For Native Americans, health is never taken for granted
For most Americans, this past year has been a revelation and reality check on the deadly consequences of an unchecked viral epidemic. For Native Americans, the danger of viruses and diseases have been embedded in our collective consciousness for generations.
It might surprise some that the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians first began preparing for a possible viral epidemic in 2018, with a tabletop exercise testing our emergency management functions. Looking back, it was interesting to see our scenario included a “flu-like pandemic reaching our reservation.”
Reinforcing healthy and resilient communities are at the forefront of our generational long view. It is one of our pillars of community engagement, and makes up a lion’s share of our philanthropy efforts.
A little history might be in order to put this preparedness into context. Beginning in the 15th century, European migration to the Americas resulted in a catastrophic decrease in the number of indigenous people. In addition to deliberate killings, Native Americans died in massive numbers from infections widespread among Europeans; specifically smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, and influenza.
These viruses decimated Native communities, and the effect on our collective consciousness is one of heightened vigilance against the spread of disease. While most Americans might look at tuberculosis or the Spanish Flu as footnotes of the past, Native peoples are keenly aware of the devastation that disease brings.
Over the previous decade, San Manuel established an Office of Emergency Management and the role of Designated Infection Control Officer responsible for scaling up our response in the event of a viral epidemic. We pulled together an emergency task force for the coronavirus in late January 2020, a few days after the January 19 announcement of the first confirmed case in the U.S. We declared a state of emergency for our members on March 14 (a week before California did the same), and we were the first California tribe to close its casino operations the very next day.
But the issue of preparedness and response priorities extends much further than our tribal community, employees or casino guests. What history has taught us is that the health of our broader community is just as important to sustain our own strong, self-sustaining sovereign government. Virus epidemics simply do not recognize county, municipal or reservation borders.
Health and wellness are never in a bubble. Medical response requires a coordinated, system-wide approach.
Public health response between our tribe and the region is a two-way street. We need only think back to the ’30s and ’40s when the federal government helped to inoculate us from tuberculosis; or how today surrounding hospitals deliver our tribal member babies and treat our illnesses. Conversely, the San Manuel Fire Department has long collaborated with regional agencies as a first-responder to our neighbors.
We hold that our mission is to serve the underserved of the broader community beyond the borders of our reservation.
It is this recognition of a healthy community that has been the catalyst for much of our outreach the past several years, now that San Manuel is in a position to bring more assistance to others. We are proud that our success in tourism and gaming allows us to help other tribes still fighting for self-sufficiency, as well as build partnerships here in the Inland Empire.
Since the pandemic hit, we have supplied money, food and medical resources to several tribes in both California and Arizona, including substantially increasing our support to the Riverside-San Bernardino Indian Health Clinics throughout both counties.
Through our partnership with San Bernardino County and state governments, regular COVID-19 testing for the public is happening at a tribal owned property in Highland; we administered over 1,500 vaccines to employees and members of our tribe; and drew upon county resources to help identify 50 small businesses for $20,000 grants keeping their doors open.
We are also grateful for the opportunity to help improve the breadth of health care offered at medical facilities throughout the region with long-term gifts designed to support the medical infrastructure at facilities in the county.
This includes directing our giving for projects such as PET/CT imaging equipment at Redlands Community
Hospital; ventilators at Loma Linda University Health; surgical endoscopy equipment at San Bernardino Community Hospital; the pioneering daVinci Surgical System at St. Bernardine Medical Center; replacement of MRI and CT scanners at Riverside University Health, and landmark gifts to help establish the Gateway College at Loma Linda University Health and the San Manuel Maternity Pavilion at Loma Linda University Health hospital.
This is just a fraction of the millions of dollars we have awarded to health clinics and medical centers in the Inland Empire in the past 10 years. And it demonstrates how important the partnership of health is to all of us at San Manuel.
When the San Manuel Reservation was established in 1891, it followed a shameful period of militia raids that left only 30 survivors left to rebuild. As we have grown in capacity and numbers, we have chosen not to be insular in our worldview.
Today we, the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel, will act as we have since time immemorial as stewards of the ancestral homelands of our Serrano nation (inclusive of San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside, and Kern counties) in order to help prepare and be ready for whatever may come.