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Skokomish
tribal member Elena Prest gathers licorice fern, a traditional
medicinal plant made into tea or chewed raw to remedy a sore
throat. (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
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Tribal communities know death by pandemic.
As history threatens to repeat itself with the menace of the novel
coronavirus, tribal communities are turning to their teachings and
one another to protect themselves amid what they call a near total
failure of federal resources to help, despite solemn promises in
treaties.
No one is waiting in these communities for someone else to come
to the rescue. Response to the threat of the virus by tribal governments
and health care providers has been swift and aggressive. Tribal
governments are sovereign in their territory, with broad emergency
powers and they are using them.
States of emergency have been declared at multiple reservations,
enabling tribal governments to spend funds, restrict gatherings,
close their borders to outsiders, quarantine tribal members in their
homes and even postpone elections. It was big news earlier this
month when Gov. Jay Inslee restricted gatherings to 250 people in
Washington. But some tribal governments, such as the Port Gamble
SKlallam on the Kitsap Peninsula, had already gone further,
banning gatherings of more than 10 for at least 90 days. Such extreme
measures are necessary, tribal leaders say. The Makah Tribe and
Lummi Nation enacted shelter in place ordinances for their citizens,
and the Yakama Nation followed suit Monday night. There is no time
and not a resident to lose.
Their actions come against a backdrop of a federal government response
that so far has set aside $40 million for tribes, tribal organizations
and urban Indian health programs to battle the coronavirus. Not
nearly enough, health experts say. Nor is there a clear path for
that money to reach tribal health programs.
That is a drop in the bucket, said Abigail Echo-Hawk,
a Pawnee tribal member and chief research officer for the Urban
Indian Health Institute, the research division of the health board.
We are at the epicenter of what has happened. And there isnt
a mechanism to get that money into Indian Country in urban and rural
areas.
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Esther
Lucero, Dine, left, is chief executive officer, and
Abigail Echo-Hawk, Pawnee, is chief research officer of the
Seattle Indian Health Board. The center takes a holistic approach,
including with the coronavirus. (Alan Berner / The Seattle
Times)
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The health board is one of 41 urban Indian health programs around
the country and serves about 6,000 people a year in Seattle and
King County. Yet by mid-March the facility has just three coronavirus
test kits on hand to deal with the pandemic. We dont
have the capacity to test any longer, Esther Lucero, a Dine´
tribal member and chief executive officer of the Seattle
Indian Health Board said last week.
Whether the declaration of a national emergency by the president
would change that was unknown. Like so many other things.
We still dont have the supplies. Despite what everyone
is saying. We have staff capacity but not the supplies, Echo-Hawk
said. I am angry. Are we trying to address this illness or
not?
An offer of 200 additional tests for the virus from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency late Friday came with so many unacceptable
strings attached that it was no offer at all for a front-line community
health program serving people of color, Lucero said.
Finally, over the weekend, Public Health Seattle & King
County provided 200 tests expected to arrive Monday. Unlike with
FEMA, the board can use its own lab to process the tests, and communicate
the results to its own patients instead of sending them to
a national call center. But resources remain woefully lacking to
provide a true public health response in the crisis, identifying
hot spots and following up with wraparound care, Lucero said.
Meanwhile, a loss of clinical providers identified as high risk
for the virus, in addition to appointment cancellations, will blow
a $734,922 hole in the health boards budget this month, even
as administrative costs are piling up, health board officers wrote
in a March 13 letter to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
In tribal communities, the people within their borders arent
just residents, they are family. The duty to protect goes beyond
civil and legal jurisdiction. It follows an older and higher law
learned long ago when these communities first faced a threat they
could not see.
Beginning in the 1770s maybe earlier outbreaks of
infectious diseases, including smallpox, influenza and measles,
scythed through Native tribes of the Northwest Coast. Disease killed
an estimated 80% of the Native population within 100 years of their
first contact with whites, according to historian Robert Boyd, author
of the book The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence,
a history of infectious diseases and population decline among Northwest
Coast Indians from 1774 to 1874. So devastated were tribal villages
by diseases that in many instances few survived to bury the dead,
who were simply left where they fell. Their remains were looted,
washed away or scattered.
