Ellen DeGeneres, Jason Momoa, other celebs helping Navajo Nation efforts to fight coronavirus
Some celebrities have begun helping the Navajo Nation with efforts to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus by donating supplies and spreading awareness.
The Navajo Nation has more than 1,000 reported confirmed cases of COVID-19, and more than 600 of those infected people live in Arizona. The Navajo Nation has more than 250,000 members and spans over 27,000 square miles across three states — northern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southern Utah.
The Navajo Nation announced its 57-hour weekend curfews will last through the last weekends of April. This requires residents to stay home and closes some essential businesses to help curb the spread of COVID-19.
Sean Penn's nonprofit to help with testing
The actor, who founded disaster relief nonprofit organization Community Organized Relief Effort, visited the Navajo Nation Friday to meet with President Jonathan Nez to provide more resources for COVID-19 testing.
He visited the community of Nazlini during one of Navajo Nation's distributions of food and essential items, according to a Facebook post from Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer's page.
Penn is looking to partner with Nez to provide help increase testing and assist with contact tracing, the process by which public health investigators find everyone a person who tests positive recently interacted with, according to the Facebook post.
According to CORE's website, the organization has helped to administer over 52,000 tests so far in Atlanta and LA, Malibu and Napa Valley in California.
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi donate face shields
DeGeneres and her wife donated about 240 face shields to the Navajo Nation through de Rossi's art company, General Public.
General Public is an art publishing company that uses 3-D technology to make textured prints of paintings. The company partnered with MultiCam to create the 3-D printed face shields, according to a press release from the Navajo Nation Council.
The protective face shields were delivered May 6 to Crownpoint Health Care Facility, Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services and Gallup Indian Medical Center.
Melissa Shoemaker, a Navajo Nation citizen who lives in Chicago, said her sister works at a health care center on the Navajo Nation and she told her they were "running dangerously low on personal protective equipment," according to the press release. Shoemaker then reached out to General Public after seeing a video of DeGeneres and de Rossi talking about donating the face shields.
"I decided to reach out to Ellen and Portia as a shot in the dark. Thankfully, General Public's president Randi Spieker responded to my inquiry and immediately began coordinating the donation to be flown by Michael Rogers, the company's founder and pilot, to Gallup for distribution," Shoemaker said in the press release.
Jason Momoa sends water to Tuba City
Momoa, who is perhaps best known for his roles in "Game of Thrones" and "Aquaman," sent 20,000 cans of his Mananula Pure Water to the Navajo Nation, according to Cassandra Begay, a spokesperson for Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund.
The Fund is an "all volunteer grassroots indigenous-led group operating on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations," according to its website, navajohopisolidarity.org.
An associated GoFundMe has raised more than $874,000 as of Monday evening. It is not clear who is managing the money or if the fund is registered as a nonprofit.
The Navajo Nation has a shortage of running water. In many households, the only source of water is to haul it in, bottle by bottle or barrel by barrel, from a communal supply point.
At least 15% of Navajo Nation homes have no running water at all, according to the official tribal tally, but the real number may be 40% to 50%.
"One-third of Navajo and Hopi families in this era must travel miles to haul water, while only 16 grocery stores and small food markets serve the entire area," according to Begay.
Momoa posted on Instagram to announce his delivery of the cans of water to the Navajo Nation.
"My water company is still small but I’m doing what I can to help those that need it the most," Momoa said in the Instagram post.
The Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Effort will include the water donated in food baskets that provide two weeks of food to households, according to Begay.
The effort has served more than 1,500 families in 40 communities on the Navajo Nation and in four out of the 12 Hopi villages.
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Mark Ruffalo, Paul Rudd and Taika Waititi help efforts to educate
Protect the Sacred is an initiative created to educate Navajo youth to rise up and protect the nation's elders, languages, medicine ways and cultures during the pandemic.
The project was started to help give information to the youth on how to keep their families safe and stay home to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Actors Ruffalo and Rudd and director Waititi have participated in Protect the Sacred livestreamed Facebook events and have used social media to spread the word, according to the initiative's website.
They participated in a Facebook livestreamed event April 10 with Nez calling on young people to stay inside during the weekend curfew to help stop the spread of the virus.
"I know it's tough to be inside as a young person — there is nothing that anyone could do to hold me inside the house as a kid — it's not just about saving ourselves and our grandparents but this thing attacks young people, and hundreds and hundreds of young people have died from it already. It's indiscriminate on who it gets," Ruffalo said in the livestream.
He also said the initiative is starting a challenge called "Hero and Shero" for young children to overcome the difficulty of staying inside. He said if the challenges are met, he will come out to the Navajo Nation and throw a "party" to make up for the parties they're missing during the curfew.
The challenge includes four activities for youth to participate in with their families. Families can sign up on protectthesacred.care.
Late Sen. Barry Goldwater's granddaughter delivers hazmat suits
While Barry Goldwater may not be at the same level of fame as actors, the late senator is known nationally as the libertarian firebrand who lost a presidential election but inspired a new conservative movement.
His granddaughter's foundation partnered with Blok Industries to deliver 20,000 hazmat suits to help COVID-19 response for the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe.
The hazmat suits will protect first responders against the virus, according to a spokesperson for the Barry & Peggy Goldwater Foundation.
Goldwater's granddaughter, Alison Goldwater Ross, create the foundation "to digitize, curate, restore and preserve Goldwater’s extensive collection of 15,000 negatives and 25 miles of historical images primarily of Arizona’s native people and landscapes," a press release said.
GOLDWATER'S GRANDDAUGHTER: Why she wants to share his photography with the world
After the pandemic started, Goldwater Ross wanted to focus the foundation to help find resources for aid to support the Hopi and Navajo tribes, the press release said.
Those interested in donating to the Barry & Peggy Goldwater Foundation to help bring relief to communities affected by the new coronavirus can visit goldwaterfoundation.org
Reach breaking news reporter Alyssa Stoney at alyssa.stoney@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter @stoney_alyssa
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Coronavirus: Jason Momoa, Ellen DeGeneres, Paul Rudd aid Navajo Nation
