A White Earth issue across Indian Country

High rate of alcohol-related deaths came as no surprise to White Earth Band of Chippewa.

MAHNOMEN, MINN. — The numbers came as no surprise to Pat Moran, manager of a substance-abuse program on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday that almost 12 percent of deaths among American Indians and Alaska Natives are alcohol-related — more than triple the rate in the general U.S. population.The report is based on the first-ever national survey of alcohol's role in Indian mortality. The CDC found the largest number of alcohol-related deaths among Indians in the Indian Health Service's Northern Plains region, which includes North Dakota and Minnesota. There was no breakdown by state or tribe.

"Those numbers don't surprise me at all," Moran said. "We have a high rate of alcoholism on the reservation, and a majority of deaths here are related" to alcohol or other chemical abuse.The White Earth Band of Chippewa Indians (PDF) offers intervention and prevention services, diagnosis and referrals. The band also operates several outpatient and after-care sites scattered across the large reservation and an in-patient treatment center for women and their children in Mahnomen.

The White Earth program is "short-staffed and short-funded," Moran said. "We're always looking for more money to do more things."With $2 million each from the state and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, White Earth this summer bought a 40-acre treatment center in Bemidji, Minn., after it was closed by Episcopal Community Services. The band plans to spend a total of $8 million to reopen the center to treat American Indian teenagers with substance-abuse problems. Moran said there are other signs of progress on her reservation."I see people who are out walking who are in recovery," she said. "I'm one of them.

"In the Northern Plains, reservations often are remote, isolated and poor, the CDC report notes, and those factors may contribute to the higher alcohol-related death rate. In any case, the survey results should be "a call to action" for federal, state, local and tribal governments, said Dwayne Jarman, one of the study's authors and a CDC epidemiologist who works for the Indian Health Service.

Jarman said in an interview Thursday that states should increase alcohol excise taxes to cut demand. Policies against serving people who already are intoxicated need to be better enforced, he said, and there should be better coordination between tribal courts and health centers."We also need to look at new community-specific ways to address the problem," he said, bringing Indian cultural values more into play. Researchers analyzed death certificates from 2001 to 2005. They found that traffic accidents and alcoholic liver disease were the two leading causes of alcohol-related deaths, each accounting for about a fourth of the deaths. Homicide and suicide also were causes.There may have been more alcohol-related deaths, according to the report, because deaths attributed to such diseases as pneumonia and colon cancer were not counted, although alcoholism is considered a major risk factor in each. Men accounted for two-thirds of the alcohol-related deaths among Indians, according to the study. Almost two-thirds were younger than 50, and 7 percent were younger than 20.The study results confirm that alcoholism remains a crippling problem on reservations despite development in recent years of culturally sensitive "red road" recovery programs.

Linda Duckwitz, a licensed addiction counselor at the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in north-central North Dakota, said the CDC statistics "are very troubling." The Spirit Lake Dakotah Nation "is doing some creative things, including equine therapy," where young addicts in treatment work with horses, she said. But the effort is hampered by a lack of state funding for treatment programs that aren't hospital-based and by permissive attitudes throughout the state toward binge drinking and alcoholism.

Simply amazing..........

This huge mess started years ago. The guys at the top lied for years on their earnings statements to investors and the SEC. They made hundreds of millions in stock options.

They are finally getting around to doing something, anything, to placate someone who might be dumb enough to commit more assets to bail out these thieves.

The stench is sickening.

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Daniel Mudd replaced his top managers at the beleaguered mortgage-finance provider as the company struggles to convince investors it has enough capital to weather the housing slump.

Chief Financial Officer Stephen Swad will leave and be replaced by David Hisey, the Washington-based company said in a statement today. Chief Business Officer Robert Levin will retire and Peter Niculescu will step into the role. Chief Risk Officer Enrico Dallavecchia will also leave and his duties will be assumed by Michael Shaw.

Mudd is seeking to restore confidence to Fannie after its shares tumbled more than 85 percent this year and debt costs climbed. Concern that Fannie and the smaller Freddie Mac didn't have enough capital prompted U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to draw up a rescue plan to inject unlimited amounts of money into the companies if needed.

This is how it started ......

My father, Douglas Parisian, worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and we lived on many Indian reservations across the Great Plains. Growing up, the hills of the Sisseton-Wahpeton tribe on west to the Big Horn Mountains on the Crow Reservation were home to me.

It was near Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota I spent my high school years. Only 80 years before, Hotckiss guns were carefully trained on a group of terrified and disarmed Sioux. It wasn’t a battlefield at Wounded Knee, like historians suggest, it was an assassination; as were America’s first freedom fighters; Sitting Bull, Dull Knife and Geronimo.

The carnage continues today as the Indian Affairs Trust Office still can not account for two billion dollars of Native American fund transfers. This company was founded in 1995 to manage serious wealth for those tribes and tribal members who understand that casino gaming alone is not the answer to viable long-term economic success.

Excellent ndn rez humor...........

When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training.

One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks.

The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: 'What are these guys in the big suits doing?' One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.

Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, 'Why certainly!' and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.

So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly, but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon.

An official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing, the translator relayed the message:

'WATCH OUT FