Indianz.Com > News > Cronkite News: Navajo Nation tackles COVID-19 and Census 2020
Navajo drives unite two goals: COVID-19 relief and upping census participation
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Cronkite News
MANY FARMS – On a hazy weekday morning, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and about two dozen masked volunteers pull into the parking lot of a local chapter house. For as far as the eye can see, cars and trucks line up along Indian Route 59.
The volunteers, including representatives from
World Central Kitchen, hustle to unload horse trailers crammed with cases of bottled water, diapers and boxes of mostly locally sourced foods – including
neeshjizhii, a steamed corn that one volunteer calls “gold.”
Hygiene kits of masks, hand sanitizer and toilet paper, supplied by
CORE, the Community Organized Relief Effort, await distribution.
After a prayer, the workers begin hoisting supplies into the car trunks and pickup beds of tribal members. Then residents are directed to census specialist Arbin Mitchell, who holds a “Shape Your Future” Census 2020 banner to ensure no one passes until they’ve signed up.
The drive is the latest in a series of COVID-19 relief events Nez’s office has held since the tribe received the final portion of its $714 million CARES Act money.
The effort has two goals: help the 174,000 residents of the reservation stay safe in the pandemic and increase Navajo participation in the census before counting ends.
Each week, helpers stop at as many as eight of the 110 chapter houses across the reservation, which stretches 27,000 square miles across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Chapters are the tribe’s local government entities.
“There’s no large gathering, especially here on the Navajo Nation,” Nez said. “So what’s the next best thing? These types of events. As they get their food, they stop – and they also get counted for the U.S. census.”
The Navajo Nation has had one of the highest per capita rates of
COVID-19 cases
in the U.S. – more than 10,000 to date and more than 550 deaths. The tribe has enacted strict mask restrictions, stay-at-home orders and 57-hour weekend lockdowns.
CARES Act dollars have paid for relief supplies such as those distributed at the Many Farms chapter house, as well as personal protective equipment and
front-line worker
pay. The money also is going to
projects
that address longstanding problems on the reservation, such as limited access to clean water, electricity and broadband internet connections.
Tribal officials noted that being undercounted in the census could cause issues that have plagued their community to drag on – or even worsen.
“My people are left behind,” said Katherine Arthur, president of Many Farms Chapter.
“My people are scattered all over the place,” she said. “They don’t have running water in their homes. We need education. We don’t have telecommunication where the students are going to school. We don’t have resources. We need funding to finance those kinds of services for my people so that we can at least come an inch up.”
Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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