SANTA FE – A philanthropic effort aimed at boosting access to scarce medical and protective equipment supplies on the Navajo Nation is being organized by former Gov. Bill Richardson.
The coronavirus has swept with ferocity through the largest Native American reservation in the U.S., where there have been more than 550 infections and 22 deaths. The reservation spans parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer went into self-quarantine Thursday after being in close proximity earlier this week with a first responder who later tested positive for the coronavirus.
Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, told The Associated Press on Thursday that his enduring sense of gratitude and friendship with the Navajo people prompted him to provide seed money and launch the humanitarian effort in cooperation with Molina Healthcare and the New Mexico Children’s Foundation.
“So many Navajo elders are vulnerable to this virus because they don’t have masks, they don’t have protective equipment,” said Richardson, who credits Navajo political support for his initial election to Congress in 1982.
Richardson fears the pandemic could reach a vast scale of suffering reminiscent of the 19th century forced removal of Navajos in the “Long Walk.”
Thousands of Navajos endured cold, disease and starvation in the U.S. government’s attempt to move them to a desolate tract of land hundreds of miles away in eastern New Mexico. In 1868, they signed a treaty with the federal government to secure a return to their homeland.
Richardson credited Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a fellow Democrat, with “getting ahead of this crisis” and complimented Nez for implementing a weekend and evening curfew to slow the spread of the virus.
Peterson Zah, a past president of the Navajo Nation who forged a working relationship with Richardson in the 1980s, said he has been astonished by the rate of infection across the Navajo community of about 300,000 people in an area slightly larger than West Virginia.
“You accept that and say, OK, what is the need here?” Zah said. “There must be something that people can do, particularly those from outside the Navajo Nation, people that can help.”
Carolyn Ingram, executive vice president Molina Healthcare, said the California-based company plans to work with Navajo nonprofit groups and its own procurement supply chain to send equipment to health care clinics and communities on eastern parts of the reservation.
Molina provides marketplace insurance, Medicare and care to special-needs populations in New Mexico.
