Largest tribe in the state. And today marks the first stop of the new sunday series, Velshi Across America. Every sunday, i came to you live from a vital Battleground State from across the country. I learned much more from being out in the field talking to people and so were doing it again but for different reasons. The election is over. Joe biden is president elect and now we have to turn our attention away from the circus that will soon leave the Nations Capital to the most pressing Health Emergency in modern history, the covid19 pandemic. More than 13. 3 million americans have been diagnosed with the disease and nearly 267,000 of them have died. More than 2,000 americans are now consistently dying every day from covid19. While theres promising news about vaccines, while an end to this National Nightmare is in sight, were still many months away from it being safe to return to something that resembles normal. And while we can all look ahead to the seriousness with which the Incoming Biden Administration is taking the pandemic, Inauguration Day itself is still 52 days away. Thats a lifetime for suffering Small Businesses across the country already in the final stages of survival mode, if theyve made it this far. Its a lifetime to wage earners who havent received a paycheck or a relief in check and who are surviving on reduced hours. The effect of the pandemic continues to have on our nations Small Business has been nothing more than catastrophic. Even for those who have been lucky enough to remain open, they do so with a fear that they could be shut down on a moments notice as new restrictions and stayathome orders are instituted across the country. That is why im here. Im going to travel across america between now and the end of the year to places hard hit by covid to hear your stories. I dont know what else to do to help, but i can do what my profession requires of me. My team and i can bear witness. We can listen to you and tell america. We can make sure that struggling businesses and workers are not forgotten and that the cavalry, as joe biden calls it, is coming. And that they know where the help is needed most. Our goal is to help any way we can, to use my platform to bring together experts, whomever is needed, to get you the answers you need right now because theres no time to waste. Theres a tradition among Native Americans of storytelling which is why were starting our reporting in south dakota, at the Pine Ridge Reservation, to tell you their story. South dakota is one of the hardest hit states in the country right now for covid19 on a per capita basis. It has the high egs raest race people testing positive nation. Native americans account for 14 of all covid19 cases and 15 of all deaths. And despite rising numbers in hospitals that are at or near capacity, the republican governor of this state, kristi noem, refuses to issue a statewide mask mandate and saying people who dont want to wear masks shouldnt be shamed because they dont want to. Actually, they should. Because science shows masks work, not only to protect ones selfs, but to protect your fellow citizens. As a south Dakota State Medical Association put it in a statement supporting a statewide mask mandate, masks work to decrease the risk of infection for everyone. Which is why there are restrictions at the Pine Ridge Reservation behind me which recently included a reservationwide shutdown and installed checkpoints to stop the spread. The disconnect between the native american tribes taking aggressive measures and state and federal officials taking a Hands Off Approach has increased already inflamed tensions. Joining me here on site this morning is the state representative, peri pourier. Shes a member of the ogala tribe. The pine ridge begins here and goes now to the border . Correct. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. Tell me about the situation on pine ridge and with Native Americans in south dakota as it relates to covid. Just as you described, were always on a Tipping Point between basic survival and crisis. And right now, any time anything happens, especially the pandemic, were at a crisis. Every time theres an emergency situation, a flood, or any type of thing, we are teetering on crisis and survival. Right now were losing our elders and were not just losing our elders or grandparents, were losing our knowledge keepers, were losing our language. Were losing all of the fundamentals that make us who we are. Its at threat and there are a lot of people who are scared. This was already not an ideal living situation well before covid. You were underrepresented in terms of health care, medical facilities, basic provisions and access. So covid hits you harder. Thats why even though Native Americans make up 9 of the states population, theyre 15 of the deaths. Its just worse if you get sick on an indian reservation. Its worse not only because of our health disparities. We are more young people who were vulnerable, who have diabetes, asthma, all of the threatening diseases that make us vulnerable. Its also our living situations. We have families in one house. We have 14 to 15 Family Members on average living in one house because we dont have housing here. Its across the board, no more where you look at it, we have the highest statistics across the nation, especially with teen suicide, especially with all the other categories that just its threatening a lot of our individuals are at home sheltering in place but theyre still scared because this is something thats in the air and its hard to combat. Especially when were living so closely together. When i drove in yesterday from the airport, just very close to here, as you enter the reservation, theres a checkpoint. The people at the checkpoint stopped me, took down my license plate number, asked me questions, took down my