KUER Miyoshi Lee helps deliver the covid kits each month. She said her organization also offers other services, like help for people affected by stalking or domestic violence. “It's just paramount for us to be able to take care of our relatives, you know, and I feel like that is something that has been forgotten,” Ramirez said. And the virus has killed hundreds of them on the nearby Navajo Nation. Natives between age 60 and 80 are 2 to 3 times more likely to die from COVID-19, according to the Center for Disease Control. But COVID-19 caused the group to shift its mission to taking care of Native elders, who carry the knowledge and traditions of their people. “So it's just really important to us to have programming for Natives, by Natives.”īefore the pandemic hit, they held monthly dinners and a cooking circle for women and girls. “There's always a sense of community when Natives are together, but it just wasn't something that was an organization,” she said, while stirring the mush in a large metal pot. But Ramirez said there wasn’t a good place for them to gather and share traditional foods and stories before she started the Full Circle Intertribal Center. There are around 500 Native people living in Grand County, according to the U.S.

Goldtooth performed a traditional sheep butchering last year in order to deliver fresh mutton to elders around Moab on behalf of the FCIC. KUER Leslie Goldtooth (L) and Nate Lee (R) enjoyed a cup of Navajo tea along with the blue corn mush. Ramirez said they have raised $150,000 and delivered over 600 bags of food and cleaning supplies since March.Īfter filling 30 bags with corn for the elders, Ramirez ducked into a small kitchen next to the courtyard to help prepare blue corn mush for the other volunteers and talk about the group’s beginning. Eighteen months later, the non-profit has turned its efforts toward keeping Native elders safe during COVID-19, as well as added resources for Native residents of Grand and San Juan counties. Ramirez founded Full Circle Intertribal Center in May 2019 in order to help build community among Moab’s Native population.

“This is traditional steamed corn, which goes to our elders,” she said, throwing small sacks of the corn into the bags. They are filled with supplies for Native elders and single mothers around Moab. She’s tall and thin, with long black hair that touched the ground when she reached down to count the bags. Kristen Ramirez, who is White Mountain Apache, moved between them, giving directions. Before the pandemic, Full Circle Intertribal Center brought people together to cook traditional foods like this. KUER Ramirez stirs blue cornmeal and water together to make blue corn mush, a traditional food made by Native people in the Southwest.

Moab by Mara Ramirez