Spilyay Tymoo
Warm Springs, Oregon
January 7, 1994 PAGE 5
The deadly brew of alcohol and despair has devastated Alaska Natives. But now people are reaching out to
one another in a sobriety movement that is slowly gathering strength.
A growing revolution of hope
Almost everyone had a
horrible story to tell, stories of
suicides and despair and deaths
that shouldn't have been. These
were the kinds of things people
talked about openly. More
discreetly, they whispered of
sexually abused children and
women beaten by husbands and
boyfriends in bursts of drunken
rage.
People in the villages of
Alaska are like a man being
pulled under by the currents of a
river, said Walter Charley, a 79-year-old
Athabascan from
Copper Center. The people
sitting around him Indians,
Aleuts and Eskimos from all
over Alaska knew exactly
what he meant. Some nodded as
he spoke.
"We're struggling for our
lives," Walter Charley said.
Here, on a dusty baseball
diamond beneath the Wangell
Mountains, the roots of a
revolution were quietly taking
grip-
For five days last August, a
couple hundred Alaska Natives
gathered to discuss the problems
facing people in the villages. A
few were counselors, social
workers or political leaders, but
most were just regular people
many of them former alcoholics
or drug abusers trying to live
a decent life, worriecf about the
future and eager to visit with
people from other places strug
gling with the same issues.
They shared their experiences
and talked about solutions. They
danced to traditional music, and
boogied to a Native rock band.
In a ceremony at the end of the
retreat, they vowed to stay
sober, respect the people they
live around and work toward
improving life back home.
The garnering was one of the
most visible signs of a move
ment percolating in dozens of
villages over the past two years.
Known as the "sobriety move
ment," its goal is a Native world
unimpaired by alcohol or drugs,
one in which widespread
alcoholism is no longer consid
ered normal.
The aim of the movement . ;
goes well beyond that, though,
and includes reshaping Native
communities and culture all
over Alaska, places where
people are being destroyed by
changes and forces they don't
understand and haven t been
able to control.
It is a long, slow, extreme
uphill struggle. The movement
is so new if s difficult to tell how
much of an effect, if any, it is
having.
The problems are so complex
that there's no single, proven
way to solve them.
Villages are trying dozens of
approaches, from Alcoholics
Anonymous to traditional
Native spirituality and ritual,
from legal sovereignty to est-like
"personal growth seminars.
"If s not the kind of thing you
can look and see big dynamic
successes," said Mary O'Conner,
health educator for the North
Slope Borough in Barrow. "You
can't say, Yep, it's working.
We're real successful.' You re
dealing in people's lives. It's an
over-time kind of thing."
What the sobriety movement
has stressed above all else is a
philosophy that it must be the
ale of the villages not
h agencies, not the govern
ment, not the regional corpora
tions who take responsibility
for their own well-being. With
that comes pride, unity with
others doing the same thing, and
increased control over their
lives.
"You've got to start some-
Blace," said Doug Modig,
irector of the alcohol program
for the Rural Alaska Community
Action Program, a state- and
federally-funded social service
agency.
"We started with the idea that
people are impaired by alcohol
and that has to stop if you're
going to deal with these other
problems. . . As long as people
are drinking, they don't have a
choice. When they stop, they do.
"We're not just talking about
alcohol. It's a real broad thing.
We're talking about suicides,
and sexual abuse, and domestic
violence. We're talking about
economics and ineffective local
government.
"We're talking about personal
responsibility that results in self
determination. . . It suggests a
unity, that people aren't doing it
alone."
Modig, a Tsimshian Indian
from Ketchikan, runs the only
statewide alcohol program in
Alaska, and has been at the
center of the sobriety movement
from its beginnings. Two years
ago, Rural Cap banned alcohol
from its functions, a move since
followed by several regional
Native corporations.
Since then, Modig and his
associate, Amy Lohr, have
traveled to more than 20 vil
' lages, been invited to 25 others
and worked with more than 90., ,
They say they listen to what
communities want, then help
establish appropriate alcoholism
and development programs.
"The approach from the
agencies in the past has always
been, 'We'll come help you.'
What we're saying is, 'You got
to help yourself. We can maybe
help you do that, but you've got
to be the one to do it, Modig
said.
Some regional health corpora
tions and government health
agencies have begun to tailor
programs to the needs and
wishes of specific communities
rather than use a single model
for all. For example, rather than
rely on a single psychologist to
make infrequent visits to a
village, there have been efforts
to train residents to counsel one
another.
"Nobody can come in from
outside and solve the problems,"
said Carla Bonney, director of
the tribal-run health department
in the village of Tanana, in the
Interior. "But for so many years,
people, Native people, have
been told they're not capable of
solving their own problems.
