PICURIS PUEBLO, N.M. (AP) — Small Native American villages are embracing extraordinary isolation measures that include guarded roadblocks to turn away outsiders and near-universal testing for the coronavirus. It comes in reaction to a contagion with frightening echoes of the past.
At Picuris Pueblo in northern New Mexico, leaders say survival is at stake and are going further than a statewide order.
Native Americans account for more than half of the COVID-19 infections statewide. New Mexico’s 19 indigenous pueblos view the coronavirus as an existential threat after early infections raced through some of their communities.