Minn. Native News: Prairie Island Joins Other MN Dakota Tribes In Opioid Lawsuit

As the disastrous effects of opioid addiction are becoming more widely known, so is the awareness that this is an issue that disproportionately affects the native community.

According to the Centers For Disease Control, as drug overdose deaths increased more than 200 percent between 1999 and 2015, the death rate for Native Americans and Native Alaskans rose by more than 500 percent.

Also, in 2012 the CDC reported that 1 out of 10 natives over the age of 12 used prescription pain medicine, which includes opioids, for nonprescription purposes. That’s compared to 1 in 20 whites and 1 in 30 African Americans.

Now… a new lawsuit claims that it’s the pharmaceutical industry that is the big cause of the opioid epidemic in native country.

BUCK: “It's hit us with force. Generations of our tribe’s future are mired in addiction.

That’s Shelly Buck, the president of the Prairie Island Indian Community, a Mdewakanton Dakota tribe in southeastern Minnesota.

BUCK: “The wreckage that leaves on our family unit is significant. We have babies being born addicted to opiates at a higher rate than ever, and many of our parents can't care for those children.”

Prairie Island and three other Dakota tribes in Minnesota have collectively filed complaints in a multi-district litigation now underway in United States District Court.

The complaint alleges that pharmaceutical companies have improperly and fraudulently downplayed the risk of addiction to opioids.

BUCK: “I mean we had no clue. When you go to the doctor, you have to have surgery. Anything that causes pain, the first thing that they want to do is prescribe pain medicine”

Timothy Purdon, is with the law firm, Robins Kaplan, which represents 15 tribes across six states.

Purdon: “We represent prairie island along with the other three Minnesota Dakota tribes, the shakopee tribe, the Upper Sioux, lower Sioux and prairie island.”

Purdon says the lawsuit accuses pharmaceutical companies, like Purdue Pharma, Johnson and Johnson, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, and others of knowingly causing harm. It also includes what he calls, the middlemen.

Purdon: “We alleged that the middlemen, the, uh, the distributors of the, the opioids, um, that they also acted illegally, that they improperly flooded certain parts of the country with opioid pills.”

Distributor companies include Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp.

Prairie Island President Shelley Buck and Attorney Tim Purdon say this flooding of opioids across communities, has drain d tribal community resources. Here’s Shelley Buck.

BUCK: This is just unlike anything we've seen and something has to be done.

The impact is felt locally in…. health services, police departments, tribal courts.

BUCK: “Treatment costs and medical expenses continue to increase and 100 percent of that is born by the tribe through our self-funded medical insurance program.”

And Nationally… as Tribes across the country are feeling the effects of opioid addiction and are getting involved. There are currently two of what Attorney Purdon calls, test cases, right now.

BUCK: “These cases have been consolidate, as I said, in front of a single judge in Ohio. And that judge has set up a tribal track for the litigation. And as such he's picked two test cases. The muskogee creek tribe in Oklahoma and the blackfeet tribe in Montana have been identified by the court as test cases.”

These test cases will serve as examples and help the parties on both sides understand the strengths and weaknesses of the claims.

And… in a move that Attorney Purdon calls “historic”, hundreds of federally recognized tribes recently signed an amicus Brief in support of the test cases. 448 of them.

Purdon: “There's only a little over 570 federally recognized tribes in the whole country. And you had 448 for coming in to join and support the litigation brought by Blackfeet and Muskogee creek. That's historic.”

A decision in those test cases, according to Purdon, should be decided before the end of the year.

Pharmaceutical companies and distributors deny acting improperly.

Prairie Island Indian Community President Shelley Buck says the aim (or end goal) of all of these lawsuits is to get resources needed to build treatment programs in communities to help turn the epidemic around.

BUCK: “That is our goal with the tribe debt of three tribes is the, to build a facility for our, for communities where we'll always have beds right now we run into problems where we can't find beds available when we need them. We'll have beds available for our people and it'll be a culturally based healing versus just what the state requires.”

