Hoopa Valley
Jane judged drug addicts harshly until she became one in her
late 20s. Suffering from depression and mourning a lifestyle she
worked hard to maintain for her family, she began smoking meth.
Three years into her addiction, she continues on a cycle of
cleaning up and relapsing. She’s not sure what it takes to quit
for good, but she knows she has to want sobriety more than
anything else, more than the drug itself.
“There are good people who use drugs and there are bad people
who use drugs,” she said. “Just like there are good people who
don’t use drugs and bad people who don’t use drugs.”
Like so many living on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in
California’s Humboldt County, Jane is a good person. She grew up
with the love of both parents. But her childhood was far from
easy. She waited in cars outside of bars and spent months at a
time living with other family members while her parents
entertained various addictions. Nonetheless she was raised to be
a strong, productive member of the community. Even the strong
succumb to meth.
Hoopa Tribal Police Chief Bob Kane sees it nearly every day.
“How do you describe something that takes a sane person and
turns them half insane?” he said.
The Hoopa Valley Tribe considers alcohol and controlled
substances the most significant safety issue facing the
community. They fear the greatest impact will be on the next
generation—Hoopa’s at-risk youth.
The tribe’s court estimates that alcohol or substance abuse
is a factor in approximately 65 to 70 percent of eviction cases
heard by the court, and 75 to 80 percent of child-custody and
divorce cases. In 2010 the court reported that alcohol or
substance abuse was a significant factor in 80 percent of the
child abuse and neglect cases heard on the reservation.
Not only does the community struggle with addiction, the
people struggle to come together to address the problem. Last
year the tribe applied for a grant through the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
(SAMHSA) that would help bring together their various
organizations for a collective response to the problem. They
didn’t get the grant, and funding continues to be an issue when
providing substance abuse services to those in need. “The
tribe’s approach has been focused on providing assistance to the
already addicted person,” the tribal court wrote. “This approach
has been utilized out of necessity: the limited staff resources
have been used to try and put out the biggest fires in hopes of
stabilizing individuals, their families and the community. It’s
a crisis-driven system.”
Tribal Police Chief Kane has watched drugs sweep through the
valley like a plague. (Jacob Simas)
The tribe’s system consists of a court, a juvenile probation
program, a police department, an Indian Health Service clinic
and a human services and mental health department. Human
Services is where most people seeking help turn. Some say the
department does not meet their needs, others say the opposite.
Tonya Bussell-Linderman works at Human Services as a
substance abuse counselor. She also works under an alcohol and
substance abuse prevention program that began in 2010. She said
most of the people seeking services through Human Services are
court ordered or on probation. The department facilitates
intensive outpatient groups four days a week for two hours each
day. “It’s intensive,” she said. “A lot of education and a lot
of working on one’s self goes on there.”
It is estimated that Human Services serves about 550 people
per year, many of whom access help for substance abuse–related
problems. Although most arrive because of a court order, there
are a few, like Jane, who walk in the door asking for help,
either in a moment of desperation or planned self-intervention.
Regardless, Bussell-Linderman said intake assessments are not
done unless the individual in need has at least 24 hours clean
and sober. Achieving 24 hours clean can be a real challenge for
most suffering from an addiction.
Assessments are done as a way to identify the types of
services a person may need. Assessments can also be used as a
mechanism to track data about the problem in the Hoopa
community. Because there are no inpatient treatment options in
the local area, many referrals are made to the Friendship House
in San Francisco and the Jordan Recovery Center in Crescent
City.
All of Hoopa’s agencies working in the field agree there is a
lack of support services and outpatient programs for those
returning from treatment. “Our community needs more aftercare,”
Bussell-Linderman said. “If we had places for people to go,
sober living and clean and sober housing to support them, I
think we would be more successful. They need to have a place
that’s safe.”
Jane’s first trip to Human Services was an act of
desperation. “Everything was falling apart. I was falling apart.
I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go,” she said.
Little did she know it would still be a while before she would
be fully ready to walk the path to recovery.
