My Home Community Urgently Needs the Vaccine. Who Will Hear My Call?
The Nisga’a, like many remote First Nations, rely on coming together for survival. But the shots have yet to arrive.
Ginger Gosnell-Myers is Nisga’a and Kwakwak’awakw and has been appointed as the first Indigenous Fellow with the Simon Fraser University Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue. SHARES ‘The BC government’s vaccination plan gives priority to remote First Nations. But within that broad intention, there is little information on which communities will be the first to receive the vaccine.’
Photo via BC Government Flickr.
If you have ever lived in a First Nations community in northern British Columbia, you know how important connection and support between one another is. In the north, our communities have always recognized that coming together is a protective factor against the ongoing systemic attack on Indigenous cultural knowledge and languages.
Dr. Shannon McDonald, the acting chief medical officer of the First Nations Health Authority, said 600 infections in B.C. First Nations are still active, and 32 people from Indigenous communities have died of coronavirus.
British Columbia has allocated 25,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine to First Nations for distribution by the end of February and 19 have received doses so far
A rapid-response vaccination clinic has been set up in Snuneymuxw First Nation in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith region in response to a growing COVID-19 outbreak. The Snuneymuxw First Nation opened the . . .