I’m Cole Premo.

Minnesota Native News: Unique Conference Combines Traditional and Academic Knowledge of Native Nutrition

Marie: This is Minnesota Native News, I’m Marie Rock.
Headlines: Coming up… we check on a major campaign to restore healthy diets for Native Americans.

Six hundred people gathered at Mystic Lake Conference Center in Prior Lake for the Third Annual Conference on Native American Nutrition.

Tribal leaders, nutrition practitioners, researchers, students, and many more gathered to learn, share, and visit with one another.

Here is Leah Lemm with the story:

STORY #1 THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON NATIVE AMERICAN NUTRITION

REPORTER: The Third Annual Conference on Native American Nutrition was held in early October at the newly built conference center at the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s Mystic Lake Center.

Even with overcast skies, the center was bright and airy, and full of energy.
SOUNDS FROM MORNING INTRO
I spoke with Jesse Chase, Chair of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’ Seeds of Native Health Campaign, which put on the conference in partnership with the University of Minnesota.

CHASE: Seeds of Native Health is a four year, $10,000,000 campaign to improve Native nutrition, food access, and to fund advocacy campaigns across Indian Country. We partnered three years ago to begin the Native American Nutrition Conference as a way to get traditional knowledge and academic knowledge about native nutrition together.

REPORTER: And so they did. I read through the agenda and found topics such as…

Reclaiming the Tradition of Breastfeeding: The Foundation of a Nation…
Alaska Traditional Foods Movement …
and The Role of Soil Nourishment in Nutritional Quality of Indigenous Foods…

These are just three of the nearly 60 available sessions, and that doesn’t include the pre-conference foraging and cooking presentations.

The demand and interest in topics like these is evident in the growing number of participants.

CHASE: We've had just incredible turnout this year. Two years ago we had 400 people. This year we have almost 600. I really think this is something a lot of people care about just to see the growth that we've had.

REPORTER: And there is urgency to these topics.

Professor Mindy Kurzer is in the chair of the conference and is the Director of the Healthy Foods Healthy Lives Institute at the University of Minnesota.

KURZER: The issues are so urgent and so pressing and indigenous people are so invisible in this country that when people, it is very obvious to me that even progressive people who are non-indigenous, when they talk about disparities of any kind, whether it's health disparities or education disparities, don't mention native people.

REPORTER: Noteably, the conference has a particular awareness of the nuanced relationship between academia and tribal communities.

KURZER: There's been a lot of mistrust on the part of native communities of research in general and academic approaches to studying indigenous communities. And so this conference is part of a movement to heal that and work together, take the best of both worlds.

REPORTER: Professor Kurzer is referring to a history of exploitation… on the part of researchers… with many Native communities, and the culturally and humanly insensitive methods by which information was often obtained.

Part of that healing… in bringing together the best of both worlds… includes a lot of good *visiting.*

Ernie Whiteman, a panelist and presenter at the conference, is the Cultural Director of Dream of Wild Health…. An organization in Hugo, Minnesota…. He remarked on the importance of having the opportunity to network...

WHITEMAN: It’s a unique onference, I think that attracts a lot of people from all over Indian Country. We all are dealing with common things in our communities, you know. And so I think this place is like a resourceful place to come and to gather and to meet and to share ideas with one another and to solve problems.

REPORTER: Obesity rates… in 2015… for American Indian and Alaskan Natives was nearly 44%… and lack of access to fresh foods is a challenge common for many tribal communities.

This conference provides those working to combat these statistics the powerful tools of knowledge and connections.

WHITEMAN: It’s up to us as people that attend these conferences, participating in this conference to take home something or some things and apply it to your community.

REPORTER: The conference takes place again in September 2019.

For Minnesota Native News, I’m Leah Lemm.

Minnesota Native News: It’s Never Just Housing

This is Minnesota News, I’m Marie Rock.

