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About Siletz news / (Siletz, OR) 199?-current | View Entire Issue (July 1, 2007)
TRIBAL PROGRAM NEWS Ask Raven CEDARR Raven wilt answer your questions about problems associated with alco hol, tobacco, and other drugs. You can call in your questions to the numbers below or mail them to: Community Efforts Demonstrating the Ability to Rebuild and Restore July 11 • 5:30 p.m. Siletz Community Health Clinic Conference Room Raven P.O. Box 549 Siletz, OR 97380-0549 We hope to see you there! Dear Raven: I was recently told that teen-agers who drink alcohol might damage their brains. Is that true? Unsigned Dear Unsigned: This is a very good question to talk about today. The reason is that recently, scientists have learned new things about the brain, especially the adolescent brain. What we now know is that the brain’s frontal lobe, which is involved in planning, decision-making, impulse control, and language, undergoes a major remodeling during the teen years and up to age 24. Drinking alcohol dur ing this period of growth can lead to brain damage, especially for memory, physical skills, arid coordination. Most of that damage is because of neurotransmitters, the things that send messages to the brain. Alcohol injects chemicals into the brain that affect the important growing process. The hippocampus is the brain struc ture that is key to the process of recording new memories. Adolescents, unlike adults, are still forming connections between nerve cells that play a role in memory and alcohol can damage the development of these connections. This is just a brief answer to your question. There is much more that a Raven who is smarter and more knowl edgeable than 1 am could tell you. I have heard that we might be for tunate to have some people coming to the Siletz community in the summer or fall to talk with us about this. 1 hope to see you there! Summer is a time when alcohol use among teens is the highest. If you know of any teens who drink, please give them this information. And if you know any adults who think it’s okay for teens to drink, this would be good for them to know about too. Thank you for writing to me. I hope you have a good summer! Raven TLC Attitudes of Gratitude First of all - Happy Fourth of July to everyone! If you love fireworks dis plays, I hope you get to see a great one this year! My “inner child” still rejoices at the sight of huge, colorful starbursts in the night sky and the loud cannon-like booms that shake to the “core.” Some drama in our lives is good, a fun diver sion from everyday routine. When “drama” becomes an every day “life force,” however, we need to take a look at what is happening. Are we avoiding issues in our own life by be coming immersed in others’ problems and taking them on as are our own? We all may have done that at some point in our life, but to do it on a regu lar basis is not healthy. It’s so easy to slip into this behavior, to become lost in the excitement of someone else’s crisis without being consciously aware that we are neglecting our own needs. The adrenaline rush we get from those encounters blinds us to our own reality. We can forget that although there are emergencies in life, life is not an emergency! We lose ourselves, we lose any se renity we have in our life to the rush, the panic, the anxiety that is brought on by others’ problems. Then when it’s all over, we are totally drained, ex hausted, sucked dry of any energy we may have had to face our own stuff. If we are in recovery, living life on an adrenaline roller coaster can be dis astrous. We need structure, we need quiet time and serenity, time to breathe, SiletzTribal A&D Programs Prevention, Outpatient Treatment, and Women’s Transitional Siletz: 1-800-600-5599 or 541-444-8286 Eugene: 541-484-4234 Salem: 503-390-9494 Portland: 503-238-1512 8 • Siletz News • General Council Meeting by Lynn Whitlow July 2007 time to make appropriate choices for our life. None of this can happen when we are living on impulse and panic. The good news is we can learn to react in healthy ways to others' crisis. We can help in ways that don’t get us sucked into a whirlwind that leaves us spent and unable to do what we need for ourselves. None of us want to be callous and uncaring when someone else is in need, but we can evaluate the situation and suggest other resources that may be more appropriate than our own intervention. That is where the gratitude comes in: We can be grateful that we don’t have to live a life of impulse and frenzy, of crisis and drama. We can make choices that are healthy for us, that keep us on the road to recovery and a life of inner peace, balance, and joy. Attitudes of gratitude to those who have given support to A&D and TLC - to John Spence for the big chunk of salmon, to Sandy Gordon and Lorna Henery for clothing, and to Maintenance for keeping equipment working up here on the little hill. Thank you, Alice and Stephanie, for your faithfulness. Just a reminder that we hold a Women’s Talking Circle at the TLC on a monthly basis, usually on the second Wednesday. We invite you to join us at 5:45 p.m. for potluck and at 6:30 for Talking Circle. We also can use new volunteers at the TLC. Call me at 541-444-8238 or 1-800-922-1399, ext. 1238, for more information. Have a happy summer! Narcotics Anonymous Meetings Monday - 7:30-8:30 p.m. Atonement Lutheran Church 2315 N Coast Highway (101) Newport Tuesday - 7:30-8:30 p.m. TLC - A&D Building 565 Old River Road Siletz Tuesday - 8-9 p.m. St. Peter the Fisherman Lutheran Church 1226 SW 13th St. Lincoln City Thursday - 8-9 p.m. St. Peter the Fisherman Lutheran Church 1226 SW 13th St. Lincoln City Friday - 7:30-8:30 p.m. Atonement Lutheran Church 2315 N Coast Highway (101) Newport Saturday - 6-7 p.m. Siletz VFW 143 SE Eggbert St. Siletz Toll-Free Help Line - 1-877-233-4287 Aug. 4, 2007 Siletz Tribal Community Center Siletz, Oregon 1 p.m. Agenda Call to Order Invocation Flag Salute Roll Call Approval of Agenda Approval of Minutes Program Report: Meth Program (CEDARR) Tribal Member Concerns Chairman's Report Announcements Adjournment Time to Apply for Student Incentive Awards It’s that time of year when many of our tribal students will graduate or be promoted in college, Adult Voca tional Training, high school, middle school, elementary school, kindergar ten, and Head Start. The Siletz Tribe would like to reward our students for their accomplishments through the Siletz Tribal Incentive Program, which awards students the following incentives: • • • • • • • • Head Start and/or Kindergarten promotion - $5 Elementary School Promotion — $l() Middle School Promotion - $25 High School Graduation - $50 Completion of Vocational Training - $100 Completion of a Bachelor's Degree - Pendleton Blanket Master’s Degree - $150 Doctorate Degree - $200 To put in for an incentive award, please send documentation of the pro motion and/or graduation with name and return address to your local edu cation specialist and we will process the incentive award as soon as possible.
