[Despite the reservation’s Democratic tendencies and its
struggles amid the pandemic, the president is trying to woo Navajo
voters. ] [[link removed]]

COVID RAVAGES NAVAJO NATION AS TRUMP MAKES ELECTION PLAY FOR AREA  
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Cody Nelson
October 8, 2020
Capital & Main
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_ Despite the reservation’s Democratic tendencies and its struggles
amid the pandemic, the president is trying to woo Navajo voters. _

, Capital & Main

 

Last spring, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the Navajo Nation worse than
just about anywhere else in the United States or the rest of the
world. Infections on the country’s largest American Indian
reservation soared, reaching the highest per capita rate
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in the U.S. in May.

“Our people out here were hit very hard, and it spread like wildfire
in our community,” said Jeff Begay, a business consultant living in
the tiny community of Navajo Mountain, Utah.

 

Begay, who is Navajo, said federal aid on the reservation has been
slow and ineffective. More than 550 people on the reservation have
died from COVID-19. Even in remote Navajo Mountain, Begay said there
was an outbreak of four cases at a nearby church earlier in the
pandemic. 

In mid-May, the Nation’s infection rate was 2,304 cases per 100,000
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people – one in every 43 Navajos on the reservation had contracted
COVID-19. As help from the federal government lagged, nonprofits like
Doctors Without Borders stepped in to fill the void. 

Normally known for providing medical aid in warzones, the organization
launched a rare U.S. operation on the Navajo Nation, sending a team
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of medical professionals to help with infection prevention and offer
technical support in health facilities.

A third of households on the Navajo Nation Reservation don’t have
running water, making hand-washing difficult.

Unemployment and poverty are rampant. A third of families on the
Nation don’t have running water, making hand-washing difficult. Many
Navajo households are multigenerational and in hard to reach areas,
giving the virus an easier path to vulnerable elders living far from
health services.

Medical facilities are few and far between on the reservation, and the
percentage of Natives without health insurance remains higher than
that of any other racial or ethnic group. Despite a more than 10
percent decrease in the Native uninsurance rate under the Obama
administration, it has remained flat under Trump.

The conditions that are allowing the coronavirus to ravage the Navajo
Nation – from poverty to poor health care to inadequate water
infrastructure – are the result of decades of federal policies that
have left the reservation’s living standards behind those of every
U.S. state. And under the Trump administration, they have remained the
same or gotten worse. 

 

 

“Tribes have been pushed aside by this administration,” Navajo
Nation President Jonathan Nez said in a video interview
[[link removed]] shortly before he spoke
at the Democratic National Convention in August. “We had to take
this administration to court just to get our share of relief funding
from the CARES Act.”

The Nation and 10 other tribes sued
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Trump’s Treasury Department in April, arguing that the $8 billion in
coronavirus relief allocated for tribal governments should go to
federally recognized tribes and not the for-profit Alaska Native
corporations.

Last month, federal judges ruled
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the Alaska Native corporations aren’t eligible to receive CARES Act
funds. The Navajo Nation received $600 million. However, that money
came with burdensome restrictions
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requiring it only go toward “necessary expenditures incurred due to
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the public health emergency” – nothing to do with generations of
federal neglect.

Navajo Nation leadership wants to use those funds to build water and
electrical infrastructure, among other projects, to gird the
reservation for a continued fight against the coronavirus and future
pandemics. But constructing broad, new infrastructure takes more time
than the CARES Act allows – all the federal money must be spent by
Dec. 30.

The Navajo Nation comprises over 27,000 square miles and 173,000
residents spread out across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Politically, the Navajo Nation leans blue. In 2016, Hillary Clinton
won over 56 percent of the vote in the 10 counties that include parts
of the reservation. In all, the Nation comprises over 27,000 square
miles and 173,000 residents spread out across Arizona, New Mexico and
Utah. The majority of Navajos vote in the swing states of Arizona and
New Mexico.

Despite the reservation’s Democratic tendencies and its struggles
under the Trump administration, the president and his surrogates are
making a play for this part of Indian Country. The far-right
organization Turning Point USA put up billboards near the
reservation’s southern border on Interstate 40 in Arizona reading
“Navajos For Trump
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The administration has an ally near the top of the Navajo Nation’s
government: Vice President Myron Lizer, who has appeared at Trump
events and taken heat
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for giving the impression that Navajo leadership was campaigning for
the president. 

“We for years fought congressional battles with past congressmen and
senators that were part of a broken system that ignored us,” Lizer
told [[link removed]] the 2020 Republican
National Convention. “That is, until President Trump took office.”

However, the reality of the past four years paints a different
picture.

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Coal miners were a major target of Trump’s 2016 presidential
campaign, especially those in Appalachia. 

“I’m thinking about the miners all over this country,” Trump
told a crowd
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in West Virginia four years ago. “We’re gonna put the miners back
to work. We’re gonna put the miners back to work. We’re gonna get
those mines open.”

Energy is a major industry on the Navajo Nation, with coal mining
accounting for hundreds of jobs.

Energy is a major industry on the Navajo Nation, too, with coal mining
accounting for hundreds of jobs. Many miners bought into Trump’s
message, as did Jeff Begay. He had high hopes for Trump’s goal of
producing more products and energy in the U.S.

