Incidence of SARs-CoV-2 (Dikos-Ntsaaigii-19) Among Navajo Nation Children

On March 17, 2020 the SARs-CoV-2 virus was first reported on the Navajo Reservation. Today, the Navajo Nation has a 147% higher infection rate and a 450% higher death rate than the national average. Despite this tragedy, a glaring question remains, what is happening among the Navajo children. The study found that Navajo children had an infection rate 220% higher than the general population and a death rate from COVID 1,400% greater than non-Navajo in the United States. This occurs even though of Navajo children having a much higher vaccination rate of 68% compared to about 25% of children Nationwide. The introduction of SARs-CoV variants such as the alpha and omicron variants did not seem to play a role in these findings. The higher infection rates suggest a genetic predisposition among the Navajo to SARs-CoV-2 via the ACE-2 receptor and signal transduction pathway while the increased death rates may also suggest inferior care provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Hospitals.

Tradition, Sovereignty, and Conservation: The Controversy Surrounding the Wind River Indian Reservation Game Code

In December 1983, a highly publicized slaughter of over fifty elk at Wind River Indian Reservation reignited a dispute between the reservation’s resident tribes—the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho nations—over wildlife management. In response to diminished big game populations, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe had passed hunting regulations in 1980, but the people of the Northern Arapaho Tribe refused to do so, effectively derailing any attempt to manage wildlife at Wind River. After the Bureau of Indian Affairs imposed a game code on the reservation in 1984, the Northern Arapaho Tribe initiated a legal battle that culminated in the 1987 case of Northern Arapahoe Tribe v. Hodel. The court ruled that because the treaty rights of the two tribes overlapped in the area of wildlife management and because research conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the request of both tribes had revealed a need for hunting regulations, the U.S. government had the power to impose the Wind River Reservation Game Code. Although the tribes jointly manage wildlife today and big game populations now thrive at Wind River, it is important to examine the controversy that involved conflicting visions of and concerns about cultural traditions, tribal sovereignty, and wildlife conservation principles and practices. Exploring how Eastern Shoshones and Northern Arapahos viewed those subjects differently and how their longstanding rivalry at Wind River shaped this conflict highlights some problems with the simplistic and romanticized concept of the “Ecological Indian.”

Climate Variability and Change in Western U.S. Rangelands

We examine variability and change components of precipitation and minimum and maximum daily temperatures, and the derived variables potential evapotranspiration (PET) and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), over rangelands in the region 30-50N, 100- 125W. We focus on areas administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), with a view toward understanding how future climate variations may affect ecosystems, and ultimately, grazing on these lands. Based on an analysis of the annual precipitation cycle we adopt a three-season partition for the year, classifying land areas by season of maximum precipitation; this yields a coherent subregional map. Masking with a combined BLM/BIA footprint, we find that in all subregions both tmin and tmax have increased in response to anthropogenic forcing, the rate being generally greater for tmax. Significant precipitation trends are not detected, whereas PET exhibits significant upward trends in all regions. While PET-normalized precipitation, as well as PDSI, do not exhibit significant trends individually (by variable and region), the fact that most trend downward nevertheless suggests a systematic drying. We conclude that temperature constitutes the principal detectable control on hydroclimatic changes in rangelands within the study area. Although ecosystem responses may be complex, future temperature increases are expected generally to reduce soil water availability. The unforced component of variability isinvestigated with respect to several key climate indices on both interannual and decadal time scales.

Our Crow Indian Hospital

This chapter explores how members of the Crow Nation—especially women—navigated the various terminationist pressures of the post-World War II period. In these years, an influential group of policy makers pursued the dissolution of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the termination of tribal members’ political status as “American Indian.” In practice, one of the most immediate threats was the reduction or elimination of reservation health services. The chapter reveals that the female members of a new Crow Health Committee emerged as leaders in the community’s effort to protect the reservation hospital and to reform the colonial institution to meet the evolving needs of Crow people. In regular meetings with medical officers in the newly created Indian Health Service, these women presented comprehensive health services, and particularly maternal and infant welfare, as a federal obligation and a matter of Indian treaty rights.