Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes grieved for people who died every week from COVID-19.
When families called the tribe to help pay for funerals, Barnes had to turn them down.
The U.S. Treasury Department counted the tribe’s population as zero instead of 3,100 when it distributed CARES Act relief funding a year ago. Bad data forced Barnes and other tribal leaders across the U.S. to respond to the pandemic with little federal aid.
During the worst point of the pandemic in northeast Oklahoma, Barnes said he learned about new infections every day and two to four deaths a week.