The Northern Arapaho Tribe shared a message to all tribal members from Chief Medical Officer Paul J. Ebbert, MD:
To All Tribal Members;
We are seeing new Coronavirus cases several times a week. This is a reminder that the Wind River Reservation Stay-At-Home Order is still in place. You should stay in your homes except to get food and to get medical care. Everyone needs to practice social distancing, good hand-washing, wearing masks in public and all other instructions you have been given to protect you, your family and our elders from this virus. Tribal members are starting to relax their standards a little bit and this is putting people at risk.
This also means that the order to have no gatherings of no more than ten(10) people is still in place. Several times over the last couple weeks people have chosen to violate this order. In one case this resulted in exposure to many Tribal members from someone who came from out of town. In another case someone attended a birthday party who was supposed to be quarantined and may have exposed many people.
The rule is no gatherings of more than ten(10) people. The Joint Tribal Council has passed a resolution and you can be cited if you do so.
If you are told by the State or by one of the clinics that you are quarantined then you must stay home and follow the rules that are given to you. The Joint Resolution gives the Tribe the authority to incarcerate you if you fail to do so. This is because you are endangering other people if you do not.
I know this is hard and we are all getting tired. But, the way to keep the number of cases down and the number of deaths down is for people to self-isolate, social distance, wear masks and to wash their hands frequently. Our positive cases are spread over a much wider area than they were initially. Please do not put yourself, your family or our elders at risk and follow the rules that the Tribe is set out.
Paul J. Ebbert, MD
Chief Medical Officer