Photo: CONAIE and partners carry out medical brigade in the community of San Carlos after the oil spill on April 7, 2020. Via Facebook.

COVID-19 is impacting Indigenous communities across the world. As in other contexts, communities already politically and economically marginalized experience some of the most devastating impacts of the virus as it disrupts food systems, overwhelms health facilities, disrupts people’s means of working and earning a living, and of course causes illness and death. Yet Indigenous communities are resilient, and, empowered with ancestral knowledge, organized communities, Indigenous languages, and their own forms of communication and media, they are taking action. As the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs points out, it is paramount that Indigenous Peoples have access to culturally appropriate resources and information in their own languages. Indigenous communities themselves are best equipped to develop self-determined solutions. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing inequalities and human rights abuses that affect Indigenous Peoples around the world. At the same time, governments are taking advantage of the attention that is directed to virus response in order to proceed with projects and policies that further violate Indigenous rights. The following are brief examples of key ways the virus is threatening Indigenous human rights.

In English

Por Wa’chala il Chirizx

Many A'uwẽ-Xavante ceremonies – such as wate’a (above), part of the male initiation complex -- revolve around water and ritual activities in water.  Plans for three hydroelectric dams on tributaries to the Rio das Mortes threaten the river basin. Photo by Rosa Gauditano/Studio R.
 

By Laura R. Graham, with collaboration from Edson Krenak Naknanuk