Dr. Brady DeSanti
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, as of 2021, Native Americans’ life expectancy of 65.2 years was equal to the life expectancy of the total U.S. population in 1944. The CDC also reported in September that the AIAN population was at higher risk during the pandemic for COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death than other racial and ethnic groups.
Those revelations were consistent with the impact that professors Dr. Tiffany S. Lee (Diné /Lakota) and Dr. Brady DeSanti (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe) say they witnessed among their students and communities during the pandemic. Lee is a professor and chair of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico (UNM). DeSanti is director of Native American studies and associate professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO). They shared their experiences with Diverse about how their institutions continue to rebound from the setbacks of COVID-19 and the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on the Native American population throughout the U.S.
“It was devastating, extremely devastating,” Lee recalls. “There was a lot of loss, a lot of loss — a huge impact. It goes back to settler colonialism. There is a whole history of disparity there, health disparities even prior to the pandemic. So, (the pandemic) really heightened that.”
Lee explains how some of her students live in rural areas “not having access to hospitals nearby … not even just having running water. There are lots of families on the reservations that still do not have running water in their homes. They have to haul water.” Home computers and internet service were nonexistent for many students in the department. “When a pandemic hits, it exposes those vulnerabilities,” she continues. Lee says one of the department’s solutions for adapting to the pandemic was to provide technology scholarships that enable students to purchase tech items with which to do their research and assignments at home.
Optimism amid loss
Despite the considerable obstacles, Lee says her department not only has survived the difficult times, but it is thriving. A master’s program was launched in 2018, and in spring 2022, the state legislature approved a Ph.D. program. UNM expects to have the fourth Native American or Indigenous studies department in the nation with a Ph.D. program. Its first cohort of students is slated to arrive in fall 2023, and the department is in the process of hiring a sixth tenure-track faculty member.
