Photo by Daniel Santini.

By Laura R. Graham
 

En español.

Indigenous communities are mobilizing in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through Cultural Survival’s experience and work with Indigenous Peoples around the world, we are hearing that the pandemic is revealing deep inequalities, poverty, and vulnerability in Indigenous communities. 
 

Photo: CONAIE and partners carry out medical brigade in the community of San Carlos after the oil spill on April 7, 2020. Via Facebook.

COVID-19 is impacting Indigenous communities across the world. As in other contexts, communities already politically and economically marginalized experience some of the most devastating impacts of the virus as it disrupts food systems, overwhelms health facilities, disrupts people’s means of working and earning a living, and of course causes illness and death. Yet Indigenous communities are resilient, and, empowered with ancestral knowledge, organized communities, Indigenous languages, and their own forms of communication and media, they are taking action. As the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs points out, it is paramount that Indigenous Peoples have access to culturally appropriate resources and information in their own languages. Indigenous communities themselves are best equipped to develop self-determined solutions.