 Nearly two years after the COVID pandemic began, members of the Choctaw tribe in Mississippi are still figuring out how to cope with their grief as the community witness a death rate per capita three times higher than the state average. COVID-19 has taken a disproportionate toll among Native Americans. As of March 2022, 130 Choctaw on this Mississippi reservation died from the virus. When you lose the first five, you're going to cry, but it got to the point where I got desensitized. The death rate among Choctaws was three times higher than the state average, and Mississippi suffered the worst death rate per capita in the country. Jeremy Bell runs the local bus service and lost family members. I mean, it was just like, you heard about your cousin passing, yeah. Somebody said, what's the worst that you've ever said? And I said, I buried a cousin at 11 o'clock on a Saturday, and I stayed down there because at one o'clock I was buried another cousin. Chronic health issues in the community and underfunding also played a part in the high death rate. The significance of the extent of the suffering is not lost on the tribe's chief, Cyrus Ben. Our ancestors went through a lot of adversity and tragedy, but to know that we are in the lineage of those that were so resilient, that that is what continues to push, that hopefully one day the future generations can look upon us to know that we were strong and resilient in our own rights. Testet number seven, Nisheema Ladania Crosby. In the middle of the pandemic, Bell named Sheema Crosby as winner of the Choctaw Indian Princess pageant. Almost a year on, that celebration is still tinged with grief caused by COVID-19. She lost her grandmother to the virus. A lot of us are so ready to move on, but we haven't even reflected on what we've lost. So I feel like we need to take a step back, learn what we've lost in order to move forward before we can even forget that COVID happened. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.