- Boozhoo.

I'm Rita Karppinen.

Welcome to the 20th season of "Native Report."

- [Announcer] Production for "Native Report" is made possible by grants from the Blandin Foundation, the generous support from viewers like Jack and Sharon Kemp, and viewers like you.

(gentle folk music) (gentle folk music continues) - In this episode, we'll address a critical issue affecting many Indigenous communities, addiction.

We'll explore the complex factors contributing to addiction such as historical trauma, systematic inequities, and the ongoing challenges of mental health.

Through powerful stories of struggle and resilience, we'll see how Indigenous communities are addressing these challenges by blending traditional healing practices with modern approaches to recovery.

Join us as we take an honest and hopeful look at overcoming addiction in Native communities.

(solemn music) (solemn music continues) - Eventually, I graduated to pills by 15, and 16, it was the first time I put a needle in my arm.

- It kind of got to the point where it was like, "Oh, I need this so that I can drown out all the problems in my life."

- You could just dabble and find sort of like a healthy way to navigate through that or you get into the hard stuff and you become a shadow, and I ended up becoming a shadow.

- Addiction is a topic that I think about a lot.

It has affected my personal life and most immediate circle.

I think it affects all of us in society, even if we don't have someone in the immediate circle who's going through a personal struggle with it, and it is complex.

(somber music) - I feel like a lot of us, you know, that struggled through those addictions, we're dealing with our own trauma, but not only we're dealing with our own trauma, but we're dealing with the trauma of our parents and their parents.

- Alcohol, way back when, was introduced by the Europeans.

First, it was all-out termination.

Kill the Indian, because they wanted the land, and if they couldn't kill us all, then let's go with assimilation, and so there was a big push to take every child and put 'em in these boarding schools.

So these were like military camps and they were abusive.

- Colonial violence is a very different kind of violence.

Instead of saying, you know, "I'm gonna clunk you over the head and steal your bologna sandwich," so to speak, they were saying, "You have to worship God the way I do.

You have to speak the language that I speak, not the language you speak."

It was about erasure, and so I think you can see the beginnings of trauma responses, including their connections to different kinds of addiction.

You know, even in the very beginning, 1600s, 1700s, and it escalates.

You imagine, by the end of the 1800s, not only has there been tremendous violence visited upon the population, but the children taken away and sent to schools where they received lots of harsh physical discipline and no nurture, and so you see an escalation in the trauma responses in the late 1800s, and they don't really stop, you know, or start ending the residential boarding school system until, you know, World War II.

- [Rita] The stories of Native community members continue to reveal the struggles of addiction.

- It makes sense as to why our people turn to alcohol and drugs.

When your children are taken, when your culture is taken, your identity is taken.

You have nothing left, so you're more vulnerable to drugs and alcohol.

- [Anton] All humans have trauma somewhere in their family tree, and when somebody experiences a trauma, it does things.

- Children that grow up in a drug-induced environment, over time, this highly affects a child, and then they can't regulate themselves.

They can't sit still, and that looks like ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but it is not.

It is trauma.

- My mom was on drugs really bad growing up, in and out of treatment I think two or three times before I was 12.

So, by the time her addiction had really got her pretty bad, I basically kind of left and was on my own.

I was drinking every day.

I was doing whatever drugs was there every day from when I was 12 'til I was 14.

When I was 14, I basically completely stopped because my cousins that were younger than me were also only around our family that had been on drugs or drinking, and I kind of really realized that no one was gonna come save me unless I go to foster care, and I didn't want to do that.

I was too scared to be separated from my younger cousins, so I kind of just told them, like, "Hey, if you guys can hold out 'til I'm 18, I'll make sure that I have my life together and you can come live with me."

- [Rita] Through the stories of those in a drug-free community in Minneapolis focused on the arts, we'll hear from people in recovery actively battling addiction with the support of their community.

- Well, I had grown up in a house with eight other people in a two-bedroom house.

My dad struggled with, he had learning disabilities, which held him back a lot.

When I was going to school and everything, like, for, you know, whatever reasons, I found myself angry a lot.

I think a lot of Native American men struggle with anger that they don't know where it comes from and they don't know how to express it.

They don't know how to, like, in a healthy way, release it.

