“The Gods of the Taino People,” Perkins Street (behind former Hi-Lo Foods), Jamaica Plain. By Rafael Rivera Garcia with Jose Ramos, Jose Alicea, John Montero.

Welcome to “Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times,” an ongoing open call series to share perspectives and reflections on the pandemic from Indigenous people and communities. For each post I’m donating to a cause supporting COVID relief in Indian Country. For more information on the series, submission instructions, or if you would like to contribute to author honorariums and donations, please see this post.

by Rosa Blumenfeld

Rosa Blumenfeld is Muisca raised Colombian and Jewish. Rosa is a writer, water follower, and mikveh guides who lives on Massachusett land in Boston, MA, USA. Website: www.rosablumenfeld.com IG: @spiritual_rosa FB: www.facebook.com/spiritualrosa

I live in a neighborhood of Boston that has been transformed over the last 40 years from Jamaica Spain, the city’s barrio, to Jamaica Plain (JP), a haven for white young urban professionals. They have taken over this neighborhood for the same reasons that I wanted to live here: it has good public transit access, the Jamaica Pond and the Arnold Arboretum. It is also Boston’s most walkable neighborhood, with small stores along Centre Street, very active neighborhood listservs and Facebook groups that emphasize caring for each other and social justice, and is very family friendly.

Although I have lived in the Boston area since 2006, I have always avoided living in Jamaica Plain. As a fellow Native/Indigenous woman raised Latinx, the gentrification and the entitlement that goes along with the white people who have slowly but surely taken over here has always enraged me, and I didn’t even grow up here. (Don’t know what I mean by saying I am Native Raised Latinx? Read my post about it here.) When I separated from my soon to be ex-husband, I lived in a friend’s guest room, then rented a room in a former trap house with 22 year olds who didn’t clean and stole from me. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and asked if anyone knew of housing in Boston on Facebook. The first listing I got was of a beautiful 2 bedroom that was below market rate because the landlord was a white JP progressive who wanted socially justice minded people in the house and could afford to do so. After a year of not feeling at home anywhere, I eagerly clicked on the photos and was delighted with what I saw. Plants everywhere, beautiful light, and artfully arranged furniture. I could tell right away that the white queer artist and social worker who lived there cared about not just having a place to live, but making it a real home. So despite my reservations about the Whole Foods and all the white yuppies in the neighborhood, including my new roommate, I moved in. I was tired and needed to feel like a whole person with a real home again.

Now that COVID 19 has hit, I wouldn’t say that I regret my decision, but the underlying tensions in my neighborhood are rising to the surface in big ways, just like they are in the rest of this country. Stopping the spread of the Coronavirus isn’t just about washing our hands or staying home. It is also about consistently and quickly out thinking the virus. We now need to prioritize the health of the whole by stopping our instincts to be physically close to our fellow human beings and starting again when we make unconscious mistakes like touching our faces or a door knob. Every. Singe. Time. The delivery guy who stood right in my doorstep to collect a package from my landlord upstairs a month ago wasn’t intentionally trying to invade my space. He was just standing where he normally stood, with a natural inclination to want to be close to another human being. He didn’t remember in that moment that times have changed and that he should ring the bell and then step back. In the absence of national leadership and agreed upon rules of engagement, people are left to figure out what social distancing means on their own, and it is pretty clear that we all have different definitions of what that means.

When I go outside to walk my dog in Jamaica Plain, it is like playing the old video game Frogger. I am constantly crossing the street, slowing my pace to maintain a 6 foot distance from someone and checking my surroundings so that people stay away from me. The white people who I see on the street still think that they are entitled to all the space, even during a global health pandemic. I no longer walk around Jamaica Pond because people seem to think that this is a vacation and on a nice day are walking on the path or sitting on the benches much less than 6 feet from each other. The runners sometimes do and sometimes don’t wear face masks. They definitely do not slow down or move around others to maintain their distance because apparently keeping their pace is more important than making sure their sweat or their spit doesn’t get someone sick. (Yes I still see runners spitting in the street even while Massachusetts is in lock down and has not hit its peak yet.) This is what it is like when I go outside, where there is plenty of space. I can’t even imagine what these people are like in the tiny Whole Foods that sits where the Hi-Lo supermarket used to be. I don’t even go in.

As we are seeing on the national stage, there is a way that white people think that their lives, convenience, and wealth are more important than anyone else’s. This is why there are protests to end quarantine in some states, why the Navajo Nation has more COVID 19 cases than 8 states, and quite frankly, why the virus has spread so quickly and so far in this country in the first place. I have been watching this play out from the safety of my own home where it’s been just me and my dog Penelope since the restaurant where I used to work as a server shut down right before Saint Patrick’s day. But now this entitlement has come home to roost. My roommate went to quarantine with her girlfriend at the beginning of the pandemic, and the heaviness of it all is starting to get to her. She wants to come home.

Growing up in an alcoholic home, I was taught to focus all of my attention out on another person and severely punished when I tried to think about myself. The way this manifests in my adult life is by me taking care of everyone else in my life at my own expense. It is really hard for me to figure out what I actually want when faced with a request for something from someone else. My first thought is to figure out how to give them what they want, even if it doesn’t make sense for my life or would even be bad for me. It also makes me hesitate to tell my story as a Native Raised Latinx person for fear of how it will be read and received by others. It is no accident that during a Trump presidency, the Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy dies in the darkness.” I agree with this principle, so despite my fear and not wanting to upset my roommate, here we are. Just as I would never silence another Native/Indigenous person or person of color, I cannot silence myself. Sometimes the best cure for white entitlement is the truth in broad daylight.

