Reclaiming Our Communities and Our Land from the Drug Abuse Epidemic

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is an important acknowledgment of the trauma suffered by our people, and it’s a time for us to address the ongoing injustices we face. We are witnessing the rape of our land, the murder of Indigenous women, the killing of our brothers and sisters – the grizzly bear and the wolf.

We face many of the same perpetuators of death and disease as past generations – lack of access to resources, drug trafficking, the poisoning of our water and soil – but with the added impact of climate change and deadly new drugs like fentanyl. We are twice as likely to die of an opioid overdose as non-natives, and the same drugs that poison our bodies pollute our lakes and wreak havoc on our communities.