So I think that, you know, is maybe part of the intergenerational trauma that, you know, I'm dealing with today.

Like, I come from a place with struggle and survival.

In my therapy, like, one of the main things that I'm acknowledging was that, when you go through all these struggles and stuff, your body reacts to those things, and so, like, when you're not going through struggles anymore, your body's still looking for those things.

Like, it wants to create these things 'cause that's what it's used to.

I started out doing marijuana, smoking cigarettes.

You know, a little bit of alcohol and stuff like that, and then, eventually, I graduated to pills by 15, and 16, it was the first time I put a needle in my arm.

So I had my fair share of doing heroin, and then I had my fair share of doing meth and all them other drugs, and I did that until I was 24.

I'm glad to be here.

You know, for real, 'cause looking back at all the things that I experienced in my life, I feel like I'm pretty lucky, you know, to be able to have survived.

- [Rita] Addiction doesn't only affect individuals.

Entire families and communities can be affected by it as well.

- My early childhood was basically spent with my mom.

My mom and my dad had separated when I was about one or two years old.

We moved around a little bit for like the first six years of my life.

So we always struggled with bills, and we were always moving around apartments and stuff, and switching schools, and I feel like I never really connected with anyone right away.

It was just a lot of not fitting in until I started skateboarding, and then once I started skateboarding, it was like the whole world opened up.

There was a lot of friend groups there, but that also came with trouble.

I started smoking cigarettes and smoking weed and skipping school.

By the time I was in high school, I was doing as many drugs as I could and hanging out at the skate park, and there was a very slippery slope between skateboarding and having fun and then to drugs.

I was at a weird party, and there was this like 50-year-old dude that was putting a bunch of meth in a light bulb, and at the time, I was just like "this old dude's rad" and "let me hit that," and like, now that I'm old, looking back at it, I was like, "What is up with that?"

That was super strange.

I started hiding my meth use from everyone and sort of just kind of crawled into the shadows.

- [Rita] Through the journey of this drug-free community, we found that recovery is not only about overcoming addiction but also recognizing stressors, patterns of addictive behavior, and the reality of relapse.

- So when I first moved down here, I had my oldest son.

He's now seven.

At the time, he was one, and I had lived down here for about three months actually, and I was with my ex-husband, and we got a phone call about taking in a newborn baby, and we were both like, "Heck yeah."

I still had my foster care license from when I had my family members, my cousins, and we were both just like, "Yeah, let's do it."

We got him an hour after he was born, and a month later after that, I found out that I was three months pregnant, so my second youngest.

I got the diagnosis that he was autistic.

I had to do therapies, had to cut back on work a lot, and he was a stay-at-home dad, and I was tattooing full-time.

We didn't expect to move down here and have, you know, four kids within the matter of, like, two years of us living down here.

During that time, because we were both super overwhelmed, I started having a glass of wine every now and then, and I was like, "It's fine.

You know, I'll just have some wine and paint a little bit.

It'll be fun.

Relax my nerves."

With everything happening in my life, I quickly took a downturn and started drinking really heavy.

So my ex-husband and I ended up getting a divorce, and that is when my drinking got really bad, because, at that point, I was like, "I don't know how I'm gonna do it.

I don't know how I'm gonna be a single mom of four kids and tattoo full-time," and I kind of was just like, "I don't want to have responsibility anymore," and I felt even more guilty for feeling that way because I'm a mom.

You should always think of your kids first.

- [Rita] For many who struggle with addiction, it is not unusual to hit bottom.

- My first go around with meth was, like, super bad, 'cause there was no one there to stop me.

I had just turned 18.

I moved out into an apartment and it just spiraled so fast and I ended up stopping for a little bit.

Like, my mom came and took me out of my apartment, and I weighed like a hundred pounds and I was just sick.

I started hanging out with my good skateboard friends again, and then we all got introduced a lot to ecstasy and stuff like that, and then that was just so similar and the hustle was so similar that it was just the next addiction, and I got right back into meth and doing a lot of cocaine and selling cocaine.

I did end up getting raided at me and my mom's house when I was 20 years old, and I had a bunch of drugs in the house, a bunch of meth paraphernalia, but they were like, "You know, be prepared to get consequences or work with us.