When my roommate first called me saying she wanted to come home, my first thought was to say yes. An interesting conversation ensued where she told me all about the ways that she had and had not been social distancing. How she went to her Mom’s house and waved at her from the sidewalk. How she needed to pee when she was there but it was too dangerous to go inside, so her mom threw her a roll of toilet paper and she went in the backyard. How she had done better in the house with just her and her girlfriend, and that it was tense when the roommate was home, especially with her boyfriend. She talked about how all four of them were still working and that it was hard to find a place to take zoom calls when they were all there. But luckily, since quarantine had started, it had only been all four of them in the apartment twice, for a week at a time, with a couple of weeks in between because the boyfriend lives alone. How she thinks that we will all end up in pods, but that our landlord probably won’t want to be in a pod with her.

A couple of things strike me now as I replay the conversation in my mind. I never told her how hard it has been on me to be living here alone. I chose to live with a roommate for a reason. I have struggled with anxiety, depression and disordered eating my whole life. Having the energy of other people in my own home helps me cope and do simple things that I struggle with: getting out of bed, eating, and going outside. Because she isn’t here I’ve had to dig deep and come up with other supports. I am spending lots of time on video chat with friends and family. I started this blog. I am turning to God, the universe, a higher power (I am still searching for a word that resonates most with me) and inviting them into an active relationship with me in my home. I am making friends with the plants in the apartment. I am cherishing my relationship with my dog more than I ever have. When the quarantine was first imposed and I was faced with an unknown amount of time alone, I couldn’t stand the silence of the apartment. It was very triggering. But now I notice the bird song outside my window as I write and I can tell I am not alone. Noticing all of these connections and being grateful for all of these relationships is huge progress for me.

As I reflected on this situation, I started to think about what I wanted and needed. With some help I realized that my top priority couldn’t be what my roommate wanted, but rather about my own needs. That I have a right to be safe and healthy both physically and mentally. And that during a global health pandemic, we both had a communal responsibility to each other to maintain our safety and health as well. Hers AND mine. In the ensuing conversation and email exchange, I told her that I wasn’t comfortable with her coming home. That the virus now considered us to be separate households. In my mind, this was pretty straight forward. No one likes the pandemic. We all want to escape from it. But the chess pieces fell where they did when this started and now we have to take responsibility for them. Make the best out of what we have. She had just told me how she hadn’t entered the homes of any of her friends or family, and neither had I. For most of the pandemic she has actually been having a pretty good time living with her girlfriend. They are getting along really well and making the most of it. They are baking bread, going on walks, and playing board games after dinner. They are both still employed. We were all in quarantine. All in this together, or so I thought.

Her reaction to the idea that she had to stay away for longer and do her part in the responsibility we all have to bear during the pandemic was to turn me into the evil roommate who was depriving her of her home and her ‘right’ to it. I was shocked at how quickly she shifted the responsibility of the pandemic completely onto me and refused to accept her part in it in any way. She had just told me she was obeying the rules of quarantine and not going to any one’s home. She had just told me that she was struggling like everyone but that she basically had a 2 bedroom apartment for herself and her girlfriend and they were having a great time. Where did this urgent ‘need’ to be in our house come from? She just ran through all these people in her life who she was social distancing from to keep them safe. I assumed that she would put me in that category too. I forgot to account for the fact that all those other people are white.

There is a long history in the Americas of white people treating Native/Indigenous people as less than human in order to get their way. When the colonizers came here and fought to dominate this land, the way that they fought each other and the way that they fought us is very telling. When European colonizers fought each other, there were rules. Face to face combat, everybody has a gun in their hand, an agreement on time and place. When the colonizers wanted something from the Native peoples of this land, they just took it. By giving out smallpox blankets for example. No rules. No warnings. Just murder and then land theft.

The City of Boston posted an infographic that I saw on the mayor’s Facebook page urging Boston residents to Be Polite, and wear face masks out in public. The mayor’s personal blurb used stronger language saying that it is unacceptable to be outside and not have a mask on. What I know is that this isn’t an issue of being polite. It is an issue of the entitlement that is built into the white people who live here. They don’t need to be more polite, they need to stop thinking that their lives are worth more and act accordingly.

As I develop this relationship with something greater than myself, navigate this pandemic as best I can, and struggle in my relationship with my white roommate, I am learning a lot about judgement and forgiveness. I am very angry about all the entitlement that I see, how many people have died, and all the ugliness that has always been there but is now more visible because of the virus. But I know that if I engage with that anger and let it harden into judgement, the only person that I am really hurting is myself. Bitterness does not lead to a peaceful and loving heart. It does not change the actions or hearts and minds of other people. It only leads me away from a spiritual center. I am not entitled to judge my roommate, or any other person on this earth. Whether they are wearing a mask or not, social distancing according to my version of the ‘right’ way, or handing out smallpox blankets. The Creator is the only one who can judge. It is also not my place to forgive my roommate or anyone else for their actions because again, that means that I felt entitled to judge them in the first place. The only place for forgiveness in my life is for myself. I get to forgive myself when I slip into the temptation to judge another person so that I give myself the opportunity to refrain next time. Given my story and the story of my peoples, this is a difficult road to walk. But if I expect others to give up their entitlement, I must give up mine too. In order to keep my own spirituality, my heart, and my sanity, I have to surrender it and give it away. God doesn’t want me to have an angry life and a bitter heart. Their purpose for me is much larger. I just have to keep listening, learning, and living for it to be revealed, one day at a time.

Donation for Rosa’s post will go to The NDN Collective’s COVID-19 Response Project, “designed to provide immediate relief to some of the most underserved communities in the country. NDN’s intent is to quickly distribute resources to frontline organizations, Tribes and individuals to provide gap services during this health crisis, and to artists and entrepreneurs who have suffered the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” as well as an additional donation to ActBlue’s split fund, which splits donations between 70+ community bail funds, mutual aid funds, and racial justice organizers.