Illegal Drug Usage is a Crisis in Indian Country. Now is the Time to Act.

The end of this month marks International Overdose Awareness Day. Each year on August 31, the day is recognized globally to bring focus to prescription opioid overdose risk and preventing drug-related harm. 

Unfortunately, we don’t have to leave Indian Country to see the severe damage drugs are wreaking on our tribal communities. Even with unprecedented opportunities available to Indian Country — a resurgence of our Indigenous culture, historic levels of federal funding and several universities offering tuition waivers for Native students — drugs serve as a major threat to progress and well-being in Indian Country. 

At the recent summer meeting of the Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes (MAST), there was a time slot on the agenda for a roundtable discussion with tribal leaders from Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. The notion behind the roundtable was to give leaders an open forum to talk about what is happening within their tribes and to voice their concerns.  

As leaders spoke, drug overdoses within their respective tribal communities dominated the conversation the first day. Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Indians (LVD) tribal attorney Karrie Biron discussed how LVD banished drug users within its community, which is located in the western part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Biron described how the tribe established a “Take Back Our Community Campaign” last Friday, July 22, 2022. The following Monday, the tribal council passed a resolution to “exclude any non-LVD member from the lands of the Band who is identified as, or comes to be known, as a known drug dealer/user or who is otherwise excluded from any Tribal business now, or in the future, for drug-related activity…”

Learn more about the initiative here.