The carnage on the coast was a continuation of the march of death
across the continent. The arrival of newcomers in the Americas was
followed by possibly the greatest demographic disaster in the history
of the world, writes geographer William Denevan, emeritus
faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in The Native
Population of the Americas in 1492.
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Nettles,
a traditional medicinal plant gathered by Kris Miller, are
usually cooked as a green or in soup or stew or in a tea.
(Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
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In treaties with the federal government signed by tribal leaders
all over the country, as in Washington, one of the promises in exchange
for ceding title to their territories was health care for their
people. It is a broken promise. Health care for Native people is
chronically underfunded by the federal Indian Health Service.
Even before the new coronavirus showed up, in Seattle and beyond,
Indian and Alaska Native people already faced
higher mortality rates and underlying health risks, from diabetes
to respiratory diseases. There is a possibility of disproportionate
impact in our communities, because of historic suppression and repression,
Echo-Hawk said. We cannot allow for that disproportionate
impact to happen.
The Seattle Indian Health Board quickly put together fact sheets
and protocols for other Native health providers across the country
on its web site, and is advocating to get more resources to Indian
people.
We are incredibly resilient. We have our own way of caring
for our relatives and our most vulnerable populations, Lucero
said.
But now even the basics, such as an adequate public health response,
are lacking from the federal government in the middle of an emergency,
Echo-Hawk said.
Difficulty in a time of need is nothing new: Nationwide, urban
Indian health programs serve the more than 70% of American Indian
and Alaska Native people living in urban areas, but are allocated
less than 1% of the Indian Health Service budget. The agency needs
to be fully funded to adequately serve both tribal governments and
urban Indian health programs, Echo-Hawk said.
During this time of need, even as so many others have shut their
doors, The Chief Seattle
Club, which serves urban Indians and Alaska Natives, many of
whom are experiencing homelessness, is continuing its daily hot
breakfasts, but with half the seating to maintain safe social distance,
and giving out sack lunches. Serving more than 80,000 meals a year
is just part of what the Pioneer Square nonprofit does to help people
who often have nowhere else to go.
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Chief
Seattle Club nurse Shawn Thurman meets with Sabina Lopez to
discuss health issues. (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
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John
Argetsinger, a Chief Seattle Club hygiene attendant, distributes
clean, donated clothes to those in need and often does loads
of laundry for people living on the street. Hygiene and nutrition
are important for maintaining health. The club is continuing
to provide services seven days a week during the coronavirus
crisis. (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
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Chief
Seattle Club hygiene attendant John Argetsinger is using more
gloves than usual since the outbreak of the coronavirus. He
works in the office providing clean donated clothes, laundry
service and sanitizer at the counter. (Alan Berner / The Seattle
Times)
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Kalae
Trask, left, and Doug Anderson start their day at 6 a.m. preparing
meals for people who come to the the Chief Seattle Club. Many
patrons have compromised health and are living on the street.
The Pioneer Square organization serves 80,000 meals a year.
(Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
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The club during the pandemic is still open every day, so people
can get their clothes washed and take a hot shower. The day center
served an average of 116 people every day from March 1-18. That
is despite having to temporarily suspend other services, including
health care, mental health, employment, public benefits, substance-abuse
treatment, legal aid and traditional wellness.
Tribal communities have long had teachings, passed from one generation
to the next, to keep themselves and their relatives healthy and
safe teachings they are continuing to rely on now, as the
novel coronavirus cuts a swath through daily life.
Reaching deep into the mossy cloak on the big leaf maple, Elena
Prest felt for the juicy root of the fern, pulling it free.
Gathering this traditional medicine is part of how Prest, a Skokomish
tribal member, stays healthy, not only now, during the emergency
of the coronavirus sweeping the world, but always.
Gathering these medicines is a practice and a teaching, a way of
life that is keeping this tribal community strong even at a time
of emergency, said Kimberly Miller, also a Skokomish tribal member.
She gathered tender green shoots of nettles and tight green curls
of fiddlehead ferns, both full of vitamins and tonic juices.
