Welcome to “Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times,” an ongoing open call series to share perspectives and reflections on the pandemic from Indigenous people and communities. For each post I’m donating to a cause supporting COVID relief in Indian Country. For more information on the series, submission instructions, or if you would like to contribute to author honorariums and donations, please see this post.
By Vincent Barnargas, Jr.
Vincent Barnargas Jr, an Akimel O’odham from the Gila River Indian Community, is an unpublished novel and short story writer living in Chandler, Arizona. You can find him on Twitter @Windjammah.
They say there’s comfort in familiarity, but there’s horror there too. I find myself considering this as I watch my people suffer across the country, each and every story about tribes hit hard by the Pandemic bringing me closer to tears with every word no matter how many times they flow.
It’s an old story and a song I’m so sick of hearing. How many times does it bear repeating and how long until it’s played for no one at all?
I remember reading Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse and finding so much pleasure in her version of the post-apocalypse where the Diné people survived because they, “had already suffered their apocalypse over a century before.” Pragmatism is a tool of the marginalized and down-trodden, a necessity to bear the burden of survival as a question, as a goal rather than a given. But if pragmatism could save a tribe of people like mine, then at least they wouldn’t have to suffer again.
And though I won’t call this an apocalypse, instead of avoiding suffering I’m seeing tragedies written into our history once again.
I’ve been struggling to get through each day. My tribe has managed to get by with few losses compared to the state, but it’s hard to find comfort in that when one of those was my grandmother. I choose to believe she passed unrelated, having been in the hospital for a month prior to all of this happening. But it’s little comfort when nothing is the same, when on top of abbreviated funerary rites and an inability to touch one another I’ve lost someone dear to me and I will not be getting her back when all of this is over. For her, the stories have stopped.
I have been doing my best to lift my chin and push forward. This marks the most words I’ve written since all of this began, despite writing being my biggest outlet, my tool for pushing back against the darker times and celebrating the brighter ones. But I will keep trying because I think we need stories in times like these. We need to remember that we can win and not everything will be a tragedy. That, despite history and the present being familiar melodies, we can create new songs and sing them together. And I think that’s the biggest thing keeping me going: trying to do some good.
One day this will all be over. One day I’ll stop seeing the death counts rise. My hope is that one day the news will play a smaller part in my daily anxiety, but until that day comes and forever after it, my heart is with my people. It’s with everyone who has lost loved ones like I have and who also fears every day that they will lose more. But more than anything I wish for this to be the last time that I have to brace myself every time I read “native” and “tribe” in a headline. I fear that learning my history has narrowed that hope for me, but I will hope all the same.
It’s important to imagine a better world.
~~In loving memory of Ann Barnargas~~
The donation for Vincent’s post will go to the Navajo Nation Department of Health COVID Response, as well as an additional donation to ActBlue’s split fund, which splits donations between 70+ community bail funds, mutual aid funds, and racial justice organizers.