Navajo students describe pandemic struggles to Jill Biden

ST. MICHAELS, Ariz. (AP) — Students on the country’s largest Native American reservation spoke to first lady Jill Biden on Friday about challenges they've faced during the coronavirus pandemic, including poor internet service and feelings of isolation.

The hourlong discussion took place at Hunters Point Boarding School, a small, aging grade school in St. Michaels, on the outskirts of the Navajo Nation capital.

The visit came as the first lady wrapped up a three-day tour of the U.S. Southwest, where she stopped at coronavirus vaccination clinics in New Mexico and Arizona and met with female tribal leaders who shared their concerns about the needs of the Navajo people.

The handful of students who spoke to the first lady were from schools in the area surrounding Window Rock.

Each explained there were times when they couldn’t get online for classes on the vast and remote reservation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, said Lesley Tohtsoni, who moderated the talk.

Biden told them help was on the way for broadband through her husband's administration.

“We so often focus on the negatives of the pandemic and — she brought this up — one of the positives is we have looked closely at education and the role teachers play and what they do for students, and the lack of equity across the board, from one end of our country to another,” said Tohtsoni, who teaches U.S. history at the Navajo Preparatory School in Farmington, New Mexico.

Across the Navajo Nation, students have been learning remotely, some given flash drives with schoolwork or paper packets if they have no access to computers. The tribe has maintained strict COVID-19 restrictions after having one of the country’s highest per-capita infection rates early on in the pandemic.

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