Sam Wasson
/ Getty Images
Originally published on December 17, 2020 10:33 pm
When Virginia Hedrick first heard about the coronavirus circulating on cruise ships off the coast of California back in March, it made her think back to some of the first ships of European settlers that arrived on American shores centuries ago, also teeming with disease.
Various outbreaks and epidemics spread across the continent in the following centuries, particularly measles and smallpox, and Indigenous people suffered hugely disproportionate rates of illness and death.
"So some would say that it was an unintentional spread of infectious disease upon contact. Others would say it was absolutely intentional," says Hedrick, a member of the Yurok tribe who grew up on a reservation in Humboldt County. Now, during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, American Indians are four times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 than white people, and more than twice as likely to die. For all these reasons, past and present, Hedrick says, Indigenous people should be moved toward the front of the line to receive a vaccine.