Survival International, an indigenous rights organization, tells the BBC, here, that several hundred members of Venezuela’s Yanomami tribe could be infected with swine flu and that seven people are dead.

The situation is “critical,” according to the group’s director, Stephen Corry, who has called for Venezuela and Brazil to take immediate action to halt the epidemic.

Members of the group says that an outbreak among the isolated tribes of the Amazon could spread quickly among the indigenous population and kill many of them. They say members of the tribe are in immediate need of better access to health care.

Only about 32,000 Yanomami remain. As many as one in five Yanomami died in the 1980s when gold miners brought influenza and malaria into their midst.

Gwen Florio

Tags: H1N1 influenza, Survival International, Swine flu, Yanomami

Where are the Indians in Black Hills bison roundup?
Tim Giago’s column here in the Native Sun News addresses something we wondered about when we read this Rapid City Journal story about lat month’s bison roundup in Custer State Park in South Dakota. Something seemed missing. Giago addresses that something.

And speaking of bison roundups …
The one last week at the National Bison Range on western Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation went off without a hitch, the Char-Koosta News reports here. Crowds were down from previous years, but that’s probably because the temperature took a precipitous dive last week.

Indigenous communities around the world face extra H1N1 flu threat
People on Indian reservations in the United States and on Canada’s reserves aren’t the only ones being hit extra-hard by swine flu. (See previous posts here and here.) Australia’s aboriginal people and Peru’s Matsigenka tribe are among indigenous communities reporting disproportionate numbers of cases of swine flu, according to this story in London’s Sunday Independent.

Piikani Nation asks Shell Canada to hold off on gas drilling
Tribal elders of the Piikani Nation held a prayer ceremony yesterday and performed a traditional offering in the hopes of persuading Shell Canada not to drill at the base of Mount Backes in southern Alberta. The First Nation considers the site sacred, but Shell Canada wants to explore there for sour gas, CTV Calgary reports here.

Gila River Tribe seeks to woo Chicago Cubs for spring training
So reports the Arizona Republic, here. The tribe is offering to build a new training facility if the Cubs do their spring training on the Gila River Reservation, rather than in Mesa. The The Gila River community also tried to land the Arizona Diamondbacks, who eventually opted for a site near Scottsdale on the Salt River-Pima Indian Community.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Black Hills, Chicago Cubs, Custer State Park, First Nations, Flathead Indian Reservation, Gila River Tribe, H1N1 influenza, Mount Backes, Piikani Nation, Salt-River Pima Indian Community, Shell Canada

First, it was a government shipment of body bags to a First Nations reserve that had requested supplies to fight the H1N1 virus, which is disproportionately affects Native communities. (See previous post, here, first item and video.)

Now comes this story from the Nunatsiaq News, from Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic, that schoolchildren were washing their hands in dishwashing liquid because there’s no money for flu-fighting supplies.

Students at Nuiyak School in Sanikiluaq turned to Sunlight, the dishwashing detergent, because the local school committee ran out of money, the story says.

The money ran out at a time when Nunavut schools are supposed to do more to increase cleanliness and develop action plans to deal with absenteeism caused by sickness among staff and students, reporter Jane George writes.

The Nunavut government came through with $38,000 for the school. The situation came to light when a teacher got sick and students had to be sent home because there was no money to hire a replacement teacher.

Peter Geikie, Nunavut’s deputy minister of education, said this week the government will investigate the financial situation, and help Nunavut schools get ready for a possible swine flu outbreak by sending hand sanitizers and antiseptic wipes if necessary.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, First Nations, H1N1 influenza, Native American news, Swine flu

Body bag fiasco leads to swine flu protocol for First Nations
Two federal cabinet ministers and the newly elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations signed a communications protocol during an unusual weekend meeting Saturday, promising to work closely with aboriginal leaders to control the spread of the H1N1 flu virus, according to this CBC report. The action comes in response to an outcry last week (see video above) over a government shipment of body bags to a First Nations reserve that had sought help in combating the H1N1 virus – which has hit Native populations especially hard.

Artifacts seized by feds should go to tribes, EchoHawk says
The federal government’s sweeping prosecution of the theft and trafficking of ancient Southwest artifacts has netted thousands of items. Larry EchoHawk, assistant Interior secretary for Indian Affairs, says that American Indian tribes should be given the first opportunity to reclaim them, according to this Deseret News story. “The tribes should get first priority,” he said. “Native people in their hearts are going to feel a connection.”