A tent encampment of homeless folks continues to grow in Minneapolis. There are about 300 people there, many of whom are Native.

Tribal and urban leaders are making plans to provide more sturdy shelter over the coming months. But what else is needed to support those living in these tents? Reporter Melissa Townsend tells us more.

[camp sound]

A lot of people involved in this camp say the first priority is stable, affordable housing. Joy Friedman is with Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center.

FREIDMAN: You need to be able to have affordable housing to rest your head to be able to start thinking about - now what do I do? But if I don’t even know where I’m going to sleep tonight, I can’t worry about anything else. Tonight i have to find a safe location, I have to hold down my tent, I got to watch over my stuff. This is making it so I don’t have time to deal with anything else that’s going on with my life. (:20)

When I talked with Charyl from Lac Courte Oreilles [la coo du ray], she’d been living in the camp for about a month.

CHARYL: I’m looking for an apartment and I’m looking for like some therapy and stuff because like I told you what I went through was very traumatic. And I prefer the Native ways. (:12)

To fill the need for housing in the short term, the Red lake Nation has struck a deal with the city and county leaders. The tribe will host FEMA style trailers on their land in south Minneapolis The tribe wants the trailers to be paid for and managed by the city and county. It’s a short term solution while local officials and Native leaders make a plan for long term permanent housing.

But not everyone in this camp is ready for that. Donald John Banks is from Mille Lacs. He’s spent a few nights off and on in the camp over the past few months.

REPORTER: So I guess the Mayor has a plan to potentially put people in housing.
BANKS: I’d be OK with housing but first I want to - I got to relearn a lot of things and redo a lot of things just so I could say I did it the right way. (:16)

Banks says he struggles with addiction and depression. He says he just needs to be in a different place emotionally and have like a 5-year plan before he can commit to a permanent address.

REPORTER: So you think now you’re ready for a 5 year plan?
BANKS: I have the foundations for a 5 year plan, that’s about it. That’s it. (:11)

For Banks and people like him who aren’t in shelters, street outreach is key.

At the camp, a coalition of tribes and Native led urban organizations are providing everything from meals, showers, snacks, advice, spiritual resources, some security and connections to health and social service programs. But one organization hasn’t been able to help.

STATELY: From very early on people were telling us we need people to come in and provide onsite medical care that we have some people there with a range of things. (:07)

Antony Stately is CEO of the Native American Community Clinic. NACC is just a few blocks away from the camp, but too much legal red tape kept them from doing the kind of outreach they wanted to do.

STATELY: Which was challenging for me and my staff because these are our patients. We wanted to help them. (:04)

And here again the Red Lake nation comes through. Stately says a valuable partnership with the Red Lake Nation and Livio health group helped them cut through the red tape. NACC no longer needed multiple layers of approval because Red Lake is a sovereign government. And they licensed NACC to provide onsite medical care on their behalf.

ANTONY: Some of the leadership at Red lake is very innovative and forward-thinking in the way that they conceptualize the responsibility they have to their urban dwelling members. (:10)

Stately says in one week NACC staff was able to go tent to tent and offer screenings for HIV, Hep-C and Syphilis. For those testing positive, docs and nurses connected them with services at the NACC clinic just blocks away.

Red Lake and NACC have also partnered on a brand new intensive out-patient drug treatment program. On October 1st, the program opened its doors in two locations— in Little Earth and in the Ancient Traders Market Building on Franklin. The program is culturally based, medically assisted treatment using Suboxone. Stately says they hope to work with up to 50 clients this year.

This tent city has shown a light on the crisis created by the shortage of affordable housing and addiction services. These partnerships are a good example of the kind of resources tribes and urban leaders want to see more of — culturally sensitive approaches to supporting urban Native relatives who are currently struggling.

For Minnesota Native News, I’m Melissa Townsend.

