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Feburary 4, 2021

Montana tribal leaders discuss fighting the pandemic

The statistics show that Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

A Wednesday dialogue with tribal leaders from the Flathead and Fort Peck Indian reservations emphasized their response — enacting stay-at-home orders, closing lands, taking school online, reinventing youth and health services, distributing federal CARES Act money, and planning their own vaccination rollouts.

“Indigenous leaders have stayed ahead of the curve,” said Dr. Cora Neumann, the moderator and a public health expert who sits on the state’s vaccine rollout task force.

While the headlines often focus on case numbers, “the loss in these communities has not been for lack of leadership,” she said.

The discussion, “Disproportionate Impacts on Native Communities,” was streamed online as the latest installment in the Mansfield Dialogues, a series organized by the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana.

The participants were Shelly Fyant, tribal chairwoman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation; and Kaci Wallette, a councilwoman for the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation.

Delays 'unacceptable'

Wallette said they requested 200 vaccines per week. The deliveries haven’t matched that — none last week, 50 this week, for instance. President Joe Biden’s accelerated rollout plans mean they expect extra vaccines soon, but the delays and resulting waiting list are “unacceptable,” she said. The reservation’s death rate stands at 4.5%, compared with the U.S. national rate of 1.7%. They’ve considered looking at ways to safely transport elders and other high-priority members elsewhere to get vaccinated if necessary.

CSKT is in Phase 1B, meaning they’ve already vaccinated health care workers and have shifted the focus to elders over age 70 and people with compromised immune systems.

“Because of our health disparities that includes a lot of people, so pretty much the issue right now is the supply,” Fyant said. They’ve been getting around 200 vaccines a week.

About a month ago, one of the tribes’ youngest fluent speakers of Indigenous language died. While it was not related to COVID, it spurred the tribes to prioritize fluent speakers and members of their apprentice programs in this phase.

Looking for leadership
Fyant laid out CSKT’s response to the pandemic from early on. Last spring, the tribes decided to declare a state of emergency. As it became clear the virus would reach Montana, they were “waiting for some kind of national leadership to emerge, and give us direction about what to do, and that really didn’t happen,” she said.

Tribal leaders concluded: “We’re a sovereign nation, we just need to do this,” she said.

They formed a unified command system with Lake County. The tribes enacted shelter-in-place and social distancing rules. “We pretty much just shut down our tribal operations,” Fyant said, and “put a hold on everything.”

“We were mostly concerned about public health and the safety of our people,” she said.

Efforts included transit to get people to medical appointments. They created housing assistance for homeless people. The immersion school, Nkwusm, went virtual last March and is remodeling for better social distancing when it reopens. Two Eagle River School canceled its basketball season, one of the few reservation schools to do so.

“That was pretty major, because you know, on the reservation, basketball is life,” she said.

In mid-March, the snowbirds started coming home early to the Flathead Reservation. Out-of-state license plates began appearing on tribal recreation lands. Fyant said that since the reservation spreads across four different counties, and primarily Lake County, they “realized what we do have control over is our tribal workforce and our tribal lands,” she said.

The tribes enacted a resolution limiting use of tribal lands only to tribal members. It was later expanded to non-member spouses and first-generation descendants. As the Fourth of July holiday approached it grew to include local reservation residents with a conservation permit.

Fyant said that it “wasn’t a very popular decision in the beginning,” because some worried the tribes would lose revenue from permit sales — which was not the leadership’s main concern. Ironically, “our revenues increased because we made people honest and they had to buy permits,” she said. The result was an estimated $200,000 increase over the previous year.

'People stepping up'
Wallette, of the Fort Peck Reservation, is a nurse, a member of Gov. Greg Gianforte’s COVID-19 task force, and the Billings-area representative for the National Indian Health Board.

She listed many people and efforts that have helped — the tribal council, law enforcement, teachers balancing virtual and in-person classes, efforts to get food boxes to residents in quarantine, setting up a hotel for those in quarantine, and “just people stepping up and asking where can you put me?”

“We’ve never dealt with this before and they’ve sure been rolling with the punches," Wallette said. "One day we say we’re going to do it this way, and the next day, we are like, ‘that don’t work, we’re going to do it this way,’ and they are gracious."

Before COVID-19, the reservation was already trying to combat a pandemic of suicide, she said.

“Montana is ranked No. 1 in suicide and Fort Peck Indian Reservation is No. 1 in the state of Montana,” she said. "So essentially we’re leading the nation in that statistic, and that is one we do not want to lead."

Stay-at-home orders and then social distancing affected programs for youth, such as horse-riding and other traditional skills. When schools did reopen, it resulted in a feared scenario — young people bringing infections home to elders. She said 29% of the cases are among ages 13-24, and 62% of deaths are 55 and older.

They’ve increased their use of telehealth programs and Zoom activities, and are coming up with creative outlets. The Fort Peck Language and Culture Department is putting on a scavenger hunt that combines culture and social interaction.

“People can get out of their house, go get some exercise, interact with one another, but in a socially distant and safe way,” Wallette said.

Neumann said that resistance to mask-wearing and social distancing in neighboring or surrounding communities has had “a major impact” on infection spread and tribes’ efforts to slow it.

Wallette said “we didn’t have that national leadership” on such measures, so “it trickled down to a lot of people being misinformed and thinking that masks don’t help.”

Wallette said they received $24 million in CARES money from the federal government, which went toward energy assistance, food boxes, personal protective equipment and small-business assistance. CSKT received $44 million, which went toward economic stimulus, broadband towers to improve visual learning, telework and telehealth, food assistance, a supportive housing project and more.

Asked about her priorities in a post-COVID world, Fyant said food sovereignty is important toward improving overall health. She listed the shorter lifespans in successive generations of her family as they moved away from an Indigenous diet.

“I think a lot about how our traditional food system was interrupted and the opportunity for us to go back to that, and really consume healthy foods that are still out there for us,” she said.

Originally published at https://missoulian.com/news/local/montana-tribal-leaders-discuss-fighting-the-pandemic/article_b7580c07-24c2-5427-84e1-b1491150a18e.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1