There's been an erosion of self
esteem that goes back to the
missionaries.
"If s not a big flow, something
huge thaf s happening every
where. It's little glimmers here
and there. We'll near that
somebody somewhere else has
similar ideas and it's a very
positive thing."
Some people in some villages
have stopped drinking. Others
have voted to ban alcohol and
set community wide goals for
living without booze. Progress is
slow, but there are small signs of
it.
In Alakanuk, a Yupik village
in which eight young adults
killed themselves in 16 months,
an Alcoholics Anonymous
meeting was held for the first
time last fall. With eight people
attending, it was believed to be
the largest AA meeting ever on
the Yukon River. Regular
meetings have been held since.
On the North Slope, perhaps
the most affluent local govern
ment in Alaska, young adults
who have given up booze have
gone on borough-owned televi
sion to talk about it.
Attendance at statewide
gatherings like the one in
ilennallen has increased
steadily.
While some communities
have tried banning booze
with varying degrees of success
there are no examples of
Alaska villages that have
successfully gone from rampant
alcoholism to widespread
sobriety. Sobriety advocates
hope that, over time, some
communities will emerge as
examples of what is possible.
That will take years, they admit.
More than anything else,
Alaska's sobriety movement has
been influenced by Alkali Lake,
an Indian village in British
Columbia that through the
will of its people went from
100 percent alcoholism to almost
complete sobriety. It took 15
years.
Alkali Lake's struggle was
depicted in the film Hne
Honour of All," with residents
of the town portraying them
selves as the drunks they once
were. Cassettes of the movie
have circulated extensively
throughout rural Alaska for the
past year, with demand increas
ing as more people learn what
happened there.
"It's been real influential,"
said Modig. Dozens of villages
in Alaska have problems as bad
or worse than the old Alkali
Lake, he said. "If s a vision of
hope. People see it and say, If
they can do it, maybe we can do
it.' People look at that and they
see real live Native people. It's
not a Hollywood thing.
Over the past couple of years,
people from Alkali Lake have
made several trips to Alaska to
talk about what happened there,
as have people from Four
Worlds Development Council,
an Alberta-based Native organi
zation that has worked exten
sively on Native alcoholism in
Canada and the Lower 48.
"When things get really
desperate, when a whole
community is ready to go down,
when things get really bad, if s
time to do something," Lloyd
Dick, a 23-year-old from Alkali
Lake, told participants at
Glennallen. He told of losing
family members and friends,
and struggling with alcohol and
drugs himself
"I used to do about five hits
of acid in one night," he said.
"Really get stonecl. I'm really
grateful for being alive. I travel
maybe thousands of miles, and
talk a little bit, maybe one or
two, it would be really nice if
you'd listen and recognize what'
happening with this alcohol. . . .
You can't rude a lot of stuff that
happened, can't keep it inside.
You stand up and snare."
Later, David West, a huge
man with long, dark braids who
leads the Fairbanks-based
Crossing Paths drummers, sat in
a circle of singers around a big
drum in right field. He slowly
pounded a beat and, in a high,
strong, ghostly wail, sang a
traditional Sioux chant. Others
also beat the drum and an
swered his chants, or danced
slowly around it.
Between songs, West spoke:
"We share the dream of the
people of Alkali Lake, that we
can kill this enemy. It's been a
prayer of ours for a long time,
that it would be the Native
people that would show the way
out from under the disease of
alcoholism, for this is our
country. We were put here,
we're from here.
"It should be us that has the
strength to show the way."
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. -;4 f -! :; S'i . 'Hu
r ? v ' "' "
Don Burnstick "jump starts" Nellie Ewan. The tug is a psychological technique designed to help people express their emotions.
The town ofKake seems poised on the precipice. Will its many non-drinkers risk turning the tide of self
destruction, or will fear and doubt leave them silent witnesses to slow death by alcohol?
D op Bless
KAKE-Half the villagers in this
Southeast fishing and logging
community have licked alcohol
turned it down on their own, or
with the help of Alcoholics Anony
mous or their church. But Kake still
acts like a drunken village, with the
same sad self-destructive behavior.
Why?
Because Kake's many non-drinkers
haven't found a way to bring a
new sober social order to their
community. When public drunks
stumble down the street or get sick
in the post office, when a young
man threatens suicide at noon and
pulls the trigger two hours later,
Kake looks the other way. The non
drinkers of Kake, said one local
critic, practice "closet sobriety."
A handful of recovered alcoholics
and non-drinkers don't think it has
to be this way. They call themselves
Saturday Night Live because on
Saturday nights they get together to
socialize and talk about how to
make Kake a better place to live.
