Risking our health to get the story

By Krista Allen
Special to the Times

When the Navajo Times in mid-March received news tips on some people contracting the coronavirus after attending a church zone rally in Chilchinbeto, Arizona, I didn’t want to drive over there to investigate.

I was scared. I didn’t have the best personal protective equipment. I had only a handful of cloth facemasks I made from 2-ply cotton fabric and polypropylene, machine sewn. I also had duckbill facemasks I made from Shop-Vac Type I fine filtration bags. And I had only one canister of Clorox disinfecting wipes.

So I decided to take shelter. A few days went by and I received a call from my friend and colleague Donovan who asked how I was doing and what I was doing to stay safe. We talked about how we were both going through the emotional toll of covering COVID-19.

When he asked if I was going to get a story on the zone rally, I told him I didn’t want to because I was afraid of the virus. After a lengthy conversation that cold dreary day, I decided to put on my combat boots, braid my hair, and get that story.

I started calling my sources across Western Navajo around the clock for three days, asking them what they knew about the rally. If they didn’t know, they connected me with people who knew even a small amount of information. I kept records and made a subject cluster and a directed graph.

Simultaneously, I kept a record of individuals who got infected and those who passed on of the virus, many who were my sources whom I’ve gotten to know and trusted me to share their stories in the paper over the last decade.

For the next several weeks, day and night, I received text messages and calls from sources telling me about who had been infected or passed on either in their home or in an ICU.

Mornings were not great. I woke up to text messages about another person who had passed on and a link to their funeral fundraiser on GoFundMe. So I prayed every morning. I prayed for our people, all of my colleagues, and the strength to keep reporting on the outbreak as the pandemic unfolded.

The follow-up story about the rally took even longer. I spent three months investigating – and waiting for sources to get back to me – because the story was important to tell.

While lives have been shaken by the global pandemic, documenting the year of COVID has been a particular challenge for reporters and photographers at the Times.

The virus hindered our travel, and it made our work more dangerous for us and our subjects. The constant stream of news can feel overwhelming, but we couldn’t switch off. We were under enormous pressure to make sure that our people were getting the right information about the outbreak. We interviewed grieving families and grieving individuals who not only lost someone – or everyone – in their family but also health, jobs and income, school, and sports.

We grieved with them. And the one word we heard the most this year was “anxiety.” We never had to deal with this before. The threat of the virus disrupted and distorted nearly every aspect of our lives and made in-person interviews really risky. We interviewed many of our sources over the phone and over Zoom to minimize risk. But when I had to go out for certain stories, I was always careful.

I wore two masks during the first surge and now I wear three masks in this second surge. When I ran out of disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer, I took a two-gallon bucket of bleach and water solution with me on trips so I could wash my hands and wipe down surfaces and my equipment on the road. I also took an extra gallon of solution for longer, all-day trips.

As the crisis continued, we got fatigued and exhausted. I remember my colleague Cindy saying one night she needed a short break and some sleep after a day of reporting, editing for days on end, and updating the COVID data and resources page on the Times’ website.

And one day, we started seeing our people’s stories in the mainstream media, many of which were stories Times journalists already covered. Suddenly they were interested in our people’s stories, the same stories they had previously ignored, and treated the public health issue here as an isolated event despite the fact that the water issues and “living conditions” aren’t unique to the Navajo Nation.

We saw that they even talked to the same sources we talked to weeks ago and many of them stalked Arlyssa’s Twitter account for news tips.

But that also meant we were weeks ahead of them as non-Native reporters parachuted into our communities and painted a picture of us that we are in absolute need, we can’t practice good hygiene, and lived in “Third World” conditions or in “poverty” on “the biggest reservation in the country.”

I often talked about these things with both Donovan and Arlyssa over the year. One of us was usually annoyed whenever these topics and issues came up. We’d often say, “It’s time to tell our own stories in large mass news media.”

As vaccinations begin across our virus-ravaged country, I am glad we writers and photographers made it this far. Many of us even had to quarantine and get tested and quarantine some more so we wouldn’t spread anything to the most vulnerable. We all know someone, including some of our own family members, who contracted the virus and recovered or died of the virus. But we did our very best in covering the outbreak.

I’m thankful for Donovan and Arlyssa, and for my sources who’ve checked up on me – to make sure I was getting enough to eat and getting enough sleep – over the year. I remember one of our medicine men, whom I often turn to for teachings and Navajo word usage for certain stories, telling me to keep praying and to use t’eesh and our herbs when I’m scared to go out for a story.

And thank you to our former leaders Peter MacDonald Sr. and Peterson Zah; to George Hardeen; and to all the journalists, editors, newspaper leadership, and local leaders who told me I am doing a great job reporting the outbreak. That means a lot to me and your words and encouragement have made me want to do better at what I do. Ahxéhee’.

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