Blackfeet shares vaccine with northern relatives (Canada)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The tribe received vaccine allotments both from the Montana health department and the federal Indian Health Service, leaving some doses unused. With an expiration date fast approaching, it turned to other nations in the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Blackfeet and three tribes in southern Alberta, Canada that share a language and culture Author: The Associated Press Publish date: May 5, 2021
The Blackfeet Nation in northern Montana provided about 1,000 surplus vaccines to its First Nations relatives and others from across the border in April 2021. (Photo courtesy of Blackfeet Nation/Blackfeet Tribal Business Council Facebook page)
The tribe received vaccine allotments both from the Montana health department and the federal Indian Health Service, leaving some doses unused. With an expiration date fast approaching, it turned to other nations in the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Blackfeet and three tribes in southern Alberta, Canada that share a language and culture
Iris Samuels
Associated Press/Report for America
BABB, Mont. — On a cloudy spring day, hundreds lined up in their cars on the Canadian side of the border crossing that separates Alberta and Montana. They had driven for hours and camped out in their vehicles in hopes of receiving the season's hottest commodity — a COVID-19 vaccine — from a tribe that was giving out its excess doses.
The Blackfeet Nation in northern Montana provided about 1,000 surplus vaccines last month to its First Nations relatives and others from across the border, in an illustration of the disparity in speed at which the United States and Canada are distributing doses. While more than 30 percent of adults in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, in Canada that figure is about 3 percent.
Among those who received the vaccine at the Piegan-Carway border crossing were Sherry Cross Child and Shane Little Bear, of Stand Off, about 30 miles north of the border.
They recited a prayer in the Blackfoot language before nurses began administering shots, with Chief Mountain — sacred to the Blackfoot people — rising in the distance. The prayer was dedicated to people seeking refuge from the virus, Cross Child said.
Cross Child and her husband have family and friends in Montana but have not been able to visit them since the border closed last spring to all but essential travel.
"It's been stressful because we had some deaths in the family, and they couldn't come," she said. "Just for the support - they rely on us, and we rely on them. It's been tough."
More than 95 percent of the Blackfeet reservation's roughly 10,000 residents who are eligible for the vaccine are fully immunized, after the state prioritized Native communities — among the most vulnerable U.S. populations — in the early stages of its vaccination campaign.
The tribe received vaccine allotments both from the Montana health department and the federal Indian Health Service, leaving some doses unused. With an expiration date fast approaching, it turned to other nations in the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Blackfeet and three tribes in southern Alberta that share a language and culture.
"The idea was to get to our brothers and sisters that live in Canada," said Robert DesRosier, emergency services manager for the Blackfeet tribe. "And then the question came up - what if a nontribal member wants a vaccine? Well, this is about saving lives. We're not going to turn anybody away."
The tribe distributed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines over four days in late April at the remote Piegan Port of Entry, amid a backdrop of rolling grasslands to the east and Glacier National Park's snow-covered peaks to the west.
As news of the effort spread in Canada, first by word of mouth, then through social platforms and media reports, people traveled from farther away. Some drove five hours from the city of Edmonton.
The effort was particularly timely as Alberta sees a surge in new cases of the respiratory virus, with a caseload record reached this month.
Bonnie Healy, Blackfoot Confederacy health administrator, said she was glad the vaccination effort reached both First Nations and other communities in the province.
"We have family members that live in those areas," she said. "If we can get these places safe, then it's safe for our children to go to school there. It's safe for our elders to go shopping in their stores."
Canadians who got the vaccines were not allowed to linger in the U.S. They returned home with letters from health officials exempting them from the mandatory 14-day quarantine imposed on all those entering the country.
The tribe's initiative is one of a few partnerships that have cropped up between communities in the U.S. and Canada, where residents might otherwise have to wait weeks or months for a shot.
Canada has lagged in vaccinating its population because it lacks the ability to manufacture the vaccine and like many countries has had to rely on the global supply chain for the lifesaving shots. Although Canada's economy is tightly interconnected with the U.S., Washington hasn't allowed the hundreds of millions of vaccine doses made in America to be exported until very recently, and Canada has had to turn to Europe and Asia.
But vaccinations have ramped up in recent months, and the Canadian government expects to receive at least 10 million vaccines this month and millions more in June. First Nations have been prioritized from the start.
In the meantime, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has offered COVID-19 vaccines to residents of Stewart, British Columbia, with hopes it could lead the Canadian government to ease restrictions between that town and the Alaska border community of Hyder, a couple of miles away. In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum and Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister unveiled a plan last month to administer vaccinations to Manitoba-based truck drivers transporting goods to and from the U.S.
On the Montana side of the border, vaccine recipients were often emotional, shedding tears, shouting words of gratitude through car windows as they drove away, and handing the nurses gifts such as chocolate and clothing. Some shared stories about what the vaccine meant to them - the possibility of safely caring for vulnerable loved ones, reuniting with grandparents or traveling again.
Recipients included 17-year-olds who are low on the country's priority list and parents who camped out with their young children in the backseat.
Maxwell Stein, 25, who plays the horn with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, arrived at the border crossing at 6 p.m. Wednesday and spent the night in his car, finally reaching the front of the line around 10 a.m. Thursday.