Well, we're gonna put this ankle monitor on you, and you have until Monday to come into the office and be prepared to go to prison for the rest of your life."

And Sunday night, I cut off that ankle bracelet and I ran to Minneapolis, and so I pretty much have been here ever since.

When I started tattooing, there was meth in the shop.

I started doing meth, and I was in a tattoo shop for like a year, and then basically sunk it all into meth for like the last 15 years.

Yeah, it was a pretty harsh cycle.

I went to prison the first time, and we pretty much just got high and tattooed in there, and it was just for a year, but it felt like a long time, but once I got out, it felt like it was a couple weeks.

Immediately went back to drinking, got in a lot more trouble that time after I got out, and within that like year and a half, by the time I got picked up again, I had racked up like 40 felony charges.

They were talking big numbers.

They were like, "Oh, you're looking at 200 months," and I had some pretty intense burglaries in there.

First degree sales.

You know, first degree possession.

And I remember sitting there and I'm like, "I'm sick.

Like, I'm not well."

And I'm like, either I can make a commitment to being sober or I can make a really large commitment to just being a criminal for the rest of my life, and, you know, I ended up making that choice that day.

- [Rita] After hitting bottom, Willard had a moment of clarity and began the journey towards sobriety, eventually helping others gain sobriety too.

- I think a big part of why I got sober was because one of my babysitters was actually my younger cousin that I took in when I was 18, and I just kind of walked through the door one day, hung over, super sick, like can barely keep my eyes open, and she just looked at me and she didn't really seem mad.

She didn't seem upset.

She seemed more hurt, if I'm being honest.

She said, "Hey, you're turning into our moms.

You're never here anymore.

We miss you."

And I just kind of was like, "Yeah, you're right.

Like, you're 100% right."

And that day, I got sober.

- So when I sobered up off of meth, I was about 130 pounds.

I'm about 200 pounds now or so, and what happened was I just so happened to go to a ceremony, and within that ceremony, I felt a feeling that I haven't felt in a long time.

It was like comforting love.

I don't remember ever feeling that type of love, and so that was enough for me to, like, stop doing drugs, you know, completely.

So when I did sober up, I went to a lot of ceremonies, and almost every weekend, you know what I mean?

For four years, and that was my way of keeping everything together.

- [Carol] Traditional healing is, for us, that part that is so needed for our people.

Sometimes, the Western treatment modalities do not help our people.

When we combine the Western treatment modalities with traditional healing, it brings that trauma to the forefront, but the traditional healing ceremony will take it and get rid of it.

Ask to be counseled traditionally, either your family to be counseled or individually counseled, and you would see a traditional healer and their helpers and talk about whatever it is you want help with.

Google "Indian Health Service," 'cause Indian Health Service is nation-wide.

The other thing people have to know is who their home tribes are because you'd have to identify your home tribes in order to be eligible for Indian Health services or to be seen by any of these tribal agencies that have all these resources.

- I chose to get sober because I was sick of dying every day, every day over and over and over again.

So I was left with two options, dying or living, and I chose sobriety.

I wanted to be able to help people.

There are some aspects of my using life that I know that I could help other people struggle through the same thing, you know, with that support.

So, I started using at about 13 and I got clean when I was 40.

So, as of right now, I have almost eight years, and so acceptance.

That first step is not only being able to admit that you have a problem, but being able to admit that your life is unmanageable because of it and that you do need help.

Community and connection, that's how you get clean.

You look for other addicts, other alcoholics, and you can normally find your people at meetings.

There is AA.

There is NA.

- The first meeting I ever went to was maybe about six people, and it really opened me up to, wow, I'm not the only person that feels this way.

- [Robyn] So there is a meeting app that you can download on your phone, and no matter where you're located, it'll find meetings for you either within your area or wherever you need to be.

There's absolutely Zoom meetings everywhere.

There is SMART Recovery.

Here in Duluth, we have an HR meeting at the Damiano Center, which is health realization.

We do assessments here, and they will refer you over, inpatient, outpatient, and whatever else you need.

- I participated in a few different programs, There was a men's mentorship program in Green Bay.

It was definitely a mentorship program, and not, you know, like therapy.

So it helped me.

Just talking to people, being communicative is a big step, because, you know, that's something that I struggled through in my life and it caused a lot of frustrations which would set me back.

