Translations 4 Our Nations: creating accessible COVID-19 information for Indigenous communities
The initiative’s founders discuss necessity, scarcity of adequate guidelines
During the months that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken grip over the entire world, many flaws within our institutions have been exposed — be they structural, medical, or judicial. One key issue is that information about the virus is largely inaccessible to many marginalized communities. Due to health care access disparities around the globe, COVID-19 poses an especially grave threat to Indigenous peoples.
Hoping to amend this and ensure that important information encompasses all languages and groups, Victor A. Lopez-Carmen, Sukhmeet Singh Sachal, Sterling Stutz, and Thilaxcy Yohathasan co-founded the Translations 4 Our Nations (TFON) initiative, which aims to translate documents related to COVID-19 awareness and prevention into Indigenous languages.
In a written interview with The Varsity, founder Lopez-Carmen and co-founders Sachal, Stutz, and Yohathasan emphasized the urgency driving this initiative.
