Historical Environmental Racism, Structural Inequalities, and Dik’os Ntsaaígíí-19 (COVID-19) on Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation has been disproportionately affected by Dik’os Ntsaaígíí-19 (COVID-19), with the highest per capita COVID-19 rate in the United States. While some media attention has focused on the importance of structural inequalities in understanding the heightened experiences of COVID-19 for Navajo people, we draw from Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous research paradigm to bring the need to consider the lasting legacy of historical environmental racism on Indigenous land to the current public health discourse. Specifically, we explore the potential lasting health implications of the historical environmental racism on Navajo people at the ecological level by describing the associations between abandoned uranium mines, structural inequalities (as measured by lack of grocery stores and hospitals) and COVID-19 confirmed cases on the Navajo Nation by compiling unique dataset from the Navajo Department of Health, 2014-2018 American Community Survey 5-years estimates, and the Uranium Mines and Mills Location Database from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We found that population and housing characteristics do not fully explain the different COVID-19 cases among 11 counties on Diné Bikéyah, and suggest that there is a need for the holistic approach is guided by Hózhó wisdom of Navajo people that emphasize the importance of interconnectedness and whole-system in understanding the impacts of Dik’os Ntsaaígíí-19

Protecting Oak Flat: Narratives Of Survivance As Observed Through Digital Activism

American Indians are increasingly using social media/social network platforms as a tool to influence policy through social change. The activist group Apache Stronghold represents a case of American Indians utilising social media tools to protect Oak Flat and influence federal Indian policy. Oak Flat is sacred Apache land located in Superior, Arizona. United States legislators transferred Oak Flat to the mining company Resolution Copper as part of the omnibus National Defense Authorization Act of 2015. Qualitative analysis of social media content and advocacy tactics – specifically through use of timeline and digital ethnography – of Apache Stronghold from 2015-2016 reveal the interrelated nature of on-the-ground efforts, online efforts, solidarity efforts, and legislative support efforts. In sum, these efforts express narratives of survivance, healing, and a future orientation, as a unique dimension of social change

INFRASTRUCTURES OF CARE IN NDN SPACES: MUTUAL AID AS A FORM OF RADICAL RELATIONALITY

The Internet and social media platforms afford Native Americans in the United States the ability to connect, organize, and mobilize for social justice beyond geographical boundaries and across the Native diaspora. Decolonizing research that takes an Indigenous research approach unsettles the dominant theories of social media use and helps center our focus on the possibilities that Indigenous peoples already imagine for themselves whether it be to strengthen their communities and culture, to work towards resistance and decolonization, or to move them towards resurgence and beyond. This research examines how the Internet and social media platforms become sites of decolonizing work through the facilitation of radical relationality, or more specifically, mutual aid. We are two Diné scholars, and approach this research with the Diné emphasis on K’é and Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózhóón

CARING FOR OUR PEOPLE: INDIGENOUS RESPONSES TO COVID-19 ERA INFORMATIC COLONIALISM

Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses, activist work and HCI approaches, these papers show how organizations formed partnerships to curate information resources, and deploy community Wi-Fi and Internet infrastructure across southwest US Indigenous communities during the most challenging months of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. For Native Americans this means ideating while navigating colonial inequality. Through an investigation of sociotechnical interdependencies across a broadband network cooperative, tribes, and university labs, an HCI team reflects on how relational stability sustains fragile Internet ecologies stretched to capacity by the needs of users deeply affected by COVID-19 in New Mexico and Arizona. Through an autoethnography of community-centered digital solutions for Navajo Nation, a member of the Nation considers how the role of K’é informs a system of infrastructural care in a nation struggling with high rates of infection and systemic lack of adequate infrastructure. Through an advocacy-oriented analysis of social media content, a Diné and Lakota social media scholar discerns the relationship between community enforcement of social distancing, the loss of interpersonal interaction, mutual aid, and the impact of public health memes for the Navajo Nation. Through radical librarianship practices, a Tohono O’odham librarian and artist counteracts the values of ‘information neutrality’ shaping whiteness-centering American librarianship by generating a community-curated solution to actionable information about COVID-19 for Indigenous communities. This panel models decolonial liberation rooted in responsiveness across mediated layers of Indigenous belonging. The authors express Indigenous interpretations of collective autonomy vis-a-vis strategic Internet assemblages, and particularly, how an Indigenous ethics of care intersects with the dream of an Internet for social good. &nbsp

COVID-19 in New Mexico Tribal Lands : Understanding the Role of Social Vulnerabilities and Historical Racisms

The Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disproportionally affected Indigenous Peoples. Unfortunately, there is no accurate understanding of COVID-19’s impacts on Indigenous Peoples and communities due to systematic erasure of Indigenous representation in data. Early evidence suggests that COVID-19 has been able to spread through pre-pandemic mechanisms ranging from disproportionate chronic health conditions, inadequate access to healthcare, and poor living conditions stemming from structural inequalities. Using innovative data, we comprehensively investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous Peoples in New Mexico at the zip code level. Specifically, we expand the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to include the measures of structural vulnerabilities from historical racisms against Indigenous Peoples. We found that historically-embedded structural vulnerabilities (e.g., Tribal land status and higher percentages of house units without telephone and complete plumbing) are critical in understanding the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 that American Indian and Alaska Native populations are experiencing. We found that historically-embedded vulnerability variables that emerged epistemologically from Indigenous knowledge had the largest explanatory power compared to other social vulnerability factors from SVI and COVID-19, especially Tribal land status. The findings demonstrate the critical need in public health to center Indigenous knowledge and methodologies in mitigating the deleterious impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous Peoples and communities, specifically designing place-based mitigating strategies.Arts, Faculty ofNon UBCSociology, Department ofReviewedFacultyGraduat