Biden, Harris host memorial honoring COVID casualties

By Aliyah Chavez. Reprinted with permission by Indian Country Today.

On the eve of their inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris participated in an event honoring lives lost to the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 400,000 people have died in the country, including many Indigenous and people of color who have been disproportionately impacted by the virus.

Tuesday evening's memorial in Washington, D.C., surrounded the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with 400 lights. It marked the first-ever lighting of the reflecting pool, according to the inaugural committee.

Around the nation, hundreds of cities, tribes, and landmarks held tributes of their own, including the Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle.

In Billings, Montana, a teepee will be illuminated on top of Sacrifice Hill in Swords Park to honor Native lives lost to the virus.

"Today we return home, seeking refuge in our teepees, our beacons of hope. We share our grief, hope, strength, and resolve with all those who have traveled on and those still among us," said Tom Rodgers who is Blackfeet and president of the Global Indigenous Council.

Sacrifice Hill is reportedly named in honor of two Crow warriors who rode horses over the cliff to their deaths. They were returning from a scouting mission to find their loved ones among the dead at a tribal camp nearly wiped out by a smallpox outbreak in the mid-19th century, the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council said.

"We will remember those taken by a merciless pestilence, and when we will tell their stories we will speak of how they lived when they walked among us," Rodgers said.

Indian Country Today has documented Indigenous lives lost in our series "Portraits from the Pandemic."