MN Native News: Homeless Encampment Update & Mille Lacs Band’s New Policing Agreement

MARIE ROCK: This week on Minnesota Native News, we get an update on the Minneapolis homeless encampment, also known as “the wall of forgotten natives.” We also hear about a new police agreement between the Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe and the county sheriff’s office that ends a two-year impasse.

Here’s reporter Cole Premo.

MAGGIE THUNDERHAWK:“I really been homeless for a long time. I just got here like maybe a month ago.”

(That’s Maggie Thunderhawk)

JAI-PHOENYX: “I'm transgender and I moved here a little over a year ago to Minneapolis”

(And Jai-Phoenix)

JAI-PHOENYX: “For me personally, it's been a little rough, you know, especially just being new here at first I'm just being a mostly white.

MAGGIE THUNDERHAWK: “It's better. Yeah. Because, um, where, where wherever we went we either got chased away from that spot or to call cops were called on us because we couldn't be there.

JAI-PHOENYX: People warmed up to me and I got pretty close to a lot of people and it kinda feels like family now, which is good and I'm getting a lot of help. And actually just today got my referral for housing.

MAGGIE THUNDERHAWK: You get a lot of services here. I signed up for housing.

As fall sets in and with winter just around the corner, Jai and Maggie are just two amongst hundreds livings at the Minneapolis homeless encampment on Hiawatha Avenue.

Nicknamed “the wall of forgotten natives”, the nonetheless diverse camp has been expanding for months. And the options are limited for moving the camp to a preferred spot for all parties involved, and it’s all happening within a shrinking timeline.

The Minneapolis City Council recently delayed their final vote to choose between two options… a parking lot on 2600 Minnehaha, which is a controversial location due to it being near two charter schools with young students, or the Roof Depot location, which would require millions of dollars to prepare.

Meanwhile back at the camp, outreach groups have been assisting the camp with food, shelter and services.

JAI PHOENYX: “There's a lot of community here, especially now with the Natives Against Heroin tent.”

As the name Natives Against Herion implies, a big problem at the camp is addiction.

JAMES CROSS: “we do confront them in a good way. Uh, we let them know that we don't want them here” … “we don't need it in this community and you want it because we got elders, we've got kids, we've got the whole life cycle in there.”

James Cross, founder of Natives Against Heroin, says he’s been out here working at the camp since day one and considers himself the camp spokesperson.

JAMES CROSS: “Securing it, desescalating it and negative behaviors. Doing ODs, saving lives. 10:29 Make sure there's coffee cigarettes and something to eat every morning so we can wake up in a good day so that they know that natives against heroin hasn't forgotten about our people.

Cross, a former addict and gang member who has lived though homelessness, says the camp has been a long time coming. Building a closer knit community has provided help for addicts and families alike.

JAMES CROSS: Before it was all silo organization, Silo programs, silo, everything. And at this time it's bringing everybody together.

But there is still the need of where to move the camp for the winter, which is brutal in Minnesota. It’s current location is not ideal for those types of conditions.

But the camp needs to find a better place for the winter, which is of course brutal in Minnesota. The current location isn’t ideal for blizzard and extreme cold-types of conditions.

According to recent news reports, Red Lake Nation recently proposed moving the camp to a location on nearby Cedar Avenue owned by the tribe. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said it’s a viable option. The only catch is that demolition of the buildings would need to begin soon in order to get the camp moved there within six weeks.

Whichever location is chosen, Cross says the biggest change needed isn’t to move these people into another camp, or navigation center, but into stable housing free of addiction.

CROSS: “Get these people somewhere where they can better themselves, better people and better the community and start living in a good way. The good life.”

With the mayor vocalizing his support for action, the Minneapolis City Council will meet soon to decide the location.

In other news...

[SOUND OF COUNTY BOARD HEARING]

The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the Mille Lacs County Sheriff’s Office have a new policing agreement.

Full disclosure, I am a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, but am reporting this without bias.

The agreement, which took effect on September 18th, is a resolution to a two-year impasse that began after the county voted to terminate 25 years of cooperation with the tribal police. It again allows the Mille Lacs band to resume state law enforcement activities.