name, asked me where i was going. Seemed like a good protection provision and im hearing from people on the reservation that theyre taking covid very seriously, theres no question about the science. There arent questions about Wearing Masks and things like that. Thats a bit of a distinction from the rest of the state, or at least from what the governor seeks. We believe that were all related. So whenever you look at the way we view the world is the kristi noem likes to say personal responsibility. We have a personal responsibility to each other here. We are all connected. We all are relatives. So looking out for myself and looking out for you first. So thats why were so concerned and we do what we do here is because we care about each other. We love each other. And we want to make sure that we all make it through. Speaking to Somebody Yesterday who was telling me that she believes on pine ridge, 33 people had died. She said in many cases, theres a clinic and its a good clinic. But once you get past a certain point, the clinic is full, or people need treatment at rapid city or places further. She said there are some people who have been hospitalized a few hundred miles from here. We have relatives in omaha, nebraska, that get across the border to minnesota, they get shipped all over the place. Whats difficult about that is that not oftentimes do they have rides home. They get flown out and then who goes who comes and gets them . A lot of times theres transportation issues. During the election, we had individuals who couldnt drive, you know, ten miles to the election site, misplaced election polls. Any little thing is a hardship because life is already hard. Its already a struggle. I want to ask you about why you believe the rate of infection and disease is higher on the reservation than it is in the state as a whole. If you are taking greater precautions, why are people getting sick still . Because of the conditions that we live on a daily basis. We live in a food desert. We do not have a food system here. We have to drive so many miles to get food. A large part of our population depends on rapid city to get food. We have one Grocery Store in pine ridge. Prices are a little bit high there. So we do our economy and getting products and services are off the reservation and then not only that, were just its ill equipped to even handle the infrastructure, our health care. Were unable to stay on top of anything, our housing, our economy, our health care. Its we depend on south dakota to get a lot of our services and its just a difficult thing to really come out on top of and survive through. One of the things that the federal government is not doing right now is passing another relief bill that is going to give loans and grants to businesses. I understand that was helpful to people here in the beginning but theres no more money. People say they cant get loans. Even if they could get loans, they wouldnt know how to pay them back. They need more help. More help is needed here. What is the biggest challenge here is we had a lot of individuals on unemployment. They waited 16, 18, sometimes they never heard back from the state over unemployment rates. Thats something you didnt hear in south dakota. You always hear that south dakota is just fine from our governor, but we have a lot of constituents and a lot of people here on the reservation who waited for unemployment for a long time and that means food, that means electricity in the cold months. Its difficult all across the board. Are you meeting a lot of people who are getting covid . Have you encountered a lot of people in the reservation who have been suffering . Weve been sheltering in place. When we have meetings, its by zoom. I know a lot of relatives who have covid. Its a lot of our elderly, a lot of our grandparents and grandfathers and grandmothers are saying theyre scared to go out because they have health conditions. They dont want to go through that extra suffering and then leave this world possibly. So it is difficult. We know a lot of people who have covid. We just pray, were a very prayful people. Thats mostly what we could do is take care of ourselves, take care of our homes and pray. And just to be clear, there are these checkpoints and there have been lockdowns, there have been curfews here. Yes, theres curfews every night at 10 00. You can hear the siren gs go of. There have been lockdowns and theyre all enforced. I remember a Police Officer pulling everybody over, making sure theyre adhering to the law. Its a hardline approach, but its needed because we look out for each other here. The governor has taken exception to some of these roadblocks. She feels that native communities should not be able to put those roadblocks down. Theyre checkpoints. Its Contact Tracing on a more sophisticated level. I would almost think you would want that all over the place. But the governor is suing and trying to get that stopped. She can sue. She can do whatever she would like to do. But we are a sovereign nations. We have to look out for whats best for us. So we will put those checkpoints in. Well see how it goes with her suing us. But were sovereign. We will do whats best to protect our own people. Tell me, again, that expression you used when you said were all related. Thank you for joining us this morning. Peri pourier is a representative for the great state of south dakota. She represents the Pine Ridge Reservation which youre starting to see behind me. As bad as the situation in south dakota is, the situation in north dakota is worse. One analysis showed that north dakota had the highest covid19 Mortality Rate on earth. Consider this. For the week ending november 19th, last week, south dakota reported on average almost 1500 daily new covid19 cases per million residents while, north dakota, averaged a shocking 1,769 