2020-10-27 from scientificamerican.com
The unequal impact of COVID-19 on the health of certain groups, including Black, Latinx and Native Americans, became clear from the outset of the pandemic. The Navajo Nation, Diné Bikéyah, made headlines throughout May 2020 when its per capita COVID-19 infection rate surpassed that of every U.S. state.
But although COVID-19’s rates in Canada have been high in the Black community, and in neighborhoods where there are large populations of people of color, its prevalence to date among Indigenous people in Canada has been less than one quarter that of non-Indigenous Canadians, with a third of the fatalities and a 30 percent higher recovery rate.
The ability of First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities in Canada to prevail during the pandemic was largely rooted in their shaping their own public health strategies after confronting the toll wrought by previous disease outbreaks and long-running neglect by health authorities.
Health care among Indigenous nations in Canada has always faced hardships shaped by social and structural inequities in housing and poverty and other social determinants—“the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age,” as defined by the World Health Organization. Staging an effective public health response during the ongoing pandemic has required that these communities regain control and oversight over prevention and treatment measures in their own localities. Indigenous people across Turtle Island, the land now known as North America, share the fundamental right to self-determination over all activities related to their lives and well-being, as articulated by the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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