Wisconsin tribes devastated by COVID-19 roll out vaccine quickly, but Native Americans' vaccination rates still lag behind whites'

COVID-19 vaccination rates among Native Americans in Wisconsin have been relatively high, a ray of optimism for a group that has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic — though vaccination rates still lag behind those for white Wisconsinites.

About 12% of the estimated 92,000 people who identify as Native American in the state have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis.

Tribes in Wisconsin receive vaccine from either the state or the Indian Health Service, a federal agency, and have scaled up their own distribution systems to make sure tribal members, descendants and others get a vaccine.

For the last two months, the Ho-Chunk Nation has held weekly community vaccination clinics in Baraboo and Black River Falls. The tribe has given at least one shot to nearly 3,400 people, some of them tribal members and others not, according to its vaccine dashboard.

Other tribes, including the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and the Menominee Indian Tribe, have also organized vaccination clinics where tribal members, tribal employees, teachers who work with tribal youth and others may get the vaccine. 

The efforts show in the vaccination numbers. Native American vaccination rates have been higher than those for Black and Hispanic residents of the state. Nearly 7% of Black residents and a little under 7% of Hispanic or Latino residents have received at least one shot.

Still, the Native American vaccination rate lags behind that of non-Hispanic white residents, about 20% of whom have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Journal Sentinel analysis, which examined data from the state Department of Health Services and U.S. Census bureau information.

COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Native American communities, in part because of inequities that put Native people at higher risk of developing serious illness from the virus.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that in 14 states that provided data, Native people were 3.5 times more likely to contract the coronavirus than white people and had nearly 2 times the COVID-19 mortality rate of white people. The study also found that Native people who died from COVID-19 were much younger than the white people who died.

"It really has become apparent the urgency of assuring that high-risk Natives ... have an opportunity to get that vaccine," said Dr. Lyle Ignace, executive director of the Gerald L. Ignace Indian Health Center, which serves Native Americans in the Milwaukee area. 

The communities that have made the most progress in immunizing their Native populations are in Ashland, Bayfield, Menominee, Shawano and Vilas counties.

In Shawano County, where the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe is located, more than 1,000 Native people have gotten at least one shot. Native people make up nearly 10% of the county's population, according to Census estimates, and they account for 13% of county residents who have been vaccinated.

Stockbridge-Munsee had enough vaccine in February and March to put on several community vaccination clinics, where it immunized hundreds of people, said Andrew Miller, clinic director of the Stockbridge-Munsee Health and Wellness Center.

"Our goal ... is really to focus on getting vaccines into as many arms as possible to try to get to that 80% vaccination rate that will allow us to return to normal life," he said.

As sovereign entities, many tribes identified their own priority groups for distributing the vaccine, using recommendations from the CDC as a guide. Some tribes have expanded vaccine eligibility to broader groups of people than the state has.

The Oneida Nation is allowing tribal members 55 or older to get the vaccine. Both Stockbridge-Munsee and the Ho-Chunk Nation have been vaccinating anyone 18 or older who is a tribal member or descendant and their household members since February, according to tribal health officials.

"We want to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible," Dr. Amy DeLong, medical director of the Ho-Chunk Nation Health Department, said during an online town hall about the vaccine last month.

That pace has put them ahead of the state, which is in an earlier phase of its version of the vaccine rollout.

Both DeLong and Miller said they knew of people traveling from far-flung states back to Wisconsin to get the vaccine from their tribe because they couldn't get it from the county or state they live in.

"We are ahead of a lot of other states and counties in the tiers getting the vaccine, so I know personally people who are traveling from Colorado, from Montana to come to our vaccine clinics," DeLong said.

Over the next three weeks, the Ho-Chunk Nation plans to expand vaccination efforts by holding vaccination events in Wittenberg, Nekoosa and Tomah, according to a news release issued Tuesday by the tribe's health department, which serves a 16-county area largely in Wisconsin.

In the release, the tribe said it had vaccinated about a third of its tribal members living in Wisconsin. It added that about 400 of the 700 Ho-Chunk elders living in Wisconsin have received at least one dose.

The Ho-Chunk, as well as the Oneida Nation and the Menominee Indian Tribe, receive vaccine through the state. The remaining eight federally-recognized tribes in Wisconsin, as well as the Gerald L. Ignace Indian Health Center in Milwaukee, receive vaccine through the Indian Health Service, according to the federal agency.

Milwaukee County lagging behind

Milwaukee County, where more Native Americans live than anywhere else in the state, is lagging behind other counties in inoculating its Native residents. At least 770 Native residents of Milwaukee County have been vaccinated, out of about 14,500 residents who identify as Native, according to DHS and Census figures.

That’s fewer shots than have been given to Natives in other counties with much smaller Native populations.

Put another way, less than a half of one percent of the vaccines for Milwaukee County residents have gone to Native Americans, but they make up 1.5% of the county population.

Other groups, including African Americans and Latinos, in Milwaukee County are also underrepresented among vaccine recipients.

City officials hope to address the disparities by using mobile sites to take the vaccine to underserved communities and by directing vaccination programs toward specific ZIP codes.

The Gerald L. Ignace Indian Health Center is trying to boost Native vaccination rates, with help from the state.

This week, the health center held a three-day vaccination event for any Milwaukee County adults who are enrolled tribal members or descendants and immunized about 460 people, said spokesman Jeremiah Wayman.

Dr. Lyle Ignace, the executive director, said it's not always possible for tribal members living in the Milwaukee area to travel to their tribe — whether it be out-of-state or outside the Milwaukee area — to get the vaccine.

"We offer that outlet for Natives who reside in an urban setting away from their reservation, and we offer them that opportunity to get them their vaccine," he said.

Sarah Volpenhein is a Report for America corps reporter who focuses on news of value to underserved communities for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Email her at svolpenhei@gannett.com. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to this reporting effort at JSOnline.com/RFA.