Compass World: An Eerily Silent Extinction
14 of the 50 states in the U.S. celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 12. Yet even in this act of solidarity against Christopher Columbus and European colonialism, indigenous peoples across the globe have been among the communities most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
What do the United States, India, and Brazil have in common? The obvious answer: they represent the three countries with the highest confirmed cases and deaths for COVID-19. A recent report by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that per-capita COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are on average 50 percent higher than 18 other high-income countries. Brazil, though the country’s infection rate has slowed, reached 150,000 deaths earlier this week. On October 3, India surpassed 100,000 fatalities from the virus.
These countries also have significant indigenous populations who are disproportionately affected by the virus.
Unlike the slew of virgin-soil diseases that killed Native Americans in the first few centuries of European colonialism, indigenous populations are not more biologically predisposed to COVID-19. Rather, they do not receive proper healthcare and government support, and they face difficulties implementing self-containment strategies.
Indigenous North America
Members of the Alamo Navajo Reservation dressed in traditional clothing for a historical reenactment. (Wikimedia Commons)
As of October 13, the Navajo Nation reported almost 11,000 positive cases of COVID-19. This number seems small compared to the total 8.1 million cases in the United States. However, proportionately, the Navajo Nation territory had the country’s highest per-capita infection rate. Navajo President Jonathan Nez attributed high infection rates to a litany of challenges: multigenerational homes, lack of running water access for 30-40 percent of residents, and crowded stores (as people flock to only a few locations to purchase groceries in a food desert).
Federal governments have failed to prioritize these vulnerable communities, adding unnecessary barriers to existing structural setbacks. Native American tribes had to sue the Treasury Department to access relief funds. In Canada, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples filed a federal court application criticizing the Canadian government’s inadequate and discriminatory funding.
Funding disparities reflect a broader issue in the healthcare system. In September, Joyce Echaquan, an indigenous woman in Canada, visited a hospital to treat her stomach pain. As she cried out, a nurse called her “stupid as hell” and “good at having sex.”
But racism is not just personal—it is also systemic. Factors such as living in remote regions, geographical isolation, high levels of pre-existing conditions (high blood pressure diabetes, etc) and inadequate housing make First Nations uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19. To make matters worse, their health is already negatively impacted by inherited epigenetic stressors from generational oppression and trauma.
In addition to a waning population, another fear grips indigenous communities: the threat of language extinction.
The Amazon (Not The Company)
A Yanomami woman poses with her child, June 1997. (Wikimedia Commons)
Sadly, the Brazilian government’s handling of the situation is even worse than Canada and the United States.
The Amazon is home to approximately 400 indigenous tribes. With a significant portion of the Amazon located in Brazil, the country with the third highest number of positive cases, tribes face serious risks of infection.
Sarah Shenker, a campaigner at Survival International, argues that the spread rate is extremely high for indigenous communities because of their communal lifestyles. With coronavirus disproportionately impacting older populations, indigenous elders are at risk. The death of elders poses a serious concern, as elders are considered living encyclopedias of traditional knowledge.
The coronavirus has already killed more than 205 indigenous elders. Among these is Aritana Yawalapiti, an indigenous elder who was one of the last speakers of Yawalapiti. There are now only two fluent speakers of Yawalapiti, and they live separated from the rest of the community. Of the two dozen Asurini elders who were alive when the pandemic first began, six have died.
Tribes who have little contact with outsiders are equally vulnerable. The Arara largely avoided contact until 1981. While official statistics report that 46 percent of the 121 Arara people living in the Dry Waterfall reservation have coronavirus, some experts believe that all 121 could be infected. In August, a woman from the Kanamari tribe tested positive, only 10 miles away from gardens of the Flecheiros, an uncontacted group in the Javari region.
Indigenous communities have resorted to traditional medicines to treat the sick.
“Help from the government? We’ve received nothing, nothing, nothing,” said Sinésio Ticuna Trovão, leader of the Ticuna people.
The government’s lack of a response is not surprising. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s actions have prioritized money over Brazil’s indigenous communities. In the first nine months under his administration, illegal mining and logging on native lands increased dramatically. Aside from exploitative resource extraction, illegal miners also endanger indigenous lives by carrying the risk of coronavirus infection. The Yanomami have created a petition to oust miners in an effort to prevent contracting the disease.
If anything, government action could worsen the situation. In June, four federal indigenous health service workers tested positive while in the Kanamari tribal village, and they may have spread the virus to other villages.
India
Hundreds of Indian languages are at risk of extinction. (Source: UNESCO)
Elders in India are facing a similar fate. In April, the last speaker of Sare died. Sare was one of the two last surviving languages of the Great Andamanic family, and only three Great Andamanic language speakers remain today.
While the Sare speaker’s death was not due to COVID-19, indigenous people on the Andaman and Nicobar islands are still at risk. At least five members of the Great Andamanese have tested positive, and the Jarawa are at risk from infected welfare staff and illegal poachers. Additionally, the Andamanese populations are particularly vulnerable to language extinction—on the islands, most people speak Bengali and Hindi.
Like other indigenous populations around the world, Indian tribal communities face poor health services. Fiona Watson from Survival International said that communities are put into resettlement camps with poor sanitation and the inability to quarantine, which makes them “sitting targets for diseases like COVID-19.”
The gradual dying of the Great Andamanic language reflects a broader phenomenon in India. In 2010, the country had 600 endangered languages. 42 are critically endangered, with the youngest speakers being grandparents.
ZOOM UNIVERSITY: INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE EDITION
However, not all hope is lost. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Indigenous communities have been shifting to digital resources, using their own language to inform members about the virus. Examples include an infographic about COVID-19 symptoms in Cree, video capsules in eight indigenous languages spoken in New York, and a tweet that incorporates the Chickasaw language into a hand washing routine.
Language learning apps are also gaining popularity. Transparent Language Online partnered with the nonprofit 7000 Languages to create an app that shares online lessons created by 17 tribes.
“We can reach people in urban areas or who are outside of Ojibwe’s speaking communities in a way that was harder to do before, and that’s a benefit,” said Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University.
As admirable as these efforts are, online learning requires a position of privilege that most indigenous people don’t have, especially if they have little contact outside their own communities.
Tribes in Latin America have largely implemented their own desperate measures. The Xingu in Brazil are protecting their elders and oral traditions by blocking roads to the Xingu Indigenous Park. Similarly, some communities in Northern Argentina have barricaded roads leading to their villages. These measures also mean letting go of some communal traditions. The Wapichana people can no longer share caxiri, a traditional drink passed around in a single container. Communities have also imposed curfews and travel bans.
Unfortunately, none of these actions can bring back elders who have passed away or revive lost knowledge. The pandemic’s impact on indigenous communities coupled with continued government negligence proves that genocide does not have to be bloody or violent; it can manifest in the insidious evaporation of culture and languages. The latter is an eerily silent kind of extinction.