Checkpoints, Curfews, Airlifts: Virus Rips Through Navajo Nation (original) (raw)
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Police officers from the Navajo Police setting up a road block in Window Rock, Ariz., on April 3. Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
The coronavirus is tearing across the largest Native American reservation in the United States. Facing a spike in deaths, Navajo officials are scrambling to respond.
Police officers from the Navajo Police setting up a road block in Window Rock, Ariz., on April 3. Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
- Published April 9, 2020Updated April 20, 2020
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — When Chad Yazzie joined the Navajo Police Department just a few months ago, he expected to issue speeding tickets or break up the occasional fistfight.
But the coronavirus is now tearing across the largest Indian reservation in the United States. The Navajo Nation’s casualty count is eclipsing that of states with much larger populations, placing the rookie cop on the front lines.
“My job is to tell our people to take this virus seriously or face the consequences,” Officer Yazzie, 24, said as he set up a police roadblock outside the town of Window Rock to enforce the tribal nation’s 8 p.m. curfew.
Faced with an alarming spike in deaths from what the tribal health department calls Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19 — or Covid-19 — Navajo officials are putting up checkpoints, assembling field hospitals and threatening curfew violators with 30 days in jail or a $1,000 fine.
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