Native Sun News Today Editorial: Looking ahead to the new normal

Thursday, May 21, 2020

By Native Sun News Today Editorial Board

Like small businesses across Indian Country, Native Sun News Today, felt, and is still feeling, the impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

We had a lot of customers on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations and we were not allowed to deliver papers there. We agree with the tribes that they have every right to secure their borders and to protect the people of the reservations.

We print our papers on Tuesday night and the papers sit on the dock at our printer until Wednesday morning so there is no way the newspapers can be infected by the time they are delivered. We had our delivery person tested and she was negative for the virus. We also went by the memo sent out by OST that newspapers were essential.

But our driver was stopped from delivering, and like we said, we agree with the caution they are taking. We only wish they had let us know before we printed so many papers that we would not be able to deliver them. It hurt us pretty badly financially.

"Dear President Trump": First Kristi Noem made a legal threat. Now Republican @govkristinoem of #SouthDakota is asking the White House for help in taking down #Coronavirus checkpoints on two reservations. #COVID19 #Sovereignty #HonorTheTreaties https://t.co/I7j8FPVU62
— indianz.com (@indianz) May 21, 2020

We are back printing again and we hope to continue bringing our readers local and national news from Indian Country. We appreciate our many readers who called the paper wondering why we did not deliver the papers on the reservation because it gave us an opportunity to assure them that everything was OK and we would be delivering again once the tribes again saw our business as essential.

There are several new cases of coronavirus on Pine Ridge and Rosebud and we are keeping an eye out on the other reservations. We had an article in last week’s paper about the major outbreak on the Navajo Nation.