Navajos Battle a Modern-Day Enemy: Meth

[CountAllVotes]

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - Isabel Whitehair had never heard of methamphetamine before her 2-year-old son reached under the sink at bath time, pulled out a pipe and put it to his mouth.
"This is Daddy's," the boy told the Navajo woman. "Dad said it's lucky medicine."

A year after the nation's largest Indian reservation launched an attack on meth — raising penalties, increasing training for police and developing an interagency task force — the illegal and highly addictive drug is still very much a scourge of the Navajo Nation.

No statistics are kept on meth-related crime on the reservation. But cases like Whitehair's — and that of an 81-year-old woman arrested last month on charges of dealing meth — make it clear the problem has not gone away.

Lynette Willie, a spokeswoman for the Navajo Department of Behavioral Health Services, calls the drug "a modern-day enemy to the Navajo people."

More:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060414/ap_on_he_me/navajos_methamphetamine;_ylt=Aj3jZQeN1uasTCiWjXKHyzsR.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3czJjNGZoBHNlYwM3NTE-

Lucky medicine and a pipe in the mouth of a 2-year old! This madness must stop! :grr: :argh:

:dem:

[CountAllVotes]

1. shameless kick

:kick:

[EFerrari]

2. I'm with you. Our family has been hit with this.

We can do better.

:hug:

:kick:

[CountAllVotes]

4. yes it is very sad

I had no idea that the Navajo Nation in having such horrible problems with this. It is no different than with any other group/culture in our society.

We CAN do better! However, it seems like The War Without End is far more important! :( :(

We need not nuke Iran. We've already nuked our own people with another white man's "medicine". :nuke:

US OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST & US OUT OF METHAMPHETAMINE! We must care for our own first!

:dem: :kick:

[EFerrari]

5. This government doesn't give a damn about our kids.

It's up to us to keep raising the issue. To keep it in their faces and never stop.

As with so many other things.

:kick:

[sweetheart]

7. jobs

Most drugs users are unemployed.

They have something to look forward to.

I a no navaho, but i've spent a few weeks of my life in their
nation, more than many folk. I've had nothing but gracious and
great-hearted encounters with navaho folks, how tragic all this.

Equal opportunity in some other place,
with some other body, some other race,
some other business, some other face,
some other skills, another power base.

Drugs are demanded by people who suffer,
stripped to their utmost depravity defaced,
we pay trillions for the prison buffer,
criminalized unemployed, at last the drugs taste.

Cable TV in doses of days,
dead drinking tea, lovin' the rays.

[CountAllVotes]

8. I find it heartbreaking myself

and I happen to know many Navajo people as my late mother lived in Arizona during her childhood in the 1930s and she went to an Indian school and many of the students were Navajo.

They are very excellent people, I agree. They never shunned my mother (who was an adopted child) even though she never claimed to be "Navajo". She loved her life in Arizona and wanted to move back there towards the end of her life.

So it does affect me, even though it is not next door to me. It is a horrible shame the way the government continues to ignore our Native peoples.

Your little poem is very nice and to the point. Thank you!

:dem: :kick:

[sweetheart]

9. Navaho vibes

Kayenta and so much of northern arizona are endowed with
incredible natural beauty... at the very least, these people
are living on some of the most beautiful land the continent
has to offer. If their economics were soundly footed, these
people would actually be wealthy, an arisocratic country gentry
who's land-based roots would give them incredible populist
power in a nation so lost of its organic connections.

Things meeting navaho poeple taught me by our encounters.

1. No violence... it is not the way.

2. The earth is our mother... the truth.

3. There is something to serving the truth.

4. In a world of abusive white men, be strong but
do not sell out items 1-3.

I feel some deep connection with those deserts of that area,
and i can't but feel a deep connection with the people of
those deserts... we are an electronic tribe dancin
kopalellopii on the mesa-top, and the colonialists barbarity
will be forgotten by all that matters.

Too bad the Zuni's don't have a national political party,
i'd probably like them a lotta lot.

[thereismore]

3. there's so much to do here, right home... on to Iran nt

[EFerrari]

6. Kick! Listen up, my friends. We need to attend to this.

:kick:

[medeak]

10. great news!

Our new tribal police chief worked with local officials and FBI and busted a huge meth lab on reservation!

It's not the native americans here that are the problem...it's the criminal element who find an oasis on the reservations to do their dirty work...thinking locating on a soveriegn nation will protect them.. NO MORE!!!!

Chief had some extremely strong remarks...pray he gets reelected in the fall.

edited to say...this was on Shoshone/Pauite reservation

[CountAllVotes]

11. Wow! That is good news!

I'm really glad to learn of this. I hope this type of policy in enacted on other Indian lands and reservations. The last thing Indian people need is another poison from the white man to completely finish them off.

Thanks for the information. It gives me hope and I always like hearing of good news! :D

:kick:

[medeak]

12. it only happened after bad news

toddler was beaten to death and tribal chief was protecting family and not giving info to local police...now we have a take charge kind of guy who wants to clean it all up. I live 1 block from reservation...there are some incredibly spiritual and intellectual people living there who are victims of creeps moving in thinking they are safe from arrest.

Believe all reservations are facing the same... LA gangs moved in years ago to recruit youth knowing no one would get to them...the tribes need to recognize they are being used and denigrated.

[CountAllVotes]

14. well as they say ...

It takes what it takes. In this case it took the death of a toddler that was beaten to death. How very sad. :(

I hope the tribal members wake the hell up quickly and realize that this new threat is a very dangerous threat.

I hope the elders in the tribes and the medicine people get together and come up with a plan to fight this new invasion. It does no one any good at all, no one of any race or color.

:dem: :kick:

[medeak]

15. and toddler

beating was the result of meth.

the circle of life?

[CountAllVotes]

16. more like the circle of death

it seems to me anyway. It is a bad cycle and it must be broken. :(

I am so very sorry to hear of this. It is all because of a drug that shouldn't be allowed anywhere.

The drug doesn't seem to really fit into this "circle of life" to me. However, I do have hope being the tribal members and tribal authorities are at least not denying the problem.

Thanks for sharing this. I know how difficult it is, believe me. :(

[EFerrari]

13. That IS good news. Thank you! n/t

[medeak]

17. am sending tribal police chief

gift certificate to dinner... hear he's taking a lot of flak over this.

[EFerrari]

18. The pressure to sell out must be enormous. I hope he's careful.

:(