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By Bette Fleishman, Youth Today, May 8, 2020 For decades, we have repeated and recapitulated: Our nation’s foster care system is broken. New Mexico, which receives the lowest markers of child wellbeing and the second-highest level of childhood poverty, has, not coincidentally, one the worst child welfare systems in the nation. It is largely coercive and punitive, and disproportionately targets low-income children of color. Further, 23 Native American tribes and pueblos are located in the...

This story has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems. By Elise Kaplan / Journal Staff Writer, May 7, 2020. Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, has a long and storied history of sending teams of medical professionals to far-flung areas of the world struck by epidemics, natural disasters, violence and other calamities. Now, the international medical...

Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) is the largest tribal multi-utility provider in the U.S. It operates 11 external watering stations for residents to haul water, charging $5 for up to 1,000 gallons. But for those who have to purchase water elsewhere or rely on bottled water, it can cost $1.50 a gallon. A study looking at water issues in Navajo Nation, funded in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, found Navajo households without running water paid 71 times...

By David Millward, May 3, 2020, The Telegraph. Donations to native American tribes who have been badly hit by the coronavirus crisis are flooding in from Ireland as they repay a debt dating back to the 19th-century potato famine. At least 41 people have fallen victim to Covid-19 in the Navajo nation, with the spike in cases partly attributed to a water crisis. An estimated 40 percent of the Navajo do not have running water at home, and a drought in the south-west has exacerbated the...

By Megan Bender, May 6, 2020, 7 KRCR News WASHINGTON D.C. — U.S. Senators Kamala D. Harris (D-CA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Tom Udall (D-NM) and Representatives Raul Ruiz (D-CA) and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) on Tuesday led 55 of their colleagues in sending a letter to Senate leadership in a push to include include additional funding for Indian Health Service, Tribal Health Programs and Urban Indian Health Organizations to recover from significant COVID-19 related losses in revenue, a press...

By Taylor Hebden and Genevieve Montinar This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated. Jacqueline Luqm…: This is Jacqueline Luqman with the Real News Network. As if centuries of colonialism, genocide, and near social eraser were not enough, the indigenous people of this country are facing yet another challenge to their existence. This time it is the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) among Native communities as well as the ongoing onslaught against them from...

By Reina Gattuso, March 27, 2020, For Brian Yazzie, the COVID-19 pandemic evokes a history of smallpox, European colonization, and indigenous resilience. What’s in your kitchen pantry? If you answered quinoa, green beans, or potatoes, you have, perhaps unbeknownst to you, been eating Native American heritage. “They might not know they have indigenous foods in their cupboard: might be canned corn, canned beans, squash,” says Brian Yazzie, a Twin Cities-based chef and food activist from the...

By Reina Gattuso, March 27, 2020, Atlas Obscura For Brian Yazzie, the COVID-19 pandemic evokes a history of smallpox, European colonization, and indigenous resilience. What’s in your kitchen pantry? If you answered quinoa, green beans, or potatoes, you have, perhaps unbeknownst to you, been eating Native American heritage. “They might not know they have indigenous foods in their cupboard: might be canned corn, canned beans, squash,” says Brian Yazzie, a Twin Cities-based chef and food...

Germaine Omish-Lucero’s ancestors were taken from their homes and forced to build California’s Mission San Luis Rey de Francia—a mission in what is now Oceanside—about 200 years ago. There, they were exposed to diseases such as measles, to which they had no immunity. Thousands died—and there is no escaping this tragic piece of California history. Yet Omish-Lucero, her children, and the children in her tribe stand. Despite inequities that continue to this day, the Rincon Band of Luiseno...

By Stephanie Sy, Lena L Jackson, and Casey Kuhn, PBS News Hour April 24, 2020 COVID-19 is ripping through the Navajo Nation, infecting and killing people at rates that are above U.S. averages. Located across three states, the Navajo population is already vulnerable, with a high prevalence of underlying disease, a lack of infrastructure and limited access to care and supplies. Stephanie Sy reports on how the Navajo community has taken on the challenge of caring for its own. Read the Full...

By Mallory Moench, San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2020 UCSF sent 21 health care workers - seven doctors and 14 nurses - Wednesday to treat patients in the Navajo Nation hard-hit by the coronavirus. UCSF-trained doctors working on the largest Native American reservation in the U.S. asked San Francisco colleagues for help as the outbreak strains the health care system. Navajo Nation, where around 175,000 people live spread over 27,500 square miles in New Mexico and Arizona, has recorded...

By Bridget M. Kuehn, JAMA, March 25, 2020 Jasmine Curry feels lucky to be a first-year medical student. The daughter of a single mother in Arizona, she spent summers and winter breaks in Kaibeto, a small Navajo Nation town. Now, she’s looking forward to a primary care career to help combat preventable illnesses in Native American communities. “It’s everything my family and I have ever prayed for,” Curry said in an article describing her nontraditional path to medical education. She is 1 of 5...