Who’s to Blame for Brazil’s Yanomami and Navajo COVID-19 Deaths? And Is It Genocide?

In Brazil, a Yanomami teen just died of COVID-19, making him the first member of the shrinking indigenous community to succumb to the novel coronavirus. Yanomami leaders suspect illegal gold miners may have been responsible for bringing the coronavirus into the community. Since Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s new president on January 1, 2019, 20,000 “wildcat” miners have taken advantage of his ultra-nationalist and pro-corporate policies, invading the Amazon Basin and exploiting Brazil’s biodiversity and Indigenous tribes of 850,000.

In the United States, the Navajo Nation reported that 838 members were stricken with the deadly disease. Thirty-Three have died. Many blame the large number of cases and fatalities on the government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs’ public school. School wasn’t supposed to be in session on March 16, the day Arizona’s statewide shutdown went into effect. But that morning, the federally controlled system decided to remain open and run busses. Rocky Ridge decided to hold one more day of school, with some school employees meeting for at least two more days.

These are only a few examples of what Indigenous call state-sponsored, structural, ecological, and ideological genocide. Instead of destroying a native people by displacing and supplanting them by invasion, conquest and transmission of infectious and deadly diseases, a more complex form of genocidal strategies is used that results in the elimination of Indian people from the face of the earth. Sustained campaigns of genocide can occur through contempt and criminal neglect, deadly institutions, ecological destruction, and the final stage of genocide: denial.

The Yanomami and Brazil’s Bolsonaro
Alvanei Xirxan, 15, died in intensive care after seeking medical assistance for 21 days. The Yanomami claim wildcat miners were the vector of the disease. Others have fallen ill and died. Bolsonaro made good on his campaign promise to open the Amazon to more agriculture ranching and mining. “The Amazon is ours,” said Bolsonaro, even as it, and the Yanomami, disappeared. What he meant by “ours” is partnering with corporations to exploit its biodiversity and minerals. He called the coronavirus calamity a “media trick” and “hoax,” even pushing unproven cures.

Other tribes are facing the same scourge, like the Kokama tribe. Two previous deaths were of Indigenous members who were living in urban areas. As Brazil faces a surge in coronavirus cases, now 25,758 cases and the number of deaths doubling every five days, the Yanomami are used to this kind of genocide. Over 100,000 roamed the watershed of the Rio Branco and Orinoco rivers until the Spanish came. When the Yanomami found out the white men had an insane desire to bring disease and take gold, they told them to go back to the bottom of the world. It didn’t work.

The Navajo
The Navajo Nation is familiar to complex forms of genocidal strategies. They faced the Spanish, white settlers and then the U.S. government. The Long Walk (Indian removal) and their Trail of Tears cost thousands of lives and a near cultural breakdown, as did reservations (prisoner of war camps), land allotment, and boarding schools. Along with COVID-19, they must fight corporate strip mining and nuclear plants that have caused ecocide. Black Mesa and the Mojave Generating Station are just two large polluters. And then there are celebrations of Indian genocide.

These and other underlying conditions added to the viral load and deaths. Over the next two weeks that public schools remained open, four employees and two students fell ill. Their family members fell ill with several deaths. Cut off from adequate medical facilities and other essential services, few got tested. The Bureau’s secrecy about coronavirus is another problem. The BIE has long been reluctant to release information about its schools or the 46,000 students enrolled in them. “We could get wiped out,” said President Johnathan Nez.

Internal Genocide Going On
Health experts warn the Indigenous are at the greatest risk of the COVID-19 threat. Compared to large nations or other ethnicities, the ratio of cases and deaths are astronomical. Just one death can equal thousands, even millions. In “Liberating Genocide,” Tony Barta wrote: “The whole state and its bureaucratic apparatus might officially be directed to protect innocent people but in which a whole race is nevertheless subject to remorseless pressures of destruction inherent in the very nature of society.” The Indigenous call it an “internal genocide going on.”

This internal genocide going on is echoing throughout Native American communities. Around the U.S., and especially in New Mexico, tribal leaders have started barring nonresidents from reservations. In South Dakota, the Oglala Sioux tribe announced a 72-hour lockdown after a member of the Pine Ridge reservation tested positive for coronavirus. The Blackfeet and the Northern Cheyenne tribal nations in Montana have announced curfews. The same scenario is occurring around the world as Indigenous succumb to COVID-19 and genocidal institutions.

Who Has Blood on Their Hands?
Who, then, is to blame for Brazil’s Yanomami or Navajo Nation’s COVID-19 cases and deaths? Or, “Who has blood on their hands?” Another way to look at it is to identify those who support and fund generational policies and laws that disproportionately benefit some people while diminishing the ability of others to meet their fundamental needs. It includes leaders and nations, those which support ideologies that divide the world into superior and inferior beings, and any attempt to exterminate indirectly by creating conditions that lead to the group’s destruction.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.