daily cases per 1 million residents. Those are huge percentages compared to new yorks worst week back in april, when the state was the worlds epicenter, new york never averaged higher than 500 daily cases per 1 Million People. Unlike south dakotas governor, kristi noem i seem to have lost audio, so i wont be able to hear them. I may have to ask for a quick commercial break. North dakotas republican governor recently relented and issued a statewide mask mandate. Due to the ive got my audio back. Thats good news. Due to the strain on the States Health care system, at one point last week, fewer than ten icu beds were available statewide. The governor moved to allow Health Care Workers who had tested positive for covid19 to continue working if they were asymptomatic. This is an extremely unpopular position among those who are directly affected, the ones we have tasked with taking care of us during the pandemic. That was really kind of a gut punch for a lot of nurses. We got multiple responses back. Probably over 100 from nurses emailing, texting, calling us saying we dont want to do this. We have been working nonstop, many hours, were tired, were physically and emotionally exhausted. Were pretty much at our breaking points. If we contract the virus, we have to continue to work. Luckily, following a request from the governor, some much needed help has arrived in the form of 60 u. S. Air force forces who were sent to hospitals across south dakota. Joining me now is the mayor of minot, north dakota. We had you on last weekend. Things have changed in a week because the governor has taken this more seriously and the message has gotten to people that they got to wear masks, they got to stay separate. But we had thanksgiving this week and a lot of people disobeyed not disobeyed, but disregarded advice not to travel. How are things for you in minot now . Weve seen a turn around in the last 7 to 14 days with our numbers and watching numbers heading in the direction we were hoping to see. Watching the Infection Rate go down. Yesterday we were at 77 for the county and thats down from over 1400 to 1500 to just over a week again. We we talked about an all encompassing task of a mask mandate across the state rather than individual cities trying to task some of those mandates and not being effective individually, weve seen a better job across the state and more buyin from not just people, but businesses. Thats been a campaign that weve put a lot of emphasize on and getting businesses to help with that with the push as we talked about. North dakota are selfreliant people but those businesses that have been hurting, that have been struggling, this is really their message to help keep their doors open not just temporarily, but permanently and a mask mandate being the legs of that stool for helping mitigate the spread of covid. Its masking, its personal hygiene, its washing your hands and just being selfaware, staying away from large groups. Numbers, at least in warren county, have been going down. Bismarck and fargo have seen the numbers continue to stay steady. Were very anxiously watching to see what comes out of the thanksgiving holiday, black friday shopping. We did see a lot of people at least locally change some of their plans and really reduce the side of what they would normally do for the holiday period. But time will be the test on that. What we saw after the halloween time period, with that big uptick, were hoping that we dont see a repeat following the next 7 to 14 days following thanksgiving. And, of course, im out here talking to Business Owners and workers. Youve actually issued a number of Executive Orders in the last week or so to try and help businesses survive. Can you tell us some of the things youre doing to help businesses make it through these tougher times . What were trying to do with the Hospitality Industry that has been suffering since march, we had a couple of months of shut down in march and we looked back to some of the Different Things we did even in the early stages and that was allows the residents that have a beer and wine license to make those being able to make those deliveries if someone wants to help patronize that business but not go out and personally visit it so that they might be able to deliver beer and wine with their meal. The other aspect was just reducing some of the fees as were coming up on renewal of our liquor license. Theyre small steps but we need to take those steps wherever we can to help those businesses out. Were continuing to look for other avenues either with c. A. R. E. S. Act dollars or local economic development. Dollars that might be used in different ways that have never been done before simply because were in a situation that nobody has every experienced, at least in our lifetime. We need to continue to look for ideas while Congress Gets through whatever it needs to do. Hopefully they can do that before the end of the year. Mayor, good to see you again. Well continue to keep in touch with you. Im here alongside the beautiful Pine Ridge Reservation right behind me. Theyre sovereignty is being threatened by corporations. Nearby where im standing is the future site of the Keystone Pipeline. Its a connection from canadas oil sans to the united states. Tribes around the country, including a tribe in south dakota, are suing to stop its construction. Another Pipeline North of here, the Dakota Access pipeline has been approved to bring oil near native lands potentially polluting rivers that are a major source of water. Then came the Dakota Access protests which came in 2016 and 2017. Those protests against the Dakota Access pipeline shocked the nation into a climate reconciliation discussion, even as the trump era began its roll backs of environmental regulations. 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