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Beyond The Pandemic: Historical Infrastructure, Funding, And Data Access Challenges In Indian Country, Heather Tanana, Aila Hoss

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted Tribal communities, in part, due to the historical inequities that Tribes have faced for centuries. As sovereign nations, Tribes have the authority to self-govern their people and land. However, the federal government has a special trust responsibility and treaty obligations to Tribes that it often has failed to fulfill. As a result, many Tribal communities live in inferior living conditions as compared to their non-Native counterparts. This Chapter builds on the prior report to explore the historical inequities Tribes experience and how they have been compounded by the pandemic. More specifically, it identifies persistent …