Veteran-led organization battles food insecurity on Navajo Nation during holidays

By the time she completed an eight-year stint in the U.S. Army after graduating from Navajo Prep in 1994, Bernadine “Bernie” Tyler said her first inclination was to seek a bit of a break from the military lifestyle.

But when she returned to her hometown of Shiprock, Tyler said she nevertheless found herself drawn to performing volunteer work for veterans who need help filing their taxes and claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, she said that kind of work had become so meaningful to her that she wanted to do it full time.

That’s when Tyler signed on as a program leader for the Diné Naazbaa Partnership, a community-led initiative designed to connect with Navajo veterans and help them access quality resources and opportunities.

“Now, I’m boots on the ground, helping veterans on a daily basis,” she said.

The DNP aims to help Navajo vets on a variety of fronts, but this time of year, much of its attention is focused on battling food insecurity among former service members. Tyler works as part of a two-person team with Karen Shirley to engage with and provide assistance to Navajo veterans who don’t have a reliable, steady source of food — something that is a year-round issue on the reservation, but one that gets even worse around the holidays, she said.

“Everybody’s in more of a financial crunch this time of year, so it’s essential we get food to veterans,” she said.

Tyler said it becomes more apparent how much of an issue food insecurity is among Navajo veterans every time her organization stages a food drive or food giveaway on the nation, like the one it conducted recently in Tuba City, Arizona. She said the event attracted veterans from all over the region, many of whom normally wouldn’t have bothered to seek help.

“But a lot of them hitched a ride with family members because they need the services we offer,” Tyler said.

Getting food to hungry veterans is a two-fold problem, she acknowledged. First, there’s the issue of collecting enough food to meet demand, but DNP addresses that aspect by partnering with local VFW posts and the Economic Council Helping Others in Farmington, which operates the local food bank.

Finding a solution to the second part of the problem is a bit thornier, Tyler said, noting that the Navajo Nation — home to 14,000 veterans — is more than 27,000 square miles in size, roughly the same size as the state of West Virginia. Regularly dispersing that much food over such a broad territory is an enormous challenge, she said.

“It is tough to try to reach everybody on the Navajo Nation, as large as it is,” Tyler said.

That has led Tyler and Shirley to enlist the help of what they call “battle buddies” — veterans with reliable transportation who are willing to look after and help other veterans who may not be able to care for themselves. Those volunteers often are tasked not just with delivering food to those who need it, but making sure that food is being consumed.

“When they’re sick, they’re not eating,” Tyler said. “We have to look out for each other.”

Tyler and Shirley help veterans with countless other tasks, as well. She said she’s the one in the duo who performs most of the outreach and engagement activities, while Shirley identifies which program or service would help a needy veteran and connects them with it.

Then, Tyler said, they simply get out of the way.

“We bridge the gaps,” she said.

DNP operates in all 110 chapters and five agencies across the Navajo Nation, she said, and its primary goal is to relieve veterans of the stress of trying to navigate health care, financial assistance or other programs by themselves. She said she finds her fluency in Navajo particularly helpful in her work.

Tyler and Shirley are willing to tackle almost any issue, she said, citing the example of a Navajo mother who approached them for help in having a headstone placed on the grave of her deceased son, who was a veteran. The headstone had been paid for by the VA, but the mother didn’t have the funds to have the headstone placed properly.

Tyler and Shirley went to work on the problem, and within three days, they had secured a commitment from the two VFW posts in San Juan County — posts 614 in 2182 — to cover the cost of the work on the mother’s behalf.

That kind of result is very much the rule rather than the exception, she said, noting that DNP has helped approximately 1,100 veterans this year alone — and the organization maintains a more than 90% success rate, meaning that a veteran’s issue is resolved within 30 days and his or her file is closed.

To seek assistance from Tyler and DNP, visit the organization’s website at dinenaazbaapartnership.org. Tyler said the group offers 24/7 support at 928-910-4225. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the organization also may do so through the group’s secure online portal.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Bernadette Tyler serves as project leader for Diné Naazbaa Partnership