NATIVE AMERICANS(ET)

It’s always a good idea to take good care of your health. Now, recent world events have people taking extra care of their immune systems. Luckily, there are plenty of healthy ways to boost your body’s ability to fight foreign infections. Here are some you can start trying.

1 – Sleep well

One of the key factors in the strength of your immune system is how well you sleep every night. The research is quite clear on this point. Your body uses sleep not only to replenish a lot of its resources and its energy, but also as a time to general maintenance of your body. Sleep helps reduce inflammation throughout your body, for example. And it reduces the levels of stress hormones in your bloodstream.

There are many methods you can use to improve the quality of your sleep. One of the simplest ones is to follow a sleep schedule. Going to bed at the same time every night helps you fall asleep faster, and get more rest out of each sleep. Exercising, following a healthy diet, and managing your consumption of caffeine can all have a positive effect on sleep quality as well.

2 – Exercise

Not all forms of exercise are good for your immune system. Stress and exhaustion can both suppress your immune system, and because of that, prolonged and intense exercise can make your immune system weaker.

You should be aiming for moderate exercise if you want your immune system to be as strong as possible. What counts as “moderate”, of course, depends on your fitness levels. Walking, light jogging, riding a bicycle, and swimming are all good examples of moderate exercise that most people can engage in. Try aiming for about 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week for maximum effect.

3 – Eat fermented foods

Fermented foods like yogurt, fermented milk, and natto are rich in probiotics, which help populate your digestive tract with healthy bacteria. Plenty of studies have linked a healthier gut to better overall health and a stronger immune system. Having a healthy network of gut bacteria also helps your immune system better distinguish between healthy cells and invading organisms, making your immune response more effective. If fermented foods aren’t an option, you can also get probiotics in the form of supplements.

4 – Stay hydrated

As a general rule, you should drink enough water every day to make your urine pale yellow. While water itself does not boost your immune system, dehydration weakens your entire system, making you more susceptible to illness.

5 – Stay on top of stress

Stress hormones have many effects on your body. One of them is suppressing your immune system. In the long term, stress also promotes the inflammation of many regions of your body, which further weakens your immune system by hogging its resources.

There are many ways you can reduce your stress levels. Taking breaks from work, meditating, exercising, and sleeping better all help reduce the symptoms of stress. You can also treat it with calming natural remedies, such as chamomile tea and CBD oil. You can get the latter clicking this link.

Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Member Kelly Benally (far right) will be collecting donations today in Mount Pleasant as part of “Operation Sheii Ma Sadie” — named for her Navajo mother-in-law Sadie Benally (center), 90.  (Facebook photo)

May 28, 2020

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. — The memory of a Navajo elder lost to COVID-19 has spurred a member of Michigan’s Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe to launch a relief effort for Navajo Nation.

Tribal Member Kelly Benally will be collecting donations today in Mount Pleasant as part of “Operation Sadie Benally-Sheii Ma- Navajo Nation” — named for her Navajo mother-in-law Sadie Benally, 90, who died from COVID-19 complications on May 10. 

The elder Benally was a respected Navajo medicine woman and a fluent Navajo speaker who fell ill with the virus just six days prior to her passing.

 Drop-off for Operation Sadie will take place Thursday, May 28, 2020 from 10am until 1pm at the Soaring Eagle Waterpark & Hotel, 5665 E Pickard Road in Mount Pleasant. 

Donations of Lysol, Bleach, Clorox wipes, gloves, masks, sanitizers, Tylenol, paper towels, diapers, bottled water and working washers and dryers in working condition are requested. Cash donations will also be accepted. All boxes and crates that get loaded into trucks will also be decorated with words of encouragement written in Navajo to let the Navajo community members know that they are in the thoughts and prayers of their Michigan relatives.  

The donations will be labeled with encouraging words written in Navajo language.

With 300,000 members, the Navajo Nation is the largest tribal community in the U.S., spreading across Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. The Navajo Nation has been especially hard hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, losing more citizens per capita to the virus than any state in the country. 

Navajo Nation has recorded 4,842 positive cases of COVID-19 and 158 confirmed deaths as of May 27, 2020. It is considered the hot spot for COVID-19 in the United States and their infection rate is among the highest in the world. The reservation’s lack of running water, medical infrastructure, Internet access, information and adequate housing have made it difficult for the tribe to handle the pandemic.

 Kelly Benally, 49, told Native News Online she hopes Navajo Nation is “really feeling the love that is coming from Michigan.”  

She set up a Facebook fundraiser to help fund Operation Sadie Sheii Ma- Navajo Nation. The fundraiser met its goal of raising $4,200 to go towards the efforts being made to help the Navajo Nation.

Front line nurses on the Navajo Nation have been working tirelessly to save lives.

