Indigenous interventions, sociological understandings of inequalities and Covid-19

Abstract

The ways in which Covid-19 exacerbated already existing inequalities across racialised, gendered, and class relationships (within and between countries across the globe) has been expressed in a myriad of forums by, for instance, academics, journalists, NGOs , international organisations, and activists. I start with the links between ‘race’ (or what I prefer to call ‘racialised groupings’ so as not to imply that race is a biological category, but a social construction with social consequences) and ’class’ (as an indication of position occupied in the capitalist economic system). A United Nations (UN) Report in 2020 entitled Racial Discrimination in the Context of the Covid-19 Crisis addresses the question of access to health care and notes that “the Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated long-standing [and racialised] structural inequalities in terms of access to healthcare facilities, goods and services”. The chapter, which consists of my answering questions posed by the editors, explores this starting point and elaborates on its implications for Indigenous sociological understandings, Indigenous methodologies, and transformative educational processes.