Mille Lacs County Sheriff Brent Lindgren said at a recent county board meeting that the agreement is a result of many difficult decisions and compromises from the band and county.

“I now look forward to implementing this new Mutual Aid/Cooperative Agreement over my few remaining months as Sheriff,” he said.

The band’s chief executive, Melanie Benjamin, released a statement, saying the past two years have been tragic and difficult years on the Mille Lacs Reservation and that the new agreement is the beginning of a long journey in restoring law, order and hope in our community. She ends by saying the journey will take many years.

The policing agreement does not have any effect on a federal lawsuit filed by the Mille Lacs band arguing reservation boundaries.

This is Cole Premo.

Minnesota Native News: Decisions Pending on Minneapolis Homeless Encampment

This week reporter Melissa Townsend has the latest on a homeless tent camp in Minneapolis. There are roughly 300 people - mostly Native - in the camp. Some are calling it “The Wall of Forgotten Natives”.

[CAMP AMBI]

MELISSA: Linda Eaglespeaker is a Blackfeet elder who works with the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center in Minneapolis.

EAGLESPEAKER: When I first heard about these camps, there were only 5 tents then. And so now it’s population has climbed up to 300 people. I came walking over. As I went through and I talked to all the familIes as I’m coming along, their number one fear is their fear of being here at night. Because the way this camp is set up is that on this side closest to the Indian Center and Wakiagan, you’ve got all the families and healthy families, and then you have all the single adults that are working and who are trying really hard, but at the other end of the camp you’ve got all those who are addicted to every kind of drug you can imagine. And at night time when we go away, they come out to play. (1:09)

[ambi of camp]

On one end of the camp two young girls are playing with dolls in a cardboard box near an elder woman sitting in her wheelchair and younger adults standing talking. At the other end of the camp it’s mostly young men and women - no elders, no children. I saw one person in a tent filling a syringe. Two people have died here in the past few weeks. One woman reportedly from an asthma attack. One man from causes not yet made public.

JOY: Fruit snacks? Fruit snacks! … (:02)

Joy Friedman walks through the tents handing out snacks. She’s an outreach worker also with the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center. At the Center’s headquarters she runs support groups for women who have left abusive relationships.

She’s here to connect with her relatives and begin conversations about getting helpful services. But she says when folks decide they do want help - it’s getting harder and harder to find it.

JOY: Like I said I used to be an individual who slept on the streets and wherever I could and ate out of trash cans. And it’s like the services I had then, are no longer here now. So that makes it even less. I can get a girl a Rule 25 today but she has to wait 4-6 weeks for a bed. (:18)

A rule 25 is the first step to getting into a drug treatment program. A bed would be in an in-patient treatment facility.

JOY: Shelters - I can’t even get them in shelters right now. They’re full. domestic violence shelters? They’re full, around Minnesota - so this is not just here. (:11)

It’s in this landscape of scarce resources that Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey has committed to partnering with tribes and urban Native leaders to create housing for everyone at this camp before winter.

[city council ambi]

The City Council Housing Committee met on September 12th to talk about a short term plan to do that. In the next 3 weeks — yes 3 weeks! - city council plans to find a site and build a temporary structure to house services and beds for those in the camp.

It would be called a Navigation center — to steer people into support services and long term housing.The location is unclear but Metro Native leaders want that site to be near the Native American cultural corridor. What’s also unclear is — who going to pay for it.

At the city council meeting, Councilmember Lisa Goodwin spoke up:

GOODWIN: I don’t see any leadership from the county here. We don’t have the deepest pockets and we should hold our colleagues at other levels of government accountable for stepping up. (:08)

Councilmember Alondra Cano didn’t necessarily disagree with her. But she did add …

CANO: I don’t want to kick the can to the county, I don’t want to kick the can to the schools or to MPHA, I want to be held responsible for the power and the position and the responsibility that we have here today. (:12)

The two women then shared some tense words off mic.

