College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Liberal Arts and Sciences Liberal Arts and Sciences

The analysis highlights the failure of federal leadership and the inadequate provision of human and material resources to assist Native communities in combatting the spread of the coronavirus, and tribal governments’ exercise of limited sovereignty to cope with the pandemic. The research highlights the disfunctions of federal policies by casting light on the Trump administration’s unfathomable delay in providing funding to tribal governments and the failures of the Centers for Disease Control and federal Indian Health Service to gather, report, and share vital data with tribal governments at a critical juncture in the Covid-19 crisis. A focus on the Navajo Nation and Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and these two tribal governments’ desperate efforts to curb the spread of the virus accentuates strict lockdowns in addition to tribes’ own initiatives to liaise with federal agencies. The research emphasizes why the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic in Indian Country is a metaphor for the president’s broader disregard of Native political sovereignty and cultural survival.

Richard S. Conley is associate professor of political science. His teaching and research focuses on American national institutions, executive politics, comparative politics, and Native American politics. He teaches a semester course on Native American politics and history, and offers a spring break experiential learning course for students to visit Native reservations, interact with tribal and federal government officials, undertake service learning, and visit historic and spiritual sites in the Great Plains and the Southwest. His current research focuses on the intersection of executive, congressional, and Supreme Court politics on Native American policy in the post-World War II period, in addition to several projects regarding the politics of Native sacred site protection in the United States.