With Navajo Nation hit hard by Covid-19, this CNN Hero’s mission to help vulnerable elders has a new urgency

“There are many, many elderly people on the reservation that are homebound and alone,” stated CNN Hero Linda Myers, whose non-profit gives lifesaving provides for Native American elders. “Some of our elders live 60 miles from a grocery store. Many of them are traditional and don’t have running water or electricity.”

“We have … families with the virus at different hospitals (across the reservation),” Myers stated. “One of our elders lost her son, her daughter, her sister and her sister’s daughter.”

Losing Navajo elders is devastating, Myers says, not simply to households and family members, however for Navajo historical past.

“They hold the life for their families. They carry on the traditions, the ceremony, the language, the weaving. All the things come from these elders’ teachings,” she stated. “It’s a piece of history, a piece of culture.”

Myers, who lives in Salt Lake City and makes journeys to the reservation a number of occasions a yr, is working with donors and companions on the bottom to ship meals, masks and different provides to the elders in the course of the pandemic.

“When the virus hit, we quickly turned everything into food certificates, knowing special diets, knowing special medical needs,” she stated. “We have sent $225,000 worth of food certificates to our elders to help them sustain themselves, to allow them to get the right kind of foods, the fresh foods, the fresh meat, so that they’re not just relying on canned food items.”

The Navajo Nation has applied a number of the nation’s most intensive lockdown orders, together with curfews, closures and different restrictions. But the new guidelines additionally pose a new set of challenges for these in distant areas.

“Our elders … have to go sometimes 18 miles to pick up their water. They wait in long lines. They have to haul their water barrels,” Myers stated. “With the trading post closed, they have very little access to the kinds of things that are traditional things for Navajo people.”

To that finish, Adopt-A-Native-Elder has additionally ramped up efforts to ship yarn to elders who help themselves by means of weaving.

“While they’re in lockdown, they’ve been able to weave. They send us the rugs. We list them on our website for sale. So we’re helping them still sustain themselves in their traditional way,” Myers stated.

All proceeds from the sale of the rug go straight to the weaver.

The group can be working forward to get truckloads of firewood delivered to all of its elders in time for winter, when temperatures on the reservation can dip under zero.

“Firewood — six or seven loads of firewood — makes a huge difference in keeping the elders warm all day and all night,” Myers stated.

Myers, who has identified these elders and their households for greater than 35 years, says her work is ongoing and he or she’s impressed by supporters coming collectively in a time of disaster.

“I like to focus, too, on the good and positive that I see. The biggest thing is that people have stepped up. It’s brought more people to awareness,” she stated. “It’s really made a difference.”