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — The Navajo Nation reported 1,620 of its tribal citizens have recovered from COVID-19, as the total cases nears 5,000. On Wednesday evening, the Navajo Nation reported another 102 new cases of COVID-19 reached 4,944. 

The total number of deaths has reached 159 from the deadly virus as of Wednesday.

Preliminary reports from nine health care facilities indicate that approximately 1,620 individuals have recovered from COVID-19, with more reports still pending. Given the total cases, the recovery rate stands at 32.77 percent.

Navajo Nation cases by Service Unit:

• Chinle Service Unit: 1,213
• Crownpoint Service Unit: 508
• Ft. Defiance Service Unit: 242
• Gallup Service Unit: 849
• Kayenta Service Unit: 773
• Shiprock Service Unit: 819
• Tuba City Service Unit: 425
• Winslow Service Unit: 84

*31 residences are not specific enough to place them accurately in a Service Unit

“We have to keep doing what we’re doing by wearing protective masks, complying with the weekend lockdowns, staying home, and practicing social distancing. Now is not the time to let up our guard. We are seeing some very good indications that the numbers are flattening, but please remain diligent and continue to take care of your elders. We are overcoming this pandemic, but the war on this monster called COVID-19 is not over,” said Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.

On Wednesday, the Navajo Nation issued Public Health Emergency Order 2020-012, ordering another 57-hour weekend lockdown beginning on Friday, May 29 at 8:00 p.m. until Monday, June 1 at 5:00 a.m. This will be the eighth weekend lockdown that also requires the closure of all businesses on the Navajo Nation.

On Wednesday, the Nez-Lizer Administration distributed food, bottled water, and cleaning supplies to 434 Navajo families in the communities of Huerfano, Counselor, and Nahodishgish in New Mexico. Overall, the administration has reached 66 chapters across the Navajo Nation so far.

For more information including reports, helpful prevention tips, and more resources, please visit the Navajo Department of Health’s COVID-19 website at http://www.ndoh.navajo-nsn.gov/COVID-19. To contact the main Navajo Health Command Operations Center, please call (928) 871-7014.

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To Donate to the Navajo Nation

The official webpage for donations to the Navajo Nation, which has further details on how to support  the Nation’s Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19 (COVID-19) efforts is:  http://www.nndoh.org/donate.html.

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For More Information

For more information including reports, helpful prevention tips, and more resources, please visit the Navajo Department of Health’s COVID-19 website at http://www.ndoh.navajo-nsn.gov/COVID-19. To contact the main Navajo Health Command Operations Center, please call (928) 871-7014.

For up to date information on impact the coronavirus pandemic is having in the United States and around the world go to: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/?fbclid=IwAR1vxfcHfMBnmTFm6hBICQcdbV5aRnMimeP3hVYHdlxJtFWdKF80VV8iHgE

For up-to-date information about COVID-19, Native News Online encourages you to go to Indian Health Service’s COVID-19 webpage and review CDC’s COVID-19 webpage. 

Known as Indian-killer President

This Day in History

Published May 28, 2020

WASHINGTON – On this day in 1830, 190 years ago, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act.

The Act established a process whereby the president could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that the Indians would live on their new property under the protection of the United States Government forever.

With the Act in place, Jackson and his followers were free to persuade, bribe, and threaten tribes into signing removal treaties and leaving the Southeast.

By the end of his presidency, he had signed into law almost seventy removal treaties, the result of which was to move nearly 50,000 eastern Indians to Indian Territory—defined as the region belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi River but excluding the states of Missouri and Iowa as well as the Territory of Arkansas—and open millions of acres of rich land east of the Mississippi to white settlers. Despite the vastness of the Indian Territory, the government intended that the Indians’ destination would be a more confined area—what later became eastern Oklahoma.

The Indian Removal Act set in motion the Trail of Tears, which attributed to the genocide of thousands of American Indians and the death of one-quarter Cherokee people. For this reason, Jackson is referred to by American Indians as the “Indian-killer” president and does not feel he should be honored or celebrated in any fashion.

Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was fired Tuesday for using excessive force that led to George Floyd’s death.

OPINION

There is always a story behind every photograph.

Yesterday I began seeing a photograph out of Minneapolis that continued to show up many times during the day on my Facebook timeline. Since I was working on other things, I will confess I did not pay close attention at first. When I finally did, I saw a white police officer with his knee on the neck of an African American man. As I focused in on the grimace on the man’s face, I froze.

I began to read the story behind the photograph.

The photograph captures George Floyd, 46, on the pavement as veteran Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, has his knee firmly pressed on Floyd’s neck, leaving him deprived of air to breathe. News accounts reported that Floyd repeatedly told Chauvin he could not breathe. We learned Floyd was already arrested for forgery because he allegedly attempted to pay for something at a nearby retail shop with a counterfeit $20 bill. He was handcuffed and thrown to the pavement. In all, there were four officers in proximity to Floyd. The other three officers did nothing to stop Chauvin as he pressed the life out of Floyd. He lost consciousness and was pronounced dead at a local Minneapolis hospital. 