“I applauded him for a while,” Begay said. “And then I saw the
negative turnaround. … We have more enemies internationally,
globally, than we did before.”

One of the Navajo Nation’s largest economic casualties of the Trump
era happened about an hour’s drive south of Begay’s home in Navajo
Mountain, Utah, when Peabody Energy shut
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the Kayenta coal mine in 2019. 

The Navajo Generating Station, which used coal from the mine and once
helped power Los Angeles, closed
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that same year. All told, the two closures took over 900 jobs
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a region where work is scant – Navajo officials and academics often
estimate unemployment on the reservation to be as high as 40%-50%. 

“It hurt us seriously,” said Begay, who chairs the Dineh (Navajo)
Chamber of Commerce. “Because of the fossil fuel-environmental
issues, the fossil fuel industry started to go downhill. Here, it just
slammed shut.”

The economic decline on the reservation is nothing new, said Andrew
Curley, a Navajo geographer and assistant professor at the University
of Arizona. “A lot of what was happening before is continuing.
People who can’t find jobs leave.”

 
 

 

Aside from work in the public sector, Curley said, many jobs on the
Navajo Nation are in the service industry or involve the extraction of
coal, oil or gas – sectors devastated by the coronavirus. While
there’s little available economic data specific to the Nation,
Curley noted that communities of color are disproportionately affected
when service industry jobs dry up, as they have amid COVID-19.

And as for the coal industry’s decline under Trump, Curley said
it’s part of a historical pattern that the Navajo Nation bears the
burden of after offering its land for resource exploitation. 

“It’s a colonial dynamic where the state preys on its vulnerable
communities,” he said.

If the U.S. is truly moving beyond coal and other fossil fuels, the
Navajo Nation faces major historical obstacles in building an economy
for the future.

Centuries of federal action, inaction and misguided policies paved the
way for the Nation’s infrastructure issues. One proclamation from
over 50 years ago has particularly haunting effects today. 

In 1966, the Navajo Nation and Hopi tribe had a dispute over a large
swath of land in northeast Arizona. Both tribes were claiming the over
1.5 million acres of high desert was theirs.

In hopes of easing tensions and pushing the Navajos and Hopis to
negotiate, Robert Bennett, then-commissioner of the federal Indian
Affairs office, stepped in. His solution: Halt all development in the
contested region. 

For the nearly 8,000 Navajos living there, the act that became known
as the Bennett Freeze meant they couldn’t build new homes or even
make critical repairs to existing structures – stymying development
in an area the size of Delaware.

The development ban lasted more than 40 years until President Barack
Obama repealed it in 2009
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Even a decade after the Bennett Freeze’s repeal, the effects of it
and other federal policies
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continue to shape the Navajo Nation’s struggles. 

“The freeze is over, but the land remains the same,” Curley said.
Today, more than 20,000 people live in the contested area.

One of the biggest impacts is a lack of water – a third of people on
the Navajo Nation don’t have a sink or toilet, forcing them to haul
water by car or on foot.

The Nation and other rural communities of color have largely been left
out of federally funded infrastructure projects throughout history,
said George McGraw, founder and executive director of the human rights
nonprofit DigDeep. Even a New Deal program specifically intended to
bring water to small, rural communities largely favored those that
were white, he said. 

“Race is the strongest indicator in 2020 of whether or not you will
have a tap and a toilet in your house in the richest democracy on
earth.”

~ George McGraw, founder of the human rights nonprofit DigDeep

“We still see the legacy of that today,” McGraw said. “Race is
the strongest indicator in 2020 of whether or not you and your family
will have a tap and a toilet in your house in the richest democracy on
earth.”

Navajos are 67 times more likely than other Americans not to have
running water in their homes, according to DigDeep’s Navajo Water
Project [[link removed]].
Communities with poor water access have “dramatically” worse
health outcomes, McGraw said, due to everything from poor sanitation
to an increased reliance on sugary beverages in lieu of water, causing
higher diabetes and obesity rates.

On top of the health issues, lack of basic utilities causes economic
woes, too, he said. 

“It’s hard to have a steady job if you can’t rely on the
basics,” McGraw said. “Communities including the Navajo Nation are
kind of left fighting for things that other parts of the country got
for free, but with both hands tied behind their back.”

Limited water access created hygiene and health issues that
exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic on the reservation, showcasing what
many tribal members say is just the latest example of federal neglect.
But when it comes to improving life on the reservation, there’s much
debate among Navajos over exactly how to move forward. 

One thing Navajos from many political persuasions do agree about,
though, Curley said, is considering their ancestors’ independence as
a model for the future. Realizing that vision, however, will require
the Nation to strike a balance between reliance on the U.S. government
and its autonomy.

“Republicans and leftists,” Curley said, “both realize there’s
an idea of the Nation being self-sustaining before U.S. capitalism
took hold.”

Such a way of life is possible in the Nation’s future, but it’ll
require more Navajos having running water.

 

_Copyright 2020 Capital & Main  _Co-published by The Guardian 
[[link removed]]Reprinted
with permission.

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