A Vigil

This is a short story of a Diné daughter and her father, Farina King and Phillip Lee Smith, about their work with Native American communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. King recounts working with Cherokee and Native American students at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, homelands of the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees. As she organizes a vigil in Tahlequah to honor the victims of COVID-19, including her father’s older sister, Florence, the story intertwines with her father’s experiences and fight to save lives as a physician in a clinic on the Navajo reservation at that same time.