The Pandemic in Prison: How COVID Robbed Native Inmates of Vital Cultural and Spiritual Support by Frank Hopper

Many different reasons brought the Native American members of the Tribal Sons to prison, but once there one thing united them: The path of the Red Road. For many, like myself, it was our first introduction to Native Spirituality, to the Sweat Lodge and to the Čhaŋnúŋpa.

Now, because of the pandemic, the Tribal Sons, an inmate Native American spirituality circle at Washington Corrections Center, cannot meet. They cannot sweat. They cannot beat Brother Drum together, cannot even sing or pray together. And it’s getting a little annoying.

The importance of Native spirituality in prison

Jay Powell, a longtime member of the Tribal Sons, spoke to me recently about the healing he’s seen and experienced practicing Native American spirituality in prison.

 “If it wasn’t for the spirituality of our walk, learning more about ourselves and finding ourselves in the Sweat Lodge and around that drum in that ceremony, then a lot of that stuff wouldn’t have happened.”

As I listened to Jay speaking over the phone from the joint, I thought about the “stuff” that brought us all to prison, the bad choices we made while suffering from the anger and the poverty, the substance abuse and the systemic oppression, and the unresolved trauma of previous generations that we inherited.

We don’t consider ourselves victims. Our bad choices, our “stuff,” hurt people, often our family and friends. But once exposed to Native spirituality we saw a better way. We saw how our traditions still have the power to heal us and make us grow. We saw how these practices had been stolen from us and that restoring them into our lives soothed the pain we felt.

Then the pandemic hit.

How COVID affected prison life

I am no longer an inmate, but I’m still considered a member of the hoop. I’ve returned as a visitor several times. In 2017 I was welcomed back and was allowed to attend a sweat with the brothers on the prison grounds. In the years since then I’ve attended a couple Tribal Sons powwows and danced with my brothers. So the impact of the pandemic on them has worried me. I asked Jay how the pandemic has affected the Tribal Sons.

“We all had COVID, pretty much the entire prison. It’s been stressful. They had us living on the gym floor. Then they moved us from the gym floor back to our base units.

“Even the guys who didn’t have COVID, they moved them in with guys who did to ensure that everybody got it and pretty much got it out of the way. So now everybody in the prison’s had it and we’re just trying to get back on track. We still don’t have any type of movements or nothing right now.

“We’re a little bit more fortunate than some of these other prisons where guys were dying. We haven’t had nobody die here yet.”

I asked whether they’re able to have sweat lodge or any other type of meetings.

“No,” Jay said, “nothing. No Drum Meeting, nothing. For a while they wouldn’t let us sweat, but they allowed our tribal sponsor Bob Bouchard to come and we would go down to the sweat lodge grounds and tend fire and drum. We were able to do that until the beginning of September. And now it’s just nothing.”

I asked, “How is that affecting everybody?”

“It’s pretty bad,” Jay replied. “People are irritable. I feel like a lot of the guys are more aggressive and outside their character when it comes to just everyday living here now because you don’t have nothing to hold onto or to keep you in line anymore, if that makes sense. Like, you just took a building block or a foundation block away from a lot of us. Or you just took the string that was holding us together. It’s like we’re a string of beads and you took the string and now everything’s going any old way at once.”

A string of beads without the string

What better analogy can there be for many Native Americans? Without the string of our heritage we become loose beads going any old way at once. The loss of cultural support in prison due to the pandemic is no different from the loss of culture our ancestors suffered. They became lost beads, rolling every which way but loose.

In the pressure cooker of prison, that’s not a good thing.

“We got a lot of guys with dirty U.A.’s and fighting and drinking and stuff like that,” Jay said. “It’s been pretty rough for the majority of the hoop.”

Jay said the prison has started vaccinating inmates, so hopefully it won’t be long before things get back to normal.

Eventually the spiritual vaccinations of the Sweat Lodge ceremony, the drumming and singing, the camaraderie and the sharing will return, inoculating the brothers from the sickness of being lost beads.

After speaking with Jay I gained a new appreciation for the sacred medicine of our traditions and culture. I remembered how important it was to me when I was down by law. And especially how devastating it must have been for my ancestors to lose it.

Frank Hopper, Tlingit, is a freelance photojournalist, a member of the Tribal Sons, and a former inmate at Washington Corrections Center.