[camp ambi]

Back at the camp Linda Eaglespeaker - elder with the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center is walking through the tents with a person from the county’s housing services.

Linda took her to 5 specific families.

I interviewed the county worker who was with Linda Eaglespeaker. But they later told me they didn’t want to go on the record because the situation was becoming more political than they had realized.

Linda Eaglespeaker is among those who hope a game of political football doesn’t leave homeless Native American families out in the cold.

EAGLESPEAKER: I’m going to come through in the next couple of days and I want to see those tents gone. (:06)

For Minnesota Native News, I’m Melissa Townsend.

Minnesota Native News: A Good Week for Harvesting Resources

Headlines:
Marie: This week on Minnesota Native News, hard work is underway to address the housing crisis – and the wild rice harvest begins.
This is Minnesota Native News. I’m Marie Rock.
Story #1: Housing/Kateri update:
Marie: A tent camp near Hiawatha and Cedar Avenues has been growing all summer, and drawing lots of media attention and community response. Now urban Indian leaders and public agencies are providing toilets and fresh water – and trying to find people homes. But homelessness and housing insecurity has been part of Native life in Minnesota for decades. Laurie Stern reports on two efforts to make long-term change.
Laurie (tape 2:40): Last winter we reported that the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center – M-I-W-R-C might take over Kateri Residence. Kateri was the only long-term housing available to help Native women reunite with children in the child protection system . But Kateri closed in June. Patina Park is Executive Director of M-I-W-R-C.
The kids can’t be placed with them until they have housing but they really can’t get housing until the children are with them.
Park calls the housing voucher requirements a Catch-22 that makes family housing nearly impossible for women with children in the system.
Safe and suitable housing is always an element of the case plan. So if the child's an out of home placement, the parent may complete CD treatment, may complete the mental health assessment, do therapy, might be doing all of the things they need to in order to get their child re- unified, but they can't find safe and suitable housing.
Park says that Kateri served a vital function that gave families time and a place to stabilize. But the old building needed even more repairs than she thought it would. So she and the M-I-W-R-C board are deciding whether those repairs are worth making.
At M-I-W-R-C, we remain committed to restarting that programming as soon as we possibly can either there or continually raising money to go ahead and purchase a new place or to build something because it's so vital.
Park says she and St. Stephens - the building’s owner – found housing for most of the former residents, but that at least one woman who used to live at Kateri is now living at the tent camp.
Plans for much-needed housing are also underway on University Avenue in Saint Paul. A new 42-unit supportive shelter for American Indians age 18 to 24 is scheduled to start construction next month and open in about a year. One of the forces behind it is Ain Dah Yung, the non-profit that helps to strengthen Native families, with an emphasis on youth. Executive Director Deb Foster explains the culture has been deliberately destroyed since colonization.
The youth that walk through our doors now are being raised by these parents and these grandparents who were in boarding school potentially in boarding schools and were stripped of their identity and language and traditions and beliefs and everything.
Foster says the new shelter will help Native youth who have aged out of foster care. They’ll learn job skills in technology classrooms, get counseling and gather with others for ceremonies. The new center will be called Mino Oski Ain Dah Yung, or “Good New Home” in Ojibwe. For MNN I’m LS.
Story #2 Wild Rice
(start ricing tape)
Marie: Finally, the season for wild rice is nearing peak time.
In the canoe is Jeff Savage, artist and director of the Fond du Lac Cultural Center.
(tape :16) When the harvesters come in, they’ll take their unfinished wild rice and sell it to the reservation who will get it finished into the finished product and then that’s distributed out to band members and to tribal government for programs and ceremonies for the whole next year.
Only American Indians may take wild rice from the waters within the original boundaries of the White Earth, Leech Lake, Nett Lake, Vermilion Lake, Grand Portage, Fond du Lac and Mille Lacs reservations.
Most tribal websites will have updates on conditions.
Darren Vogt (Vote) with the 1854 Treaty Authority says conditions this year are just so-so.
Across the 1854 ceded territory which is Northeastern Minnesota I would say the rice is below average this season. We had some early rain events which seem to really impact the harvest.
Updates are available on the website, www.1854treatyauthority.org.

