In reporting on the transformative thinking Native communities are putting into action in these tumultuous times, I heard time and time again: “This is not our first pandemic.” Since the 1500s, when ever-larger numbers of Europeans began arriving in this hemisphere, disasters have come thick and fast for the First Nations, including tens of millions wiped out within a century by continual waves of unfamiliar diseases—measles, influenza, smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, and more. Village after village stood empty. Enduring shock and grief, the survivors relied on ancient lifeways to support them as new trials arose.
Here, three Indigenous communities share heritage ways to live and care for each other that they have refined during this latest pandemic. The aim now, as ever, is ensuring a safe, sustainable future for their people. The plans meet the tests of both time and extreme adversity. Native people have told me so many times it has become a refrain: “We are still here.”
Each of these future-focused ideas has a local orientation. The Rosebud Sioux are developing a large new buffalo herd as the basis of a wholesome community food system. Menominees are building homes with age-old ideas about reciprocal relationships that strengthen individuals and their connections to each other, to the community as a whole, and to the world around them. For Kake, an Alaska Native Village, peacemaking circles repair broken relationships through heartfelt discussions that both heal and minimize the recurrence of wrongdoing.
To read more of Stephanie Woodard's article, please click here.
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