For Native Americans, coronavirus looks heartbreakingly familiar

Perhaps no community in North America has been more shaped by infectious disease than Native tribes. Overcoming today’s crisis means turning to deep wells of resilience.

For the first North Americans, memories of pandemics are long.

Lela Oman was an infant in Nome, Alaska, during the 1918 flu epidemic. Nome, on the far northwestern tip of the continent, had just gotten a telephone line, so residents were able to get some advance warning.

Everyone knew what to do after that, Ms. Oman recalled in a 1996 interview for a University...