Coronavirus takes more than Native Americans’ lives. Killing our elderly erases our culture.

In places like the Navajo Nation and other reservations across the United States, however, there is no running water to wash your hands, and even if there is access to health care, it is subpar. Traveling to a grocery store then, if there s one nearby, has become a veritable deathtrap for our elders the teachers and keepers of our languages, ceremonies, stories and all manner of powerful wisdom.

Sadly, our elders are already far and few between. Natives are the smallest racial minority in our ancestral land, so any loss is significant. As such, when we lose an elder, we ve truly been robbed of more than just a person we ve lost centuries of pre-white invasion knowledge and narrative. And although we Natives are groomed to be survivors (you d have to be, to still be here), COVID-19 threatens Indian Country in a way rarely talked about.

via www.nbcnews.com