The Navajo teenager who went viral reporting on coronavirus: 'I just want us to be seen' | US news | The Guardian

The Navajo teenager who went viral reporting on coronavirus: 'I just want us to be seen' | US news | The Guardian

The Navajo teenager who went viral reporting on coronavirus: 'I just want us to be seen'

Poppy Noor

Larry Jackson is raising the alarm on the huge number of Covid-19 cases in the Navajo Nation: ‘Why is there no news coverage for us?’

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 @PoppyNoor

Fri 22 May 2020 11.21 EDTLast modified on Fri 22 May 2020 11.59 EDT

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 Jojo Jackson’s TikTok. Photograph: JoJo Jackson

Larry Jackson, 16, would not describe himself as “political”. Last night he was celebrating the end of his junior year exams by eating chicken wings, playing Fortnite and FaceTiming his friends.

But last month, Jackson unwittingly went viral after he released a TikTok video raising the alarm on the huge number of Covid-19 cases hitting the Navajo Nation, a territory occupying parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

He compares the situation in the Navajo Nation – now first in the US in terms of cases per 100,000, with 4,253 cases and 146 known deaths, to West Virginia. West Virginia spans 24,038 square miles – making it smaller than the Navajo Nation, at 27,413 square miles. Despite this, Jackson explains: “West Virginia is living on 163 grocery stores, we’re living on 13. They are living on 63 hospitals, we are living on six.”

“Today we live on broken treaties and broken promises from the US government … This is America,” he finishes.

At the time, the Navajo Nation had the third-highest number of Covid-19 cases in the US, and yet Jackson could find scant news on the issue. On Monday this week, the Navajo Nation surpassed New York state for the highest Covid-19 infection rate.

“I was like – everyone knows everything about New York. There are so many different news outlets reporting on this one state. Why is there no news coverage for us, or any Native Americans?” he says. “I just thought that wasn’t fair.

“I just wanted to spread awareness, to give people basic, raw information because I thought the news was sugarcoating it. I wanted to show what it’s like here, the number of Covid-19 cases and the basic resources the Navajo Nation just doesn’t have,” he says.

On Monday, the Navajo Nation (population 357,000) surpassed New York and New Jersey’s Covid-19 cases per 100,000, despite being almost 25 times smaller than New York (19.5m) and New Jersey (8.9m). The figures indicate that coronavirus has penetrated 2.3% of the Navajo Nation’s population, compared with 1.8% in New York state.

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“That makes me pretty sad,” says Jackson. “It’s really disappointing, it gets under your skin, it makes you angry. It’s really sad to think that people would push a whole group of people under the rug and just pretend that they are not there,” he says.

The Navajo Nation is under strict lockdown terms right now, including a 57-hour lockdown rule over the weekends that sees no one coming in or out of the reservation. People can’t leave their homes between 8pm to 5am unless they are an essential worker or have a written pass.

So why are the cases so high? “Thirty per cent of people in the Navajo Nation still don’t have clean running water or electricity. We are being told to regularly wash our hands but for a lot of people that’s a 40 miles plus trip,” Jackson says. “Plus our resources are really low on the Navajo Nation – there are only six hospitals,” he adds.

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The Guardian’s own reporting revealed the Navajo Nation received its relief package six weeks after it was promised – only receiving it after suing the federal government. Meanwhile, Indian Country reports that the $8bn relief package set aside for almost 600 Native American Tribes is “woefully inadequate”.

Jackson has an entire YouTube channel, in the name of Jojo Jackson, dedicated to Native American culture: lip-syncing over Navajo artist Radmilla Cody’s songs; sharing his favorite sayings; and showcasing the fairs on the Navajo Nation that he loves. He enjoys making those videos most – but that doesn’t seem to be what the rest of the world is interested in.

“My videos only ever become viral when it is a cry for help. [People] never notice us for our culture or anything positive. And then they say, ‘oh, all they ever do is complain,” explains Jackson.

He is also often contacted by people spewing ignorance at him. They talk about Native Americans being freeloaders, because of ancient treaties promising Native Americans healthcare and schooling. “Yeah we have free healthcare but we only have six hospitals here. And look at what is happening,” he says.

Does he think that Trump is doing enough to help? “I don’t think there will ever be a time where the government has done enough for Native Americans, considering what they have done to us in the past and where we are now,” says Jackson.

He points out that even aside from the Covid-19 crisis going on reservations right now: Native American women are killed and trafficked at much higher rates than the US average – with a murder rate 10 times higher than the average on some reservations; meanwhile, Native people are currently having their sacred burial grounds blown up to build a border wall.

I ask him what message he wants to leave people with. “I just want us to be seen. Not as ‘other’, but just as people,” he says.