‘It’s exhausting’: how Navajo students overcame the pandemic school year

Living in internet dead zones and sometimes without electricity at home, Indigenous youths in New Mexico and Arizona went to extraordinary lengths to attend virtual classes

In a landscape of tumbleweeds and utility poles, with a view of Ute Mountain through the windshield, high school sophomore Evan Allen placed his school-issued laptop on the center armrest of his grandmother's truck and switched on his mobile wifi hotspot. Another school day was about to begin.