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Respectful Tribal Partnership: What Philanthropy Can Learn From The Navajo Nation’S Collaborative Response To The Covid-19 Crisis, Nancy Petersen, Karletta Chief, Toni M. Massaro, Nikki Tulley, Crystal Tulley-Cordova, Jonelle Vold

The Foundation Review

The gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disparately harsh impact on Indigenous peoples are now well known. U.S. death rates normalized by population, for example, have been far higher for Native Americans than for the white population in the United States. Many funders, realizing that basic human services are lacking for many Native American and Indigenous communities, have responded to the crisis. While this desire to act is laudable, many fail to grasp the complexities and necessity of applying trust-based collaborative principles that respect tribes as sovereign nations.

This article describes a successful model for collaboration among a tribal …