On a cloudy spring day, hundreds lined up in their vehicles on the Canadian side of the border crossing that separates Alberta and Montana. They had driven for hours and camped out in their vehicles in hopes of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine from a Native American tribe that was giving out its excess doses.
The Blackfeet tribe in northern Montana last month provided about 1,000 surplus vaccines to its First Nations relatives and others from across the border, in an illustration of the disparity in speed at which the US and Canada are distributing doses.
While more than 30 percent of adults in the US are fully vaccinated, in Canada that figure is about 3 percent, as Canada lacks the ability to manufacture the vaccine.
Photo: AP
Among those who received the vaccine at the Piegan-Carway border crossing were Sherry Cross Child and Shane Little Bear, of Stand Off, about 50km north of the border.
Cross Child and her husband have family and friends in Montana, but have not been able to visit them since the border closed last spring to all but essential travel.
“It’s been stressful because we had some deaths in the family, and they couldn’t come,” she said. “Just for the support, they rely on us, and we rely on them. It’s been tough.”
More than 95 percent of the Blackfeet reservation’s roughly 10,000 residents who are eligible for the vaccine are fully immunized, after the state prioritized Native American communities — among the most vulnerable US populations — in the early stages of its COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
The tribe received vaccine allotments from the federal Indian Health Service and the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, leaving some doses unused. With an expiration date fast approaching, it turned to other nations in the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Blackfeet, and three tribes in southern Alberta that share a language and culture.
“The idea was to get to our brothers and sisters that live in Canada, and then the question came up: What if a nontribal member wants a vaccine? Well, this is about saving lives. We’re not going to turn anybody away” said Robert DesRosier, emergency services manager for the Blackfeet tribe.
The tribe distributed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines over four days last month at the remote Piegan Port of Entry.
As news of the effort spread in Canada, first by word of mouth, then through social media platforms and media reports, people traveled from farther away. Some drove five hours from the city of Edmonton.
Blackfoot Confederacy health administrator Bonnie Healy said she was glad the vaccination effort reached both First Nations and other communities in the province.
“We have family members that live in those areas,” she said. “If we can get these places safe, then it’s safe for our children to go to school there. It’s safe for our elders to go shopping in their stores.”
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