MPR: White Earth tribe tackles alcohol and drug abuse

White Earth tribe tackles alcohol and drug abuse
By Dan Gunderson
Minnesota Public Radio
October 26, 2001

Leaders on the White Earth Indian Reservation later this month will host the launching of a national initative to reduce alcohol and drug abuse on reservations. (Oct 26th) The Healing of the Nations conference is expected to draw hundreds of native and non-native people from across the country.

The White Earth Indian reservation in northern Minnesota hosts the first Healing of the Nations conference, designed to tackle drug and alcohol abuse on the reservation.

IT'S ESTIMATED 40 PERCENT OF WHITE EARTH TRIBAL MEMBERS - several thousand people - are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Few people on the reservation escape the effects of drug and alcohol abuse.

Antonette Vizenor lost her brother to a drug overdose this summer. Pictures of a handsome young man hang on the walls of her small house near White Earth. She prefers that memory to the image of a man whose life spiraled out of control.

"I think his hell was here on earth. I'd say the last 10 years of his life he'd been just living in hell," she says.

Vizenor says her brother left behind a teenage son she fears is destined to follow his father's footsteps.

Lois Olson is reminded of the devastating effects of alcoholism every waking minute of her life. The Naytawaush woman has adopted three children with fetal alcohol syndrome. All have serious behavioral problems as a result of their mother drinking during pregnancy.

"You tell them something and 10 seconds later it's gone. You heard that expression, 'in one ear and out the other?' They can't grasp it, they can't remember it," Olson says.

Olson says for decades, such children have been punished for behavior beyond their control.

"It's the alcohol that has stolen from our people for so many years. I sometimes just scream out and say, 'Alcohol, I hate you. You just can't know how much I hate you for what you took from my kids,'" says Olson.

It's stories like these that prompted tribal leaders to make the issue of addiction a top priority, with the goal of making White Earth a model of a community approach to treating addiction. Tribal Chairman Doyle Turner says he realized it was time to face a problem that's been denied far too long.

White Earth tribal chairman Doyle Turner says it's time for tribal leaders to face the addiction problem head-on. He says the loss of his own sister and brother to addiction helped lead him to that realization.
(Photo courtesy of White Earth Band)

"I myself have lost a sister and brother to addiction. And I know if we start talking to people around the reservation the stories would be much the same," says Turner. "And simply count the cost. What's the cost of what's happened to us in the last 300, 400 years? It's tremendous. Not just in lives, but in terms of possibilities."

Earlier this year Turner formed a reservation addiction project called SOS, or Save Our Spirit. He says a spiritual healing will be a key to native people returning to a healthy lifestyle.

The call to end addiction is beginning to resonate at White Earth. A fetal alcohol educator says when she started holding meetings three years ago, she faced empty chairs. A fetal alcohol conference this summer drew dozens of people.

But Dennis Hisgun says substance abuse is still a difficult subject to discuss on the reservation. Hisgun runs the tribal chemical dependency program. He says there needs to be a process of communal healing.

"Most people are in denial about the seriousness of the problem they have. Denial is what kills people. Healing of the Nations implies that people are sick, and I think that's what will get through the denial is that this in an illness. This doesn't mean you're a bad person," says Hisgun.

White Earth will host the first Healing of the Nations conference, bringing people from across the nation to the Shooting Star casino in Mahnomen to celebrate sobriety and native spirituality. Tribal leaders hope to join forces with counties and the state to reduce the financial and social costs of substance abuse.

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