Yá'át'ééh. Hello, my name is Shandiin Herrera. I’m a member of the Navajo Nation and I
reside in Monument Valley, Utah. I graduated from Duke with my Bachelors in
Public Policy in May of 2019 and I returned home to the Navajo Nation
as a Lead for America Hometown Fellow. My current role is as a policy analyst and
project consultant with the Oljato Chapter. Every day I was dealing with policy issues
in my own community, and thinking how we can amend these policies that
a lot of the time, we didn’t even create. These are policies that were forced upon our
people here on the Navajo Nation and we are still learning how to navigate our
own government and our own structures, and how to make policy more
understandable and accessible to everybody. And so, I find that I was really able to transfer
my education from Duke and policy, to the work I do here on the grounds as an advocate and as someone who is the
youngest person working right now my travel government here in Monument Valley. But you know, really just trying to make sure
that policy is not this “scary” term, that a lot of people think when they hear “policy”
and they hear the rhetoric we use. My job is really to make sure that everyone
understands what the policies here are, and how to navigate it. But also to really analyze
the structures in place, and how do we improve them for our people
to make it easier, so that our people can access
a homesite lease to build a house. That should be—it shouldn’t take 10 years,
which is kind of the norm, unfortunately. How do we make it so that our people have
access to running water and electricity? How do we protect our youth? How do we encourage higher education but also
maintain our traditional knowledge. These are all involved in the policy making
process, and I think it’s so important for people my age. I’m 23 years old and I immediately returned
home to the Navajo Nation, to really learn how our communities function, and how I can be an asset
in changing that for the better, And I really think that young people need
to be involved in this policy making process because these policies directly impact us
and our family. So it’s important that we have a seat at
the table. With the impacts of COVID-19, unfortunately, the Navajo nation is one of the hotspots in this country We have now over 1,500 positive cases
and nearly 60 deaths, and that rate per capita,
we’re ranked number three now in this country, which is absolutely insane. And I think for me, it’s kind of surreal to be living in this moment
and navigating through this change in reality But really, for me, my reality has changed
in that all of the chapters, which is the form of local government
here in on Navajo nation, all of the chapters have been completely shut down. So, that means I’m not currently working
right now. It’s just insane to think that we have a
land base of 27,000 square miles. We have 110 chapters. Our reservation is the size of West Virginia, yet all of our local governments
have been completely shut down. And I have seen in my own community and adjacent
communities, how this has directly impacted
our community members. Who do they go to?
Who do they call for help? And a lot of chapters was
the hub of information, support, and also the place you go for basic necessities,
such as water. Just literally any type of support you can
think of, the chapters you go to. It’s a little shocking that in a time of crisis,
that these institutions were completely shut down. And to me, that shows the lack of preventative
policy, the lack of preparedness, should something of this magnitude happen to us,
what are we going to do? And the first reaction should not be shutting
down. As a local government, we are supposed to be in the business of helping our people through anything. It was disheartening for that to happen, but really just showed me the dire need for policy improvement here on Navajo. Now that I’m not necessarily working with
my chapter, I have found other ways to be
involved and to help my people. I am a lead volunteer with the Navajo Hopi
COVID relief effort. I serve as the Utah lead as well as the call
center coordinator. We have distributed care packages to over
2,000 families, in over 45 communities on the Navajo Nation, as well as 4 of the 12 Hopi villages. And we have raised now, over 1 million dollars. And this relief effort is so needed because
we don’t have that support from our local governments. At the end of the day, our people need to
eat, they need water, their animals need to fed,
they need cleaning supplies. And that’s what we’re doing through this
relief effort, is proving that immediate aid
that our people need. And I just think that my involvement with
this relief effort also has just really highlighted the need for the relief effort, right? Had all the local governments stayed open and were able to provide that immediate relief
in their respective communities, there wouldn’t necessarily be this huge need for our relief effort, right. If that was just funneled through our local
government, and if there were policies, preventative policies in place, our people wouldn’t be struggling
as much as they are. We have over 4,000 requests for support right now
from folks across Navajo and Hopi. And unfortunately, they can’t just turn
to their local government for the support and that is why they’re reaching out to us. And that makes us so important and vital in
this pandemic for our people and I’m very fortunate that I am able to show up in this
way for my people, though it may not be immediately through my role as a policy analyst and project consultant
with my local government. But, as a volunteer and just seeing first-hand the implications of complete shutdowns and leaving our people in the dark, and seeing how we just really need to work together to get through this pandemic. And then hopefully, we learn from this and
we are able to analyze really, the purpose of our local governments. If they’re just going to shut down in a
time of crisis, then we really need to go back to the drawing board and see why that is and
rethink what is our government here for. What are we going to provide to our people
if not immediate support? So that’s just a little bit of what I have
seen here on the grounds in Monument Valley, and across the Navajo Nation. And this is why policy matters.
This is why policy is important. And I think now more than ever we are seeing
that in indigenous communities across this country.