But some of the strongest medicine in Indian Country is the love
for one another. In many tribal communities, the hardest thing right
now is the need to stay apart. What could be more antithetical to
being part of a tribe?
Social distancing, that is a new term here, said Lawrence
Solomon, chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council, which has
declared a public-health emergency on the reservation and enacted
a quarantine ordinance, ordering tribal members to stay home, with
some exceptions. When we see our elders, we want to give them
a hug or shake hands, and [now] its fist bumps and elbow bumps
and not even visiting. Try to avoid seeing your elders that
doesnt sound right at all.
The tribe is working to set up a field hospital in a fitness center
on the reservation, with up to 20 beds to care for Native people
who are not acute cases, and to take pressure off the hospital in
Bellingham. We saw this coming, about the hospitals becoming
overtaxed, and we thought, Why not just take care of our people
ourselves? said Dakotah Lane, medical director for
the Lummi Nation, which got
an early start on preparing for the virus.
The teachings from the past are keeping the people strong, even
as the world changes seemingly by the hour. We have been around
this for a long time, we hear the stories about the smallpox,
Solomon said. We made it through. People have that sense of
pride that it will be tough, but we will make it through. We remember
who we are.
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Annette
Squetimkin-Anquoe, Colville, keeps a cedar bundle in her office.
Shes the Chief Traditional Health Officer at the Seattle
Indian Health Board. (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
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Annette
Squetimkin-Anquoe, Colville, Chief Traditional Health Officer,
has cedar, tobacco and more bound together on her desk at
the Seattle Indian Health Board. (Alan Berner / The Seattle
Times)
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Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown SKlallam Tribe and chairman
of the Washington Indian Gaming Association, said the virus already
has been an economic hit for tribal governments that fund their
operations partly with revenues from tribal government-run casinos.
Many casinos have temporarily shut down to protect their employees
and the public while still providing full pay and benefits.
Closing down is not only an economic hit or matter of disruption.
Tribal communities have deep traditions of welcoming visitors and
hosting. Shutting doors, even when it is necessary, sits uncomfortably
in tribal cultures.
When Lewis and Clark came through on their return visit,
we welcomed them, said Chuck Sams, communication director
for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, referring
to the Corps of Discovery and their 1806 journey eastward. The tribe
has always welcomed visitors in their territory and yet recently
shut the doors to its casino in Pendleton, Oregon. Tribal leaders
canceled the tribes weeklong basketball tournament, the 33rd
annual, which always draws thousands of visitors.
General council meetings, where elections were to be held for tribal
council positions, have been put off all over the region, including
at Suquamish, Port Gamble SKlallam, the Tulalip Tribes and
Umatilla.
At Puyallup, the House of Respect elders home terminated all visits,
including by family, in order to protect their elders.
Yet instinct and teachings align to still embrace the local community
beyond the reservation. The Tulalip Tribes shuttered their casino
and that day donated all the food on hand at its restaurants
nearly 3,000 pounds of fresh meat, produce and baked goods
to the local food bank.
This is a scary time for our people and our nation,
said Terry Gobin, chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors.
We will continue to move forward in the best way possible
with the information we have. We pray that our people stay safe
and healthy. We will get through this together.
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Skokomish
tribal members head out to gather traditional medicinal plant
materials including licorice ferns, nettles and fiddleheads.
(Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
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Seattle
Indian Health Board
Seattle Indian Health Board is a community health center that provides
health and human services to its patients, while specializing in
the care of Native people. We are recognized as a leader in the
promotion of health improvement for urban American Indians and Alaska
Natives, locally and nationally.
https://www.sihb.org
Chief
Seattle Club
Chief Seattle Club is a human service agency that provides
for the basic needs of our members, many of whom are experiencing
homelessness. Over 90,000 meals are served every year and members
can access quality nursing care, mental health providers, chemical
dependency professionals, and traditional healing practices. Native
people in urban areas face unique challenges and Chief Seattle Club
embraces the cultures, languages, and traditions of American Indians
and Alaska Natives as the primary method for healing and transformation.
https://www.chiefseattleclub.org
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