Pandemic Disparities In Tribal Communities
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Lummi Nation member James Scott (native name Qwelexwbed), left, receives the first COVID-19 vaccination on the Lummi Reservation by registered nurse Alyssa Lane, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020, near Bellingham, Wash.
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
The pandemic is disproportionately affecting tribal communities. According to the CDC, they’ve been one of the hardest-hit groups by the pandemic. Leaders and experts now say the death and infection tally numbers in their communities are far too low, and that COVID-19, like other illnesses, just exacerbates pre-existing health disparities. Today on Insight, how the coronavirus is impacting Indigenous peoples and the factors behind it.
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Leticia Aguilar poses for a portrait holding a picture of her grandmother Betty Ann Sigala in her home in Elk Grove.
(Salgu Wissmath/USA Today)
For years, Betty Sigala spoke to her family about her death: she didn’t want to be put on a machine and she didn’t want to die alone.
When she was admitted in June to the COVID-19 care ward at her local hospital, her family refused a ventilator. One of her grandsons convinced the nurses to ignore the no visitors rule and let him in.
He set up an iPad so the family could speak with her, then held her hand as she died.
Native American leaders across California said COVID-19 deaths are a shadow on their communities, yet state figures show few American Indian people have died here compared with other states. Leaders and experts fear their community s deaths have been undercounted because of a long history of Native Americans being racially misclassified. And data shows they may be correct.
This unacceptable and damaging practice can bar Native people from getting the help and resources they actually need, they said.
California has the largest number of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States and the largest number of American Indians and Alaska Natives living in urban centers. They are often declared white, Latino or Black on official forms by uninformed hospital workers, according to community leaders and various studies. Sometimes they are simply listed as other.
I m not interested.
“This approach is the national standard for reporting disease rates and has several advantages,” the health department wrote in a statement to The Salinas Californian. “However, it also has limitations. Any classification system will not be able to capture the complexity and richness of racial identity.”
Acknowledging the problem doesn’t change the fact that the data is wrong, experts said.
“The problem is in the data itself,” said Virginia Hedrick, executive director of the Consortium for Urban Indian Health, a California nonprofit alliance of service providers dedicated to improving American Indian healthcare. “I don’t trust the state data. I haven’t ever.
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