She went with the intention of getting a quick ticket to
rehab. Instead of immediate admission, the team at Human
Services explained the steps she needed to take before checking
into a program. Some treatment programs require as many as 30
days clean and sober to weed out those who are not serious about
their recovery. Beds are hard to come by at any treatment
facility. If a bed opens it’s usually filled within 24 hours.
Jane began to attend an intensive outpatient group at Human
Services. Although Human Services calls it an intensive
outpatient group, Jane feels it’s nothing more than a support
group for people in recovery. Nonetheless, the staff at Human
Services saw she was committed to recovery and began to take
steps to help get into a treatment program. Within a month, a
bed opened at a popular Native American treatment facility. Jane
stayed a little over three weeks there before repacking her bags
and heading home. She stayed clean for a year-and-a-half, and
hasn’t quit working toward recovery on her own.
Recovery is about finding your higher power and maintaining
that relationship,” said Jane. “Once you’ve found your higher
Clockwise from top left: Tonya Bussell-Linderman; Boyd
Ferris, a leading member of the Sweat Hogs; Eva Smith; KTAC
meeting (Jacob Simas)
power; with faith and belief you can do anything.”
Eva Smith, a medical doctor at the tribe’s Indian Health
Service center, believes there is no recovery without spiritual
recovery. She was also Jane’s medical doctor. “When people go
away to treatment, they’re beginning to get in touch with some
of the hurts and pain they have,” she said. “For a lot there’s a
light switch that seems to go off about connecting to
spirituality.”
The Sweat Hogs—a group of men in recovery from the Hoopa
Valley—are finding that spiritual connection via a sweat lodge
ceremony borrowed from the Great Plains tribes. The group comes
together at least once a week to pray while drenching themselves
in their own sweat. It’s a clean and sober sweat that serves
individual spiritual needs while providing a network of support
for participants, some young and some old.
Others on the reservation have found recovery in
denominational churches, specifically the Shaker church—a unique
blend of Christian denominations and Native American overtones.
Melodie George-Moore, a high school teacher and Hoopa
ceremonial leader, also believes spirituality can be an
important component to recovery. She explained that Hoopa
ceremonies have long incorporated aspects of family medicine.
“We have our traditions and old ways of healing,” she said. “And
we do have our stories.”
George-Moore used an analogy to describe the impact substance
abuse is having on the Hoopa community. “Drugs are attacking our
family bonds. Think of a spider web and a central figure at the
center of that web, and then the rays of the web coming from the
center representing the various familial relationships,” she
said. “Drugs come in and attack those family bonds—the rays of
your web. The web is still there, but pieces are torn and that
places pressure on the intact pieces of the web to do more.
“We all have this latent ability to build webs—to rebuild
these relationships. It takes one person to activate another
person,” she said. “The threads of the web are still there if
people want to pick them back up.”
In 2010 a group of community members got together to try to
help repair a community thread on the web. They named their
organization the
Klamath-Trinity Antidrug Coalition (KTAC). Initially
meetings overflowed with anywhere between 40 to 50 participants.
Some were frustrated with burglaries, others with law
enforcement, more were frustrated with the lack of prevention
activities available to deter youth from falling into the drug
trap.
The group meets monthly and meetings have now dwindled to
about five dedicated participants. Quarterly meetings are held
every three months where local agencies are invited to give
updates on law enforcement activities. KTAC is now working to
organize a symposium for local schools and agencies to come
together on prevention efforts.
As the community grows more and more frustrated with the
problem, a cure can seem further out of reach. But people like
Smith believe there is hope for the future. She has faith in the
strength of Hoopa people. “There is a growing sense of
intolerance that it’s not going to be okay anymore,” she said.
For Jane, recovery is slow. She’s struggling to get back into
the community in a way people respect. “This community is so
small and so impacted by drugs,” she said. “Staying clean is
almost impossible. It’s in your face. It’s in your family. It’s
in your family and your friends. It’s everywhere, and the
community is one big judge. People begin to treat you
differently and it’s difficult to establish yourself again.” 0
Additional reporting and photos by Jacob Simas
This article was originally published jointly by Two
Rivers Tribune and New America Media, and is part of a series
produced as a project for the California Endowment Health
Journalism Fellowships, a program of USC’s Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism.