We Keep Us Safe

This beautiful billboard is located near the American Indian Community Housing Organization in Duluth MN and features Arne Vainio, MD - a Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe tribal member and family practice physician on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Cloquet.

We Keep Us Safe

Dakota people measure lives by how many winters (waníyetu) we have lived through. To ask someone their age, you would say, “Waníyetu nitóna he?” — “How many winters are you?” While winters are typically a difficult time in this part of the world — resources are often scarce, and the weather is unforgiving — this past winter has felt particularly challenging for so many of us. Climate change is contributing to extreme weather events. Since the year 2000, extreme weather events have increased widespread power outages by 67%. Take, for example, the devastating polar vortex that swept through the country in February, exposing a highly unequal energy infrastructure system in Texas and bringing more attention to our society’s failure to adapt to our changing ecosystem. Similarly, COVID-19 cases in the U.S. peaked this winter after a holiday season that saw many people weigh the need to be with family and loved ones against the increasing health risks associated with travel and contact. This spring, with schools likely to re-open en masse by April, large public events tentatively returning, and with widespread vaccine availability seemingly just weeks or months away, we face a new reality of “normal life” returning — with strings attached. 

[Above are 6 recommendations from “Strengthening Vaccine Efforts in Indian Country,” a report by the Urban Indian Health Institute.]

While this year has led to some new realizations, it has also reminded us of long-suffering hardships. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people of color have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center at Yale School of Medicine, writes: "We know that these racial ethnic disparities in COVID-19 are the result of pre-pandemic realities. It's a legacy of structural discrimination that has limited access to health and wealth for people of color.” The CDC itself has acknowledged the medical racism at the heart of this issue — for many people of color, and for Native Americans more than anyone else, healthcare is inaccessible, unaffordable, and inadequate. The mortality rate from COVID-19 is almost 2 times higher for Native Americans than for white Americans. Is anything going to change that?

[Above, an infographic displays the gradually expanding criteria of eligibility for Minnesota residents waiting to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.]

We may have some reason to be hopeful. By the time this blog is published, almost 20% of Minnesotans will have received at least one dose of a two-shot vaccine, and the imminent availability of a single-shot vaccine with high rates of production will accompany expanded eligibility criteria for the general public. There is additional good news for Minnesota’s Native residents. Only recently, Minnesota has begun releasing vaccination statistics broken down by race and ethnicity, and as of February 27th, Native residents trailed only white residents for the percentage of the population vaccinated. Within that data, over 25% of Native Minnesotans between the ages of 45 and 64 have received at least one vaccine dose, representing the highest vaccination percentage of any race or ethnicity.

[Our medicine bundles from this past spring included cedar, sage, sweetgrass, hand-crafted herbal lotions, immuno-support lozenges, and beautiful tote bags hand-sewn by members of our community.]

As part of this increasingly intensive strategy to provide vaccines to the greatest number of people in the quickest possible timeframe, the state of Minnesota has taken strides to address the hesitancy, fear, and uncertainty many BIPOC communities face regarding government-sponsored public health campaigns. This month, Lower Phalen Creek Project will partner with the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center and the Minnesota Department of Health on a campaign to raise public awareness about the COVID-19 vaccines. As a part of this project, we will have the chance to develop 500 medicine bundles to help our Native community members persevere through this difficult time. This is a continuation of a project we began in May and June of 2020: as our neighbors took to the streets to protest George Floyd’s murder, we were on the ground as well, providing medic assistance, standing in solidarity, and producing (with the support from many wonderful volunteers and donors!) over 500 medicine bundles packed with traditional medicines to allow our community members moments of rest and opportunities for healing from the traumatic months of police violence and state surveillance.

[Hillary Kempenich designed this public health campaign poster in November 2020 with the American Indian Community Housing Organization .]

Now, 10 months later (and as George Floyd’s killer goes to trial for his crimes), it seems fitting that we again have the chance to provide support and comfort to our community. Not only will these medicine bundles contain gifts purchased from Native-owned businesses — our very own staff has worked with our partners at the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center to harvest and process some of these medicines ourselves. Holding these medicines safe will be 500 hand-sewn tote bags made by a fierce and fearsome crew of volunteer sewers. In addition, and of critical importance, information about these medicines will contain our Native languages and will share traditional cultural uses for each medicine. It is not lost on us that the elders in Native communities are some of our most vulnerable relatives. COVID-19 has already taken too many language speakers, too many knowledge-keepers from our communities. It is our hope that these medicine bundles and the information they contain will serve as reminders of just how sacred and valuable our people are.

It bears repeating that this effort is important for many reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic is far from the first pandemic to disproportionately affect Native communities. The almost unspeakably traumatic history of biological warfare waged by European colonizers against the Indigenous people of Turtle Island was the first of numerous eras of widespread sickness in Native communities. That legacy was with us when the 1918 flu epidemic killed Native Americans living on reservations at a mortality rate four times higher than for the general population; it was with us through the 1980s, after the U.S. government conducted mass forced sterilizations of Native women; and that legacy remains with us today, as many in our communities are hesitant to trust that the U.S. government would take any steps toward keeping our communities healthy.

Artwork from Dakota/Diné artist, Avis Charley, in the latest #VacciNATION campaign from the Urban Indian Health Institute

Nevertheless, with so much to grieve for and so much to fear, Native communities have been proactive about prioritizing health and safety throughout the pandemic. With vaccine distribution in particular, Minnesota tribal nations and urban Native organizations like the Indian Health Board and Native American Community Clinic have kicked into overdrive, in communicating the realities of the COVID-19 vaccines and in coordinating efficient vaccination progress for Native and non-Native community members alike. Even this detail — that one of the most vulnerable communities is helping others as it helps its own — is perhaps the clearest way to embody the Dakota value of mitákuye oyásiŋ — all my relations. This is restorative justice at its most elemental: even when Native lives continue to be devalued, you will see Native people caring for us. All of us.