Minnesota Native News: Per Cap Patrol Inspires, and Guitarist Combines Jazz and Visual Art

Marie: This is Minnesota Native News, I’m Leah Lemm, in this week for Marie Rock.
Headlines: Coming up…:
Concerned community members come together to show support to those battling addiction in Mille Lacs…
and jazz guitarist Briand Morrison talks about his and his father’s art….

Here are the stories…

STORY #1 - PER CAP PATROL
REPORTER: I recently visited with a group called the Per Cap Patrol at the Woodlands National Bank parking lot, just North of the Grand Casino Mille Lacs in Onamia.

The morning was clear and sunny, and the smell of the fire pit with tobacco offerings moved through the air. I was immediately welcomed by Luther Sam. He explained what Per Cap Patrol is and what it does:

SAM: I grew up here, and the Per Cap Patrol is a group of community members few and far between… different backgrounds, different upbringings, but sharing the same common goal which is to offer people a different type of lifestyle to live, opposed to drinking using drugs or selling drugs.

REPORTER: The first Thursday of the month is “Per Cap” distribution day for members of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

“Per Cap” is short for “Per Capita Payments” which according to the IRS is “a distribution of tribal property or money to an individual tribal member on a per capita basis.”

Luther reports a noted increase in drug deals that takes place soon after checks are dispersed.

SAM: People get their checks, there's no secret about it. So this day more so than any people got people got money. The dope peddlers, they know first come first serve right outside the bank door.

REPORTER: Luther and the Per Cap Patrol are a positive presence, aiming to dissuade dealers from parking in the lot. Plus they have a bullhorn (COME BACK HERE! (laughter)).

Luther has first hand knowledge of addiction and knows how meaningful being surrounded by support really is.

SAM: When I was in my addiction, I was a IV user for a couple of years on heroin and?when I sobered up though my biggest kind of help was the people never turned their back on me.?
REPORTER: Per Cap Patrol not only tries to prevent drug deals, they actively support those who face addiction with medicines, food and love.

SAM: We bring it to the people. We got the pipe out here, we got the drum, we got the medicines and one of the biggest spiritual tools out of everything is the bodies - each other… is one of the biggest spritual tools we got.

STORY #2 - BRIAND MORRISON TALKS GEORGE MORRISON AND UPCOMING EVENT
MUSIC: briand’s musical intro from impressions

REPORTER: We’re listening to Briand Morrison, a jazz guitarist who lives in Grand Portage. He spends his time performing and creating music among his father’s artwork.

MORRISON: We have a show coming up of my father's work, his name is George Morrison. He's an abstract expressionist painter who happens to be an Indian… those are his words.

REPORTER: George Morrison’s work is widely appreciated and recognized, and can be quite costly. Even his original drawings range in price from two to eight thousand dollars.

Briand is working to make George’s drawings accessible to the general public… by creating high quality prints, called GICLEES, so that high art isn’t just available to those with substantial pocketbooks.

MORRISON: I've always wanted to do a show of just giclee prints of my dad's work because the giclee prints are of low cost. I wanted art for everyone. So this is the first time that anybody has ever done a show of giclee prints.

MUSIC
REPORTER: Briand has also composed jazz works to play alongside a series of his father’s visual art. This collection is called Musical Impressions: The Art of George Morrison. And is what we are listening to.
MUSIC

The exhibit will be on display at the JOHNSON HERITAGE POST ART GALLERY in Grand Marais from October 12th through November 4th. Briand’s artist talk and performance of Musical Impressions takes place on Saturday, October 13th at 2pm.

For Minnesota Native News, I’m Leah Lemm.