- We are worthy and deserving of recovery, and that means the people, because it is a family disease.

That means the people that we love and surround us, our connections, our support, they are deserving of having us free.

- When I was in prison, what I recognized as an art tutor is that art supplies can really change someone's life.

As an art tutor, I saw people that would normally be different races and not enjoy each other's presence.

When we're in the art studio, none of that mattered.

We were just people making art together, and I think part of, you know, the non-profit that I've literally invested all my time into, Art Shelf, is that there is power in the fellowship of creativity and there is truly medicine in art, and I think that, you know, creativity is one of the, you know, underrated and underutilized avenues of wellness.

- So Willard put together a recovery art night every Friday.

Art has really helped me with my recovery process because I feel like it's an escape.

That escape that I thought I was getting from drinking, I actually get it even more from painting.

- [Willard] You know, the event tonight, we just want to provide a safe, creative space for people to come and share in that fellowship, but also hear a story from an artist in recovery, and I think that, you know, people are attracted to it and kind of experience that magic, and, you know, it's open seven to midnight.

- I feel like artwork is like my medicine, you know?

It's a way for me to meditate.

It's a way for me to, you know, express myself.

I'm at a point in my life where, you know, I'm not struggling, but I still have to deal with those things, and that's, you know, part of the addiction.

- So it's important to say not only bad things get passed forward.

Good things get passed forward too.

So we have historical resiliency, not just historical traumas.

- How much love and time is it gonna take?

But the thing is, like, the seeds of happiness, you never know when it's gonna happen.

You don't know when it's gonna start growing, but just know that if you have enough patience and you're willing to be bored, eventually things will start happening, and that was it.

I spent a lot of time just loving myself and working on myself, working on my art, and before I knew it, sure enough, after years now, there is fruits of being sober.

- Thank you for joining us on "Native Report" as we explore the complex and challenging issue of addiction within Indigenous communities.

Today, we've shed light on the impact of addiction, the resilience of those affected, and the innovative approaches being taken to address this critical issue.

As we conclude this episode, we recognize the importance of continued support, understanding, and action in addressing addiction.

By sharing these stories and insights, we hope to contribute to a broader conversation and support ongoing efforts to create positive change.

(uplifting folk music) - Addiction is common and very few families escape it.

Watching someone you love struggle with addiction is painful.

Being the one struggling can seem like there's no hope for a better life.

Addiction has long been seen as a character flaw and a sign of weakness, when in reality, it's a chronic disease.

These are much more common than you might expect.

According to the CDC, 6 out of 10 adults live with at least one chronic illness.

Addiction is one of them.

Substance abuse alters the brain's reward system.

Changes in the brain cause people to use despite the consequences.

Relapses happen.

That makes the support of family and friends more important.

While everyone's substance use is unique, there are some standard treatments.

This begins with a detox followed by cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT.

This is talk therapy, and helps individuals recognize and avoid the situations in which they would drink or use.

It allows insight while they sort through whatever triggers them.

For those with opioid addiction, medication-assisted treatment or MAT is recommended to help with cravings and reduce withdrawal symptoms.

Managing addiction is not easy and it's complicated.

A balanced diet, regular exercise, and good sleep habits can help prevent mood swings that can trigger cravings.

Strong social connections in a sober network are great sources of support.

Anger, sadness, and other emotions lead to relapses.

Writing in a journal and expressing feelings through art and music can be healing.

Spiritual practices bring inner strength you never knew you had.

Go to ceremonies.

Even if you've been away for a long time, you'll be welcome back.

Even though it might be difficult, show up sober.

Respect goes both ways.

Addiction was never your given path.

You don't need to hit rock bottom to start your recovery.

This is your life, but it's also the lives of your family and your children and everyone important to you.

They deserve to have you at your very best.

You deserve that too.

Remember to call an elder.

They've been waiting for your call.

I'm Dr. Arne Vainio and this is Health Matters.

(uplifting folk music) - Thank you for spending time with your friends and neighbors from across Indian Country.

I'm Rita Karppinen.

We'll see you next time on "Native Report."

(gentle folk music) (gentle folk music continues) (gentle folk music continues) (gentle folk music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is brought to you by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund (bright music) (logo whooshes)