The core of Saturday Night Live
is a small group of regular partici
pants: Al Williams, a recovering
alcoholic and the community's drug
and alcohol counselor; Adella
George, a recovering alcoholic and
mother of four; Kay Larson, mother
of five and a community activist;
Gary Williams, who married into a
Kake family and moved there a year
ago; and Gary Austin, a salesman
who lost a brother to suicide last
year.
To an outsider, Kake looks ap
pealing and prosperous. If s a
village of 665 on Kupreanof Island,
southwest of Juneau. The sea offers
up a bounty of crab, salmon, halibut
and clams; hunters take deer from
the surrounding forest. Just last
February, all 500 shareholders
received $10,000 checks from the
Kake Tribal Corp. for the sale of
timber losses to an Outside com
pany. An early morning walk down
Kake's main street adds to the
feeling of comfort. Smoke curls from
the chimneys of yellow and blue
and purple houses. In a small bay
just offshore, a lone heron greets the
day. Amid this ease and beauty, it
comes as a shock to leam just how
deeply troubled Kake is.
Beyond appearances
Lincoln Bean, a logger for the past
17 years, was one of the village's
first volunteer emergency medical
technicians. To spend a few hours
with him is to look beneath the
picture postcard, he begins by
telling why he became an EMT.
"My brother and sister-in-law
had been out partying, smoking
dope. The kids were in the house,
and somehow they'd got hold of a
gun. My 6-year-old nephew, he shot
to fak
himself in the stomach. I ran over
there. He was trying to wipe the
blood away from his stomach.
Everyone was standing around,
screaming and crying, out there was
nobody there who knew what to do.
"My nephew finally said to me,
Uncle, I can't breathe so I gave
him mouth to mouth, but we lost
him.
"In my life it was a turning point.
What a waste, and so were all the
others after him."
As an EMT, Bean has responded
to the suicides of 13 or 14 family
members or friends, "not counting
natural deaths, or (suicide) at
tempts." His wife's brother shot
himself, his little sister drowned,
another brother-in-law leaped from
a third-story window. Ana the list
goes on.
He remembers being called to a
prty one night. "A guy there had
been telling people he was going to
hanghimself.
...There he was, ripping a sheet
into strips, right at the party, and
nobody paid any attention. Finally,
he went out to this little tree outside,
and hune himself.
"Another guy at the party saw it,
and ran out. He held him up so he
wouldn't die, and started snouting
for help. But nobody came. People
heard nim-he coukf have reached
out his hand and touched the wall
risk
of the nearest house. They heard
him, but nobody came.
"Finally, he had to let the guy
drop to get some help. And he died.
We came. It was so eerie. The guy
was kneeling there, hanging from
that tree, and you wanted to say,
'Why doesn't he just stand up?
A head on approach
It's not that the community hasn't
tried to help itself. In 1980, a volun
teer health council got training for
emergency medicaltechnicians,
bought an ambulance and eventu
ally built a new health clinic. They
provided a professional response to
Kake's all-too-frequent scenes of
human destruction, but they
couldn't stop people from hurting
themselves.
By all account, Brent Moody did.
Moody was hired as the police
chief in 1984. A non-Native, big-city
cop from Minneapolis, Moody
connected with the community in a
way no one else ever had. For two
years after he arrived, suicide
attempts dropped 75 percent and
successful suicides stopped alto
gether. Moody did something no one else
in Kake had tried; he confronted
people.
"If someone was drunk, and
threatening to hurt themselves,
we'd transport them to detox,
actually charge them criminally for
being drunk and doing bad things,"
he said.
He showed no discrimination in
his arrests; if the son of a city coun
cil member was drunk, he got
arrested.
Moody also took suicide threats
seriously. "If someone said they
were going to hurt themselves, I'd
take them into protective custody,
and we'd transport them over to the
hospital (in Sitka) for a couple of
days."
The basic reason it worked,
people realized that a suicide at
tempt had consequences. Sometimes
people would cut their wrists or
take something just to get attention
in the village. But then they got to
realizing, 'Oh, no, this new police
chief is going to send me to the
hospital.'"
Ninety-nine percent of his arrests
involved alcohol or drug abuse.
For a year and a half, ne enjoyed
strong support from Kake's city
council but eventually that eroded,
and he left for a job in Juneau.
Sober and Isolated
The fact that Kake rejected Brent
Moody's head-on approach to its
problem may illustrate how sick the
community was. Within two weeks
of his departure in January 1986, the
suicide attempts began again. A
young man hanged nimself in early
Continued on pace 6