Justina from Gen7 -Reflections on Quarantine Life

​Hello my name is Justina I’m a part of Gen7 and have been for a little over a year now . I was born and am living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I am sixteen years old and am a sophomore. With the COVID-19 pandemic happening a lot has changed here and all over the world. I will be informing you on what’s personally happening to me and my family. There have been a lot of tribal meetings on how we will protect our people and especially our elders. Recently they have set a curfew that is from 10pm-6am, they have also shut down our rez to non-residents , essential travel can still pass by though. I’m extremely lucky that I go to the only private school on the rez. We haven’t gone to school in three weeks but the school has supplied every student with chromebooks , and we’ve been doing Zoom meetings , along with many other apps to help us learn from home. They also send out lunches that have a lot of food in them to students. It’s definitely taken some adjustment though. My family stocked up on food , in Rapid City as soon as we got out of school. My father still has work still , he’s road maintenance for the tribe. My mother is a teacher so she helps us at home while she is working. We’ve had no cases so far , but we did have a scare , thank Tunkasila the test came back negative. The day we were informed about distance learning at school , we prayed , we had an elder speak , we sang and all came together, and we also smudged twice , once during the prayer and again when students left to go home. We all are continuing to pray in our own ways , for our families and for the world. I feel the panic is there because of how unpredictable the sickness is. We keep reminding ourselves that we are strong indigenous people , our people have survived “the end of the world” many times before. We will get through this, we just need to continue protecting ourselves. I’m spending my time by going on walks with my family in our land , I’ve been focusing on myself a lot more too. People can help us by praying , or acknowledging to keep our elders protected and safe and to please stay home. We will overcome this if we all come together to fight it.