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COVID news has overtaken almost all of our daily lives, to the point we don't really know what to truly believe and can't anticipate what's going to happen next. What we do know, is there are communities who are lacking more resources than others and are suffering more as a result. We're starting COVID Disparities, a series where we interview people from each of these communities, we want to be able to share their perspective with the world in the hopes of creating unity.

Interview with Loren Anthony

Sachal: First and foremost, who are you and how are you doing?

Loren: I'm doing good, my name is Loren Anthony I'm a Navajo Diné of the Navajo Nation in the great southwest of the United States, four corners region and just feeling awesome you know just feeling very blessed to be here be healthy being able to do what I'm able to do consistently, grateful for being able to help others, I think that's the biggest thing. A multitude of gratitude this gratitude.

Sachal: For those who do not know, what is the Navajo Nation?

Loren: Navajo nation resides within the 4 sacred mountains, our four sacred mountains are in the united states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. We have a big area a big vast of land there are over 200 million acres of what is the Navajo reservation. Before all the reservation lines and treaties we had a little bit more than that and that we had our own boundaries but we shared space with other tribes, we have the Zuni, the Apache, and within the Navajo, and we have the Hopi nation tribe, so we have a big diversity of individuals here.

Sachal: There have been reports of COVID cases rising in the Navajo Nation, can you tell us from your perspective what's happening right now?

Loren: I see a lot of unity happening, I see a lot of people coming together figuring out ways to get creative to help out their communities to help out their families be resourceful.

This COVID-19 isn't our first pandemic, this isn’t our first incident with viruses or some kind of damage done to the nation, we've dealt with things done to us such as uranium mining, things with having our lands taken from us, again. The treaties we've had have been broken over and over again. A lot of disparities but throughout the disparities, there could be a lot of depression but we are very resilient people we always bounce back, always find ways to make things work. For many years, even up until this day we're still living without running water, without electricity, without gas and stuff like that.

There are over 15,000 families that don’t have electricity. That's a big spread throughout 4 states, and living in one of the richest countries in the world we should be up to par and also being one of the first Americans, that we are always the last in everything. We are coming from that set. And if you look at it that way, this sucks for everyone this sucks for them, this sucks for us, but we choose not to be that way, we been there before, they used to hang out blankets in the past, now they're handing out different little hand me outs from other things in the gov we're always cautious of what we get we're always cautious of what the big intention of everything.

So with COVID now, the numbers are high because we live in a big vast area, we're in the food desert on top of that, we only have a couple of grocery stores miles and miles apart not like a regular city would have, where you could just walk down the street pick up a couple of eggs and melt wherever you need and then go home, nothing is walking distance. Everything is at least an hour or 2 hours' drive to get to a place where you can replenish food or even haul water that you need. Those are some challenges that we have along with COVID.

But those things that we’re lacking also increase the risk that we have, cause everybody can wash their hands right away, here we can't. We have to really be resourceful to create ideas for our people to have the necessities. I am fortunate right now to be able to have running water, electricity, and those amenities but a lot of people don’t how do we think outside the box.

The numbers you hear on the media, the majority are speaking the truth, and some people like to sell poverty and whatnot, but on this end the numbers are high, they are high for our population. We are a nation within a nation. We're a sovereign nation within the US so we're supposed to have our own government but we're also dependent by the federal government to honor the treaties that we need running water and electricity, but those treaties aren't honored. So it’s a very weird cycle that we're having to deal with, but it also raises the risk of people getting COVID. We have multi general relatives living in the same home. Where we have the Grandma who has her daughter in the house and her daughter has her kids in the house, we have 3 generations living in one home. When someone contracts the virus it's hard for them to quarantine and separate themselves from the house so in many cases everybody gets COVID, that’s what makes it spread.

Sachal: Why are we living in this first-world economically powerful country and people don't have running water, electricity, and supplies?

Loren: A lot of it has to do it with our treaty rights, our treaty rights are also connected to our water rights, our water rights are also connected to our electricity rights. When they're not being honored, it's hard for us to get things that are going through our nation like running water, because we would have to get special permission from the government and then we would have to have the finances to go through that and then it would have to go through the tribe, so there is a lot of red tape that goes back and forth, that's pretty much what poverty is. You're almost like a bucket full of crabs that's trying to come out and the others are pulling them back in.

So let's say, my aunt, she needs running water to her house. The money to get that going out there, just maybe a 200-yard pipeline would need to go to the main source that's outside the reservation line. There would be a big amount of money just to do that, and she can't afford it.. I can't afford it..as a family, we can't pitch in and just get it all done. As a tribe, they wouldn't have the finances to do that. A lot of families are at this end. To have the budgets go through like that it would have to go through this long process that would end up just getting red taped again by the gov. because of all the jurisdictional levels of getting things going, it's a big mess. How do we get out of this mess?

Judge Cahill, the judge presiding over the murder of George Floyd, has set a trial (https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/29/884973516/tentative-trial-date-set-for-ex-minneapolis-officers-accused-in-george-floyd-dea) for March 8th, 2021 for you know who. Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt, is being charged with 2nd-degree murder & 2nd-degree manslaughter, while the other 3 former officers are being charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin. Keung and Lane are free, Thao is held on a $750,000 bail and Chauvin on a $1M bail.