Shall Furnish Medicine
Series.
Reservations have been some of the hardest-hit communities in the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, for Native Americans, this all feels awfully familiar...the arrival of a terrible illness that kills elders while the federal government does little to stop it. But this time, tribes know what to do. Coming September 29, we'll bring you a three-part series we're calling Shall Furnish Medicine, tracing that devastating history from its beginnings.
For Native Americans, the story of pandemics started the moment European colonizers stepped foot off their ships. Savannah Maher's tribe the Mashpee Wampanoag experienced that first Great Dying. Arapaho and Shoshone descendant Taylar Stagner tells the history of how those diseases came West as a form of biological warfare.
It's the late 1800s. With no government help in sight, Omaha citizen Dr. Susan LaFlesche is determined to bring health care to her tribe. Decades later, the U.S. still hasn't gotten around to fulfilling its treaty promise to furnish medicine. So, tribes find a way to take over their health care system, and a quiet social movement is born.
When COVID-19 arrives on reservation borders, tribes aren't sure if their newly minted health care programs can hold up against the onslaught. The fear is that this is history happening all over again. But the two tribes on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming decide early to roll up their sleeves–literally–in a fight for the very survival of their tribal identity.
November is Native American Heritage Month…and in recognition, we thought we’d re-release the first episode of our third season “Shall Furnish Medicine.” In it, we connected the dots between the spread of European diseases among Indigenous communities when Europeans first arrived and we examined what that history of genocide meant when the COVID-19 pandemic struck home in Native communities. This episode, “The Great Dying,” recently won a couple of big awards – a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for best news documentary and a national Public Media Journalism Association award for best long documentary. Kudos to reporters Savannah Maher and Taylar Stagner! Hope you enjoy!