In essence, Floyd received the death penalty for a petty crime.

Levi Rickert

This photograph has quickly become indelible in my mind. When I look at it, I find myself comparing it to the photograph of the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old teen from Chicago who was murdered while visiting Mississippi by an angry Southern mob. 

Fast forward 65 years and now you have another enduring image of a white man suffocating an African American victim, this time using a knee instead of a rope. 

Today, as I reflected on the Minneapolis Police Department, I remembered Minneapolis was the birthplace of the American Indian Movement in 1968.  Its founders were fed up with the large number of urban American Indians being rounded up each weekend, beaten and then hauled off to jail in paddy wagons.

In research funded by the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and St. Catherine University entitled, “Police Stops and Searches of Indigenous People in Minneapolis: The Roles of Race, Place, and Gender,” the authors write:

“In the United States, Native Americans have the highest prevalence of fatal encounters with law enforcement of any racial or ethnic group. Yet these encounters are rarely covered in the media – for each fatal police shooting of a Native American there is an average of less than one media story.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American Indians, on a per capita basis, are more likely to die at the hands of law enforcement than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States.

Minn. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan

Today, Lt. Governor Peggy Flannagan, who is a dual citizen of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe, during a COVID-19 update, offered her opinion on the tragic death of Floyd. She said Minnesota is grieving over the tragedy and expressed her outrage.

“One thing is clear to me, the complete lack of humanity in the video of George’s death is horrifying to me. We will get answers and we will seek justice. It goes without saying that no one should be treated differently by law enforcement due to the color of their skin and no one should live in fear of law enforcement because of the color of their skin” Flannagan said.

She talked about the systemic racism that allowed Floyd’s death to happen and shared a dream for a transformation as we move from the pandemic.

“Someday when it is safe, we will all have the option to go back to normal, though we cannot let that happen. Normal—quote, unquote—means that black and brown bodies are not safe. Normal was not working for us. We must not get back to normal, we must get back to better,” she said.

I love the concept of Flannagan’s dream – striving not to get back to normal, but to get back to BETTER. I hope it becomes our reality and we never have to see another unnecessary death of a black or brown person on the streets of our cities again. We cannot go back to normal; we must get back to BETTER.

Levi Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is publisher and editor of Native News Online.

According to experts in the industry, regulations governing online gambling in the US could see their restrictions relaxed in the coming months.

According to data from the American Gaming Association (AGA), many land-based casinos are expected to face huge losses this year. Casino employees could see as much as $59 billion in lost wages, with $34.4 billion lost in annual tax revenue.

The body said it was in talks with Congress on how to implement measures to mitigate the losses. “[We are] engaged with Congressional and administration leadership to shape stimulus and aid packages that will support employees, their families, and our communities,” said AGA senior vice president of strategic communications Casey Clark.

Boost for online gambling

Online gambling, on the other hand, is seeing an increase in traffic. With thousands of people staying home, many gamblers have moved their activities online. However, online gambling regulations in the U.S remain some of the strictest in the world, making it hard for the industry to benefit locally.

While it’s easy enough to find US online casinos which take real money players, many are based abroad and so don’t aid local workers. In states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where online gambling and/or sports betting is legal, gross revenue for online operators has increased significantly. 

Experts now believe that many players will not return to physical casinos but continue to gamble online even after restrictions lift. Some think that this will force states to review their gambling licenses and make the necessary amendments. 

“We need to be cautious going into states that need the revenue. We need to educate them on why having a competitive market with low tax rates and reasonable fees will create more revenue in the long term.” said the former CEO of Poker Players Alliance, John Pappas. 

Sports Betting in Michigan

Now, the Michigan Gaming Control Board (MCGB) is looking to push forward legislation for online sports betting to this year. The state regulator has already begun accepting gaming supplier licensing forms – a strong indication that it wants to accelerate the process.

“We’ve taken another step toward the launch of online gaming by beginning the licensing process,” said MGCB executive director Richard S. Kalm. “The MGCB encourages suppliers to file applications soon so we can conduct investigations and issue provisional licenses, which are allowed under state law.”

State departments will also be looking into drawing up new legislation for online virtual sports betting. The practice is relatively new but has seen a surge of interest on platforms like FanDuel, where players can pit ‘virtual’ sports teams against each other for money. With no existing legislation in place, many states have simply applied any existing online gambling laws to the activity. 

However, as it differs in many ways from both sports betting and online gambling, new legislation needs to be drafted to properly regulate it. Since traditional sports betting has recently been legalized in Michigan, there’s hope that the process will be less cumbersome than in neighboring states.