Can
we put a stop to this epidemic of crank abuse and keep it from spreading
through Blackfeet country? A few health
providers and counselors from the Blackfeet reservation gave their opinions. Most importantly the cure for this disease
is not going to come to us overnight.
In fact, it may take generations to change the attitudes people have
towards drugs. Obviously preventative
strategies must start in the community and most essentially in the family unit.
Family First
Linda Dusterhoff, nurse practitioner suggests, “Start from the basic family unit and get back their own Indian pride, their thoughts about self-esteem, all those things like the basics in a family. And if we can get the family unit sober, that would stabilize the community and change can start to occur.”
Darrell Rides at the Door,
counselor at the Pikuni Healing center, also agrees that preventative measures
must begin in the family. He states
that prevention “would have to begin with our youth but at the same time it has
to begin with the family. Not only the
youth but also working with the family.”
Herman White Grass, a
counselor at the chemical dependency center, feels that we must rely on
community cooperation: “Community empowerment, power in numbers. The more people you have thinking in the
same direction about the same thing and putting a lot of action into it that is
when you are going to get results.”
What about the cost of these programs that are needed to prevent meth abuse? White Grass suggested that people “stop looking at the dollars. Here is how much dollars it is going to take, and all this money is needed.” White Grass recommends that the community “get it started, and just do it, and if it fails, then next year, you know how much and what you need to build on it.”
Working Together
However, besides the problem
of money, there is also the aspect of working together. Is there a way to get
the community to work together? And who
is going to help these families get sober and stay sober?
According to Herman White Grass, the key to making these programs successful is to have people who are working for the same goal separately unite and thus reach their goal more efficiently.
Dusterhoff proposed one strategy as
an effective way to approach kids. That
solution entails finding young people who have been through the ordeal of
addiction and who have had some sort of personal experience with the dangers of
drug use to talk to their classmates.
These kids with experience, standing up in front of their peers,
speaking in the same language, and being receptive to questions, would make a
great impact according to Dusterhoff.
She claims this solution would be more effective than having “a law
officer stand up in front of a class in full uniform with a gun telling people
to ‘just say no.’”
Browning School District has
proposed another method to keep students from using drugs. This development is a Drug Testing Policy
which has been put into effect for the 1999-00 school year. This policy applies to all Browning Public
School students who participate in Montana High School Association sponsored
activities, including sports, speech and debate, cheerleading and band and
choir competitive groups. The policy
includes mandatory testing on first day of practice and random testing of
student participants throughout the season.
We have a long road ahead of us
Whatever strategies are put into effect,
it is still going to take time to recover from the devastation of drugs. Darrell Rides at the Door, counselor for the
Pikuni healing center, believes, “The majority of the problems occur because a
lot of our people on the reservation live in a very dysfunctional
environment. The women that we work
with are a product of that dysfunction which is then passed on through
generations.” This generational
dysfunction is what makes addiction so hard to overcome.
As
Dusterhoff says, “We have a community on the reservation that has been here for
generations and generations and generations.
I think that is how long it would take to change it.”