Native American Health Disparities in the Age of COVID-19
Sarah Jahangeer
Fall 2020
“The system of oppression in the United States has built a perfect environment to kill us in a pandemic,” says Abigail Echo-Hawk, the director of the Urban Indian Health Institute.Colonialism’s legacy has been embedded into every walk of life, a reality that particularly strikes Native Americans. Historical traumas such as the introduction of diseases, displacement of homes, erasure of culture and more have caused disadvantages that continue to exist today. Native Americans bear the burdens of such disparities that have been heightened in the wake of COVID-19, endangering Native populations across the United States economically and physically, particularly in terms of their health and wellbeing.
Economic disadvantages predispose Native Americans to a greater risk of contracting COVID-19. Due to racial pay gaps and resource deficits, the median Native family’s income is a third less than the average. To better depict this difference, Native Americans are ten times more likely to live with incomplete plumbing and kitchen facilities. Additionally, twenty five percent of Natives receive food aid from the government since most reserves are food deserts, or an area with limited access to nutritious food (Mineo, 2020). COVID-19 further impacted Native Americans by the government mandates implemented aimed to prevent the spread of the virus. Temporarily closing businesses and halting travel narrowed their sources of income, since many Natives rely on running tourism enterprises, like casinos and reserve tours, to support their means of living. Consequently, insecure financial circumstances have pushed many Natives to unsafe housing situations (Conger, 2020); Many families have been packed into small spaces, which has become an obstacle for maintaining proper social distance.
Native American reserves’ economies have also been hurt due to insufficient tax revenue. While many have begun offering services such as public safety, postal services and more, the tax revenue generated from these sources is still inadequate. Due to low economic returns, providing basic health infrastructure necessary to fight a pandemic as widespread as COVID-19 has been difficult. Without proper PPE, health personnel and training, COVID-19 continues to spread unchecked. Though President Trump promised to pay Native populations $8 billion under the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act to fund public health measures, tribal representatives maintained that this sum is insufficient to properly combat the worsening situation, which continues to endanger Natives due to the severity of the health disparities they face (Mineo, 2020).
Generational trauma caused by colonialism has weakened Native Americans’ ability to withstand the dangerous realities of COVID-19. When Natives were displaced from their homes and relocated to reserves, they were faced with restrictions in medical care, traditional diets and lifestyles. This has led to health concerns that still persist today, such as an increased risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes and asthma as compared to white Americans. Predisposed health conditions facilitate the ravaging effects of the virus, further endangering Native Americans (Wade, 2020).
With both economic and health related factors at play, other postcolonial tools of violence, like the manipulation of data, heighten the threats of COVID-19. For seventy years, the U.S manipulated census data to underreport the presence of Natives living on reserves to justify the land vacant for invasion and resettlement. Considering this history, a consciousness has been instilled to avoid such practices from continuing in modern contexts. For example, though the Center of Disease Control recently released the statistic that Native Americans are infected by an incidence of 3.5 times more than white Americans, Abigail Echo-Hawk argues that this number is grossly underreported. This study was only effective in 23 states, and even within that limited field, race was only reported 70 percent of the time. Additionally, other studies grouped Native Americans into ambiguous labels such as “other” until the first week of April 2020, which muddled demographic specific information, hindering timely and targeted response initiatives. Echo-Hawk also brought attention to the inadequacy in current methods to relay information to tribal epidemiology centers, though the same information was available to the states. Once information was more readily available, it was discovered that the Navajo reservation had a higher infection rate per capita than any other state (COVID-19, 2020).
Post colonial legacies of unjust systems of oppression still harm Native Americans today from economics to health. The elevated risk they face due to predetermined factors, like poor infrastructure, insufficient resources and misrepresented information, put them at unfavorable odds of infection from COVID-19 and potentially death at a disproportionate rate to their White American counterparts.
References
Conger, K., Gebeloff, R., & Oppel, R. (2020, July 30). Native Americans Feel Devastated by the Virus Yet Overlooked in the Data. Retrieved November 04, 2020, from
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/us/native-americans-coronavirus-data.html
COVID-19 Among American Indian and Alaska Native Persons - 23 States, January 31–July 3, 2020. (2020, August 27).
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6934e1.htm
Mineo, L. (2020, May 11). The impact of COVID-19 on Native American communities.
Retrieved October 18, 2020, from
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-native-american-communities/
Wade, L. (2020, Sep. 24). COVID-19 data on Native Americans is 'a national disgrace.' This scientist is fighting to be counted.