmed by the lives of her people returning to their ancestral ways.
Six years later, as the Navajo Nation is being disproportionately impacted by the novel coronavirus, Toledo’s call to her Native roots resonates as a severing from a system built on “white society and their colonial ways,” which has been failing her people during this unprecedented pandemic.
“I believe going back to our traditional ways will get us through the pandemic,” Toledo, now 18, said over the phone from her home near the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry south of Farmington.
For many Diné — meaning “the people” in Navajo — the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated ongoing systemic inequities that hurt Native communities, resulting in a call to return to their ancestral ways of life to combat the illness and consequential social disparities.
Though Native Americans only constitute about 10 percent of New Mexico’s population, Native communities across the state have been hit hardest by the novel coronavirus pandemic. According to the state Department of Health, Indigenous people account for more than 50 percent of the state’s positive cases. The Navajo Nation, which occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, southeastern Utah and northwestern New Mexico, has gained national attention with more than 7,600 reported positive cases and 369 deaths.
Despite the vastness of the reservation land, which encompasses some 27,000 square miles, there are only six hospitals, seven health centers and 15 health stations to serve its population of more than 173,000 people.
Lyla June Johnston, a 30-year-old artist and activist from the Navajo Nation and Cheyenne Nation, noted many Native people have moved to urban areas “due to a lack of infrastructure on the Diné reservation.” Even with access to hospitals, her cousin, who had moved to the Phoenix area, died of COVID-19 on June 23.
Others believe industrial exploitation, often on sacred land, has created a dangerous and toxic environment for residents, which can lead to an increased vulnerability in contracting the coronavirus.
“Those social issues that turn into environmental issues turn to epidemic issues,” Toledo said, pointing to oil and gas rigs on her grandfather’s land near her home. “People’s lands and waters and agricultural farms have got contaminated, so we don’t really have the resources to farm the way we used to because that type of resources was taken away from us.”
This, she said, inevitably puts people’s health — and lives — at risk.
According to a 2017 report from the University of New Mexico School of Law Natural Resources and Environmental Law Clinic, air pollution, uranium poisoning and an increased rate of crime and violence linked to oil companies are consequences of mining for energy development on Navajo land.
In addition, there is significant infrastructure inadequacy, Johnston said, that “really stems from 500 years of colonization.”
With poor infrastructure from the federal, state and tribal level, and only 13 full-service grocery stores across the reservation, many Diné are turning to local grassroots organizations such as Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief for food and supplies.
Kim Smith, 36, and Makai Lewis, 28, two Diné members of the organization, are heavily involved in mutual-aid efforts. They said they start their days around 9 a.m., gathering, sanitizing, preparing and sometimes delivering packages of food, clean water, feminine products and diapers to residents who live up to 100 miles away.
They also bring any available ancestral teas and medicines to distant and rural areas, all while having to respect the strict 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew implemented by Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.
“There has been this dependence, especially in the beginning, when folks weren’t leaving and we were one of the only few folks able to be out and getting food and delivered,” Smith said in a phone interview last week. “There’s this interesting urgency to get resources to folks in need.”
Some families are still able to go to grocery stores to buy supplies, but not without risking breaking curfew or facing discrimination in cities outside the reservation.
“The roots of racism are still there, and this virus has made it worse,” said Lewis.
“Our nation is at the epicenter of the virus,” he added. “I’ve heard people say, ‘You filthy Indian, stay on your reservation. Keep your virus over there.’ ”
Cities that border the Navajo Nation, such as Farmington, have a notorious history for being discriminatory against Native Americans, Lewis said, sometimes manifesting into violence and brutality.
While Toledo said she hasn’t experienced this type of racism firsthand, she said her family members have.
Toledo, a recent and first-generation graduate from New Mexico School for the Arts, remembers hearing haunting stories in her childhood of Robert Fry — a serial killer who targeted Native women and children near her homeland when she was growing up. She also heard of the Chokecherry Massacre, in which three white high school students bludgeoned and burned three Native men in the 1970s.
With the Diné having to choose between waiting for suppliers or driving to faraway grocers, there has been a growing movement for food sovereignty among the Navajo people, whose civilization was based on agriculture and sheep herding. Some have been working to create seed banks to farm crops that have not been genetically modified and, ultimately, return to the foods of their ancestors.
“When we’re losing our jobs and our connection to this capitalistic system, we’re having to fall back on our traditional system of increased food sovereignty,” Johnston said. “Also increased safety nets. We’re taking care of each other because no one else will take care of us.”
Because of the toll of the pandemic, many, like Johnston, are leaning into their spiritual beliefs, which are a source of healing and strength for many Diné.
“A lot of my family members have either died or have COVID and a lot of my friends and their families have died or have COVID, and I’ve been doing a lot more praying recently,” Johnston said.
Communities have adapted to celebrate and maintain traditions through virtual powwows and web events. Santa Fe Indian Market, a weekendlong event in August that attracts as many as 120,000 visitors and can generate up to $100 million in revenue, for example, also has moved online this year.
Though the pandemic is ravaging through Native communities and exhausting their resources, Lewis and others are equipping themselves with the strength of their ancestors.
“Two hundred years ago, our ancestors were always prepared for certain things, whether they be intense weather patterns, war or sickness,” Lewis said. “There was always a backup, there was always something for them to rely on. And also to rely on each other as relatives and kinship.
“Fast forward to now, we don’t have that same mentality, and there are so many reasons why,” he added.
Toledo, though acknowledging the hardships of the present, holds optimism for the future. It’s up to her people, she said, to cast aside negativity and come together to create change.
“It’s unfortunate that our people have to experience these issues,” she said, “but within ourselves, we have strong and divine ancestors who have prayed for our road ahead of us to be beautiful and to flourish, and if we just unite and stay strong, we will create so much beautiful change for our people.”
Seneca Johnson is a recent graduate of Santa Fe Indian School and will attend Yale University. Contact her at senecasjo@gmail. com. Gabriel Biadora is a recent graduate of St. Michael’s High School and will attend the University of New Mexico. Contact him at gbiadora@unm.edu.