“Women warriors” to fight domestic violence in Indian Country
“The level of violence against women and children in the U.S. is appalling, and the numbers for Native American women and children are staggering,” Indian Country Today correspondent Tanya Lee writes here. In North Dakota, Linda Thompson and her colleagues at the First Nations Women’s Alliance and its member organizations are organizing themselves to be more effective in supporting – and healing – the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault on the four North Dakota Indian reservations. “It’s often thought that young black men are the most victimized in the U.S., but it is actually Native women,” said Thompson, paraphrasing a statement in the Justice Department report, “American Indians and Crime.”

Arizona tribes join forces against uranium mining
The Hualapai Tribe has renewed a ban on uranium mining on its land near the Grand Canyon, joining other Native American tribes in opposing what they see as a threat to their environment and their culture. The AP reports here that the tribal ban adds to a temporary mining ban on nearly 1 million federally owned acres around the Grand Canyon. Uranium is attracting high prices these days, but the tribes say it’s not worth putting their health, water and land at risk.

New Mexico task force will work to boost tribal economies
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has created a task force to help tribes attract high wage jobs, benefit from the tourism and film industries and establish enterprise zones, according to this AP story in Forbes magazine. Richardson said the zones can be created through state-tribal collaboration. The tribes will retain sovereign authority over them.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Domestic violence, First Nations, First Nations Women's Alliance, H1N1 influenza, Hualapai Tribe, Larry Echohawk

David Harper, grand chief of the northern First Nations, is seeking an apology from the Canadian government after the tribes received a shipment of body bags to a Manitoba community trying to prepare for the H1N1 virus.

The disease, also known as swine flu, has hit First Nations hard. In Manitoba it affects 10 percent of the general population, but two-thirds of those on reserves.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says the shipment wasn’t directly related to pandemic preparation in Native communities. Likewise, the Toronto Star reports here, Jim Wolfe, regional director with the First Nations and Inuit health branch of the department, says the bags were part of a shipment intended for reserves to use over the winter and were not “linked exclusively to H1N1.”

Harper wants Aglukkag to apologize and Wolfe to resign.

Aglukkaq responds that the shipment “was insensitive and offensive. As minister of health and as an aboriginal I am offended.”

But considerable anger remains Lillian Dyck, a Liberal senator and First Nations member from Saskatchewan, says she feels as thought “someone had taken a knife and driven it into my heart.”

“As a woman,” she says, “how would you feel if you were worried about being infected with H1N1 and what you were sent was a body bag, indicating that your family was going to die?”

Gwen Florio

Tags: First Nations, H1N1 influenza, Swine flu

We said we’d delve more deeply into the issue of swine flu on reservations, and we have. In today’s Missoulian, Michael Jamison reports here that the tribal leaders are worried about the outbreak of 16 cases on Montana’s Fort Belknap Reservation, as well as the fact that state’s only death was on the Fort Peck Reservation.

“We’re definitely worried that it might be more prevalent on the reservations,” said Raymond Chandler, vice president of the tribal council at Fort Belknap, home to the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes. “You can’t prove it, because they don’t keep good numbers; but all you have to do is look around to see what’s happening.”

The story also recounts similar concerns in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In the latter province, First Nations leaders have declared a state of emergency. They’re looking to raise $1.5 million to purchase medical kits, because the rate of infection in tribal communities is reported at 135 per 100,000 people, compared to 20 per 100,000 people nationwide.

There are similar dispararities in the numbers in Montana counties with reservations, as opposed to largely white counties. But Chandler says he doesn’t need to look at the numbers.

“All you have to do is look around and it’s obvious,” he says. It’s obvious, he tells Jamison, in the masked faces waiting at the reservation health clinic. It’s obvious in the number of people home sick, and in the special hand-washing stations set up at powwow this year.

“We continue to have sick people,” says Avis Spencer, public information officer for Fort Belknap’s Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes. She predicts off-reservation towns will, too. After all, she said, crowded housing is nothing compared to crowded classrooms, and school is just around the corner.

Finally, say tribal leaders, all of this points up to the inadequacies in the Indian health care system. As we said when this story first began to simmer, stay tuned. There’ll be more.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Fort Belknap Reservation, Fort Peck Reservation, H1N1 influenza, Indian Health Service, Native American news, Swine flu

This AP story on an outbreak of swine flu on the Fort Belknap Reservation begins in straightforward-enough fashion:

Health officials on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation are stressing prevention after eight residents were diagnosed with swine flu.

It’s the next paragraph that gives me the heebie-jeebies:

Officials have no idea how widespread the infection is because after the eight cases were confirmed, laboratory testing by the Indian Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state of Montana is no longer being done.

Why ever the heck not? One would think that testing would be a priority, especially given that the state’s only death from swine flu occurred on the Fort Peck Reservation.

We’ll be following up on this.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Belknap Reservation, Fort Peck Reservation, H1N1 influenza, Indian Health Service, Native American news, Swine flu