"It wasn't awesome, but you do what you need to to get a vaccine," he said. He predicted that if he had waited in Canada, he'd likely get his first dose sometime in late June, and it would be months before he would be fully vaccinated.
The Canadian government has recommended extending the interval between the two doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines from around three weeks to four months, with the goal of quickly inoculating more people amid the shortage. Some who attended the Blackfeet clinics had already gotten their first shot in Canada. More than 34 percent of Canada's population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, but around 3 percent have received both doses recommended by the drug manufacturers to reach full immunity. Canadian officials say partial immunity is better than none.
"With vaccines, I think it's really important to get the correct dosage in the right time period, so your body builds up the full resistance," Stein said.
When Stein heard about the vaccine clinic on the border, he didn't hesitate about the long drive, particularly as a professional musician who has a lot of free time with many concerts canceled.
"Really, I have no excuse. If I had to drive 10 hours to get the Pfizer or Moderna, I probably would have done it," he said.
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Alberta Canada has one of the highest infection rates in Canada at the current time.
The Blackfeet reaching out to their relatives in Canada isn't surprising at all since Native American/First Nations/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian culture is different in many ways than that of the US or Canada. It is the whole, not the individual that is the most important.
This is not unusual since sharing is an important piece of our culture. The Cherokee and Choctaw have done it in Oklahoma and other tribes throughout the US have done the same.
Good to hear that 95% of the Native communities in Montana have been vaxxed.
p.s. I crossed the border right there 31 years ago
Babb is a pretty remote crossing, were you lost?
The 95% is for the Blackfeet Nation there are a number of other tribes in Montana but I'm sure that most are at a very high leval of vaccinations. Rocky Boy and Little Shell are for sure since I have relatives and friends there.
I'm probably wrong. We were coming down out of Alberta by way of Edmonton-Calgary.
You probably crossed at Sweetgrass.
Thank-you. I think you're right
This is a great story, Kavika, thanks for sharing it. It shows that the Native Americans from all Tribes live up to their tradition of doing what is good not only for their own Tribe, but, also for the good of others in need.
Which is how China contained the virus without having to rely on vaccines when America and Canada did not.
BTW:
Excellent link, Hallux. It's great to see a member of the Wampanoag tribe attending Harvard Law School. Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck was the first to graduate from Harvard but his classmate, Joel Hiacoombes died a month before graduation in a shipwreck when returning Harvard from Martha's Vineyard. Sadly Caleb died a year after graduation from TB.
I believe that one of the items she was speaking about was that land was taken into trust for the Interior Dept and later for the first time in history the Trump administration voided this. A stunning betrayal of both the Wampanoag tribe and all Native Americans. Thankfully the Biden administration ove road this and had the Interior department withdraw/drop the lawsuit.
The Native Americans' concern for others rather than selfishness (such as putting individual rights first) is the same reason why China defeated the virus quickly, without having to rely on vaccines, while western countries suffer still.
In the beginning it was good for Canada that the border was closed, and I was most worried about my son and his family in Milwuakee, and now it's good for America that the border is closed, and I'm more worried about my daughter in Toronto.
Buzz, IMO: Puting individual rights first is not a bad thing per say. That is what guarantees each of our personal individualism.
But the problem is and will always be the lack of personal responsibility in some of We the People.
It's a fine line but IMO: Individual rights is the foundation of what really makes America a great nation to be a part of.
We are different from each other and we know and supposedly respect that.
Though not all individuals here do.
I agree that to achieve certain results putting individual rights first is not a bad thing per se, but in order to contain the virus, it was the absolute wrong thing, one of the main reasons contributing to the massive American infection and death count.
Buzz I think perhaps we are looking at the same thing and calling it by different words to a degree.
People not wearing masks for instance, yes each person here had a right not to wear a mask unless mandated by a government local or state.
But even when mandated so many Americans did not wear masks especially at first, that IMO: Was the lack of their own personal responsibility to themselves and others.
A lack of individual rights is a permanent condition.
Unfortunately, here the lack of personal responsibility is for many as well. (Just look at why so many are in jail.)
Yes you can beat people into being responsible to a degree or jail them when they are not but a lack individual rights does not stop personal irresponsibility, probably not much more than not having individual rights to begin with. Unless NO One had a "right" to do anything but for what they are told to do by some sort of master and non compliance was death.
IMO: Our individual rights are a product of humanities need to be what we individually are.
Thankfully here we have that in writing and we cherish those thoughts and words and the meaning of them. That is what makes America America !
I spoke of "individual rights (and freedoms)" because of the many instances I saw on news broadcasts and read of Americans claiming that wearing a mask was contrary to their individual rights and freedoms. I don't recall anyone saying it was contrary to their "personal responsibilities" except those, like yourself, who criticized them because it was.
Understandable Buzz,
Probably because not many seem to get that personal responsibility is part of our individual rights.
Personal responsibility is what keeps us from breaking laws that was designed to curb personal Irresponsibilities here.
Individual rights do not include the right to violate others individual rights.
Claiming individual rights violations is what some who don't have much personal responsibility use to justify their own personal Irresponsibility.
Although related they are different. many don't get that. They want to believe that anything they want to do is their individual right but that's not really what individual rights are.
... a concept completely lost on a specific segment of some americans.
Without a doubt, devan.
Great article Kavika !
Thanks, pat.
wonderful story. good to hear that we watch one another.