COVID-19 Reveals the Dire Vulnerability of Navajo Nation Life. Artists Rise as Leaders

A “Diné COVID PSA” designed by Chip Chomas, Shi Buddy, and Ryan Pinto

Wahleah Johns, a member of the Navajo Nation and founder of Native Renewables, a nonprofit that provides solar energy to tribal communities, wrote a May 13, 2020 op-ed in the New York Times, about COVID-19 conditions in her community.

The romantic beginning of her typical day begins as early as 4 am, with the making of a “corn pollen offering to the holy people”, drinking “some loose-leaf Lipton tea” and letting the sheep out for grazing. It’s the sentence that proceeds the morning rituals that grabs us by the throat. “In Black Mesa, where the clay soil is blanketed with sagebrush and juniper, there’s no electricity, running water or paved roads,” writes Johns.

Today the Navajo Nation is at the top of the list as one of the worst COVID-19 hot spots in America.

Hundreds of miles of roads are unpaved, so it can take up to three hours to get a sick person to help. It’s difficult to self-isolate because families live in one-room homes called hogans. Up to 40 percent of Navajo households don’t have running water, making it hard to wash hands. Cellphone service and Wi-Fi are limited, so it’s difficult to keep in touch and to get information about the epidemic.

This is My America — the richest country in the world.

Artwork created for the Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund. CHARLIZE BRANCH

Ethel Branch is the former attorney general of the Navajo Nation. Launched March 15, the Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund has raised almost $3.7 million from almost 69,000 donors. Part of a team of seven, the group explains that The Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation “are extreme food deserts with only 13 grocery stores on Navajo to serve some 180,000 people and only 3 small grocery marts on Hopi to serve some 3,000 people.” When Ethel Branch saw empty shelves at a grocery store in Flagstaff, Arizona, she went into action.

Over at Hyperallergic, Ellie Duke writes that Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum, says that while the Navajo Nation is in total crisis, he is hopeful about the future, and how artists can be its catalyst. “One of the strengths that the museum is going to draw upon, when we start to discuss our future, is creativity. Creative types are going to be the ones that have solutions that nobody else has thought about.”

There’s a rise in cultural practices that have have fallen out of use, a re-examination of traditions that fortify with a focus on survival.

Santa Fe artist Heidi Brandow is at work on a project about alternative approaches to Indigenous futurism, taking a conceptually different tack from the sci-fi oriented one she says she most often sees. “We have these preexisting tools, how can we modify those to inform us?”

Rapheal Begay, an artist who lives in the Navajo capital of Window Rock, Arizona, and serves as a public information officer for the Navajo government, agrees that Wheeler’s hopeful vision of a creative explosion emerging from the leveling force of the Navajo Nation’s COVID-19 reality is happening already.

Begay said “tribal knowledge and tribal philosophies are going to be the frameworks that shape the future,” and Wheeler emphasized the importance of involving community members in the re-envisioning of the museum’s future: “There’s no better people to discuss that with than the people who actually know the rez. … The best ideas have always come from people that live and work in the community.”

One artist, Chip Thomas, created a “Diné COVID PSA” which he said in an Instagram post is “part of a larger collaborative project that is currently underway with poets and visual artists.” Collaborating with two other artists, Thomas created the poster to help raise awareness about how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Thomas is encouraging people to download, print, and share the poster as a “visible act of solidarity.” Read on at Hyperallergic.