Indigenous communities face extinction due to uncontrolled outbreaks of Covid-19
Across the world Indigenous groups are struggling to control the spread of Covid-19 as death rates continue to rise.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz at the 2019 SIWI Stockholm International Water Institute. Photo by Thomas Henrikson. Source: Flickr
Meet Victoria Tauli-Corpuz – the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Tauli-Corpuz, an indigenous leader from the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Philippines, has worked to protect the rights of individuals like herself for over 30 years.
In February, Tauli-Corpuz landed in Geneva, at what should have been her first stop in a multi-national mission as UN Special Rapporteur. However, with the spread of Covid-19, the rest of the trip was cancelled, and Tauli-Corpuz returned home to the Philippines to focus on the virus’ increasing threat to indigenous communities.
The UN attempts to define indigenous people as “the descendants of those who inhabited a country or geographical region at the time when people of different cultures of ethnic origins arrived”, adding that “the new arrivals later became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.” The Arctic Centre, Finland’s national institute for Arctic expertise, contends that “indigenous peoples view themselves as having a historical existence and identity that is separate and independent of the states now enveloping them.” Similarly, Impunity Watch, an international non-profit human rights organisation, states that indigenous groups “consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies … and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity.”
The term ‘indigenous peoples’ includes, but is not limited to, the Lakota, Mayas, Aymaras, Inuit and Aleutians, Saami, Aborigines and Maori. However, these populations “often have much in common with other neglected segments of societies, i.e. lack of political representation and participation, economic marginalisation and poverty, lack of access to social services and discrimination.”
Many indigenous communities are isolated and far removed from cities with medical equipment to help the body fight Covid-19, such as ventilators. In Brazil, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, there are nearly 900,000 indigenous persons in Brazil, around half a million of them living in rural parts of the country, the rest in urban areas. By late August there had been nearly 117,000 deaths attributed to the virus, with more than 3.5 million confirmed cases nationally. However, no reliable statistic exists to measure how many of these deaths were within indigenous communities.
Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB) logged at least 332 deaths and 7,208 cases of coronavirus across 110 different indigenous communities in Brazil alone. The executive coordinator of APIB, Dinamam Tuxá, added that Brazil’s indigenous population is “facing extermination”. In contrast, the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (SESAI) recorded 171 deaths and 7,598 confirmed cases.
Whilst Europe prepares for the arrival of a second wave of the virus and a steady increase in cases, the Navajo Nation, an American Indian territory of 71,000 square-kilometre in Arizona, has reported over 5,500 cases and more than 250 deaths. As The World Economic Forum explains, “for an area with an estimated population of 172,875, that translates into an infection rate more than five times that of the U.S. as a whole.”
Elsewhere, it is reported that Māori are 50 per cent more likely to die from Covid-19 than white New Zealanders. Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā, the National Māori Pandemic Group, has clearly argued that if New Zealand wants to prevent these outcomes, the pandemic response must focus on equity. Prior to the pandemic, Māori endured the worst health status of any ethnic group in New Zealand. The total cardiovascular disease mortality is more than two-and-a-half times higher for Māori than for non-Māori, while Māori aged over 35 are twice as likely to die from heart failure as non-Māori. These are just two examples of how the health service had already failed the population long before anyone had even heard of Covid-19.
In Canada, indigenous peoples also endure systemic inequalities and discrimination, meaning that they are suffering disproportionately from Covid-19. Although the Canadian government has “committed about $1.7 billion in specific support to indigenous and northern communities”, many say that this is not enough and more needs to be done to support these communities. Marilyn Slett, chief councillor of the Heiltsuk Tribal Council, an indigenous community from British Columbia, notes that “the community has very limited capacity to deal with an outbreak, with just one ventilator at the health centre.” Saliently, the Canadian government is being encouraged, by leaders such as Malcolm Ranta, executive director of Ilisaqsivik Society, to involve indigenous populations in creating solutions to address their individual requirements, crucially in ways that respect their rights. Ranta, who helped launch a website for community pandemic preparedness, commented that “the site will provide resources for any community interested in taking a community approach to planning for Covid-19 as opposed to a top-down government driven approach.”
It is fast becoming clear that indigenous peoples around the world are being disproportionately harmed by the pandemic. Among the reasons for this is the fact that they “face a greater burden of disease than non-indigenous peoples, including cardiovascular disease and HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.”
On top of these factors are the structural forces and socio-economic marginalisation that limit indigenous access to health care; systemic racism, discrimination, and health services that are “typically under-resourced with language and culture-appropriate care a rarity.” The pandemic has highlighted the disparities that exist among the most vulnerable, and demonstrated “how a denial of rights has disadvantaged some groups over others.” A study showed that in Brazil, the distance between indigenous villages in the Amazon and the nearest intensive care unit bed averages 315 kilometres.
The Covid-19 pandemic has not only been a global health crisis; it has also unmasked the social and economic inequalities faced by indigenous populations across the globe. Although the virus itself will eventually be treated with a vaccine, there is no immediate cure for the disparities that the pandemic has unearthed. It will require commitment by governments to guarantee equal rights and address the harm done to indigenous communities.