AUTUMN PARRA: Tohono O'odham some people
believe that the land is alive.
You can speak to it, give thanks.
When I get older and I have kids I
would hope that they get to speak their language
and know where they came from.
REYNALDA RUBIO: We live in southern Arizona
on the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation.
SELINA JESUS: The district GuVo, it is very rural.
we're isolated from a lot of services.
REYNALDA RUBIO: Got some hand sanitizer with you?
COVID is starting to get high on the Tohono O'odham nation.
Lot of wakes and funerals, and it's just--
it's hard.
MEGAN MINOKA HILL: COVID-19 is impacting tribal lands
at a rate of at least four times more than the general US
population.
Tribal nations are experiencing at per capita more
than many states.
When the pandemic hit, obviously schools were shut down.
And some of the immediate challenges
were how could tribal governments assist
families and school districts to transition
to learning from home.
SELINA JESUS: The barrier for some of the families
is that owning a laptop or a tablet--
that's very rare because they can't afford it.
Our mission here with NAAF is to provide those services that
are needed for the betterment of our communities
and for our people.
Now, with this whole pandemic, education is top priority.
MEGAN MINOKA HILL: There's nothing
at all that's cookie-cutter in Indian country.
But what I think tribal nations can do
is they can learn from each other's successes.
So since the pandemic hit, we at the Harvard Project
have been working on a COVID-19 nation building toolbox.
We've curated over 1,000 different resources
from tribal nations, from healthcare
to educational curriculum.
So it's really this multifaceted resource
that hits on everything that tribal nations are
having to think about in this moment of crisis.
It's hosted on G sites, and that's been a real gift.
We were able to immediately build
this tool box and share lessons with Indian country,
and stories of what other tribal governments were doing.
SELINA JESUS: It just opened up a whole another window for us
to see, this is what we can do.
We were so inspired that we developed
our own remote learning resources within a week.
And they are compatible with a phone.
AUTUMN PARRA: What's cool about the NAAF remote resources
is that it has all kinds of things
from fitness and education.
They also have the Tohono O'odham language,
which is really cool to have.
My school, they really don't have Tohono O'odham language.
So it's kind of hard for me to learn my culture.
Trying to keep it alive is what's most important.
MEGAN MINOKA HILL: If curriculum and education
is presented in a culturally relevant way to their lives
of who they are as Native people,
it sparks curiosity in ways that we don't see otherwise.
REYNALDA RUBIO: I would like for all the children
to preserve the Tohono O'odham culture.
MEGAN MINOKA HILL: There's a huge digital divide
in Indian country.
More and more around the world there's
transitions to online information.
And when you don't have that in Indian country,
there is a huge loss.
Particularly for tribal nations that are rural,
they're being left behind.
And so I think now is the time.
If this pandemic is revealing the cracks
in the system and the things that don't work,
we see this more glaring than ever.
And so if there's ever been a time to do it, it's now.
[MUSIC PLAYING]