Lawmakers seek solutions to opioid scourge during Mille Lacs meeting

You learn to fear the early-morning phone calls after so many of them announce the overdoses and deaths of people you love.

Opioid addiction and related deaths have had a devastating and sweeping impact on Native American communities across the state, testifiers said during a Friday hearing held at the Grand Casino Mille Lacs Convention Center.

Representatives in attendance included members of both the House Health and Human Services Policy Committee and the House Health and Human Services Finance Division. Legislation addressing the state’s opioid epidemic is expected to be heard in the policy committee later this week.

More than 60 other people attended the hearing to either testify or listen; nearly a dozen sharing how their lives have been impacted by opioids and offering suggestions to curb the epidemic.

According to a report by the Human Services Department, Native Americans were five times more likely to die from a drug overdose than white Minnesotans in 2015. And although they are only about 1.1 percent of the population, Native Americans made up 15.8 percent of the people entering treatment for opioid abuse in Fiscal Year 2015. In 2016, Native American children were 17 times more likely than white children to be removed from their homes because of parental drug abuse.

Some people have to wait between two weeks and a month to get into treatment while hospitals and detox centers can be far away or lack necessary resources to handle severe mental health problems, Cathy Chavers, chairwoman of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, and Jon Priem, police chief of the Prairie Island Indian Community, told members.

Testifiers’ suggestions for improvement include:

• better data-sharing between jurisdictions so that patients “shopping” for prescription medication can be more readily identified;
• improved access to treatment centers and more culturally informed programming;
• support for children who are suffering from the stress of tumultuous home lives caused by addiction and related trauma. This includes increased resources at schools to help children exhibiting behavioral problems;
• support and education for other family members, especially as many grandparents have become the primary caregivers for their grandchildren – even if they are too elderly for the physical strain of caring for very young children;
• additional social workers to help address excessive workloads and policy improvements to focus on keeping families together; and
• integrated care for women battling addiction during pregnancy.

All initiatives also need to be culturally informed and allow tribes the ability to focus on what will work best within their own communities, several testifiers said.

“We know that our culture is prevention. We know that our traditions are treatment. We know what our people need,” said Pam Hughes, Substance Use Disorder/New Moon Program director for the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa.

Bradley Harrington, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe’s commissioner of natural resources, said he personally struggled with addiction and incarceration, and was only able to surmount these obstacles and address his past after learning about historical trauma.

“Let our ways eventually become part of the systems of healing that need to occur,” he urged legislators.

While the situation has caused hardship and heartbreak for many, tribal members are working hard to support their communities, both through formal channels and grassroots efforts, including Sober Squad, a group that works to support and empower people through every stage of the recovery process.

“It was going against the [social norms] and basically making it okay to seek help, making it okay to be sober,” said founding member Colin Cash. “It’s sending a message of hope.”

Sober Squad holds events that range from picnics and weekly pizza nights to smudge walks and parades. They’ve also trained people in how to use naloxone (also known as NARCAN), distributed clean needles, sat with people in detox, driven them to and from treatment, and made sure they have support afterward.

The idea is that people will have something to participate in or somewhere to go every night, whether it’s a social activity, a cultural event, or a substance abuse support group, Cash said.

The idea has spread to several other Native American communities and groups have visited The Mille Lacs Band's reservation to learn more about Sober Squad and how to bring the idea back to their own communities, Cash said.

Cash wants the movement to continue growing and spreading, but is wary about “creating something that is billable” and might reduce community buy in. However, additional funding for events and a van with insurance would be nice, he said.

“There is a lot of good that we have here,” said Sandi Blake, District I representative of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. “Our tradition and our culture is what’s going to save us.”

“We know that the opioid crisis has hit your community very hard. You’ve given us a lot of wisdom, a lot of solutions,” Rep. Rena Moran (DFL-St. Paul), the committee chair, told the testifiers. “I think I hear you really clear that it has to be a comprehensive process.”