'The grief is so unbearable': Virus takes toll on Navajo

May 12, 20200

Carolyn Kaster – Associated Press count

April 22, 2020, Navajo rancher and sheepherder Leslie Dele holds a lamb in the sheep corral of his ranch outside Tuba City, Ariz., on the Navajo reservation. The Navajo reservation has some of the highest rates of coronavirus in the country. If Navajos are susceptible to the virus' spread in part because they are so closely knit, that's also how many believe they will beat it.

TUBA CITY, Arizona - The virus arrived on the reservation in early March, when late winter winds were still blowing off the mesas and temperatures at dawn were often barely above freezing.

It was carried in from Tucson, doctors say, by a man who had been to a basketball tournament and then made the long drive back to a small town in the Navajo highlands. There, believers were preparing to gather in a small, metal-walled church with a battered white bell and crosses on the window.

https://www.startribune.com/virus-rampages-across-vast-navajo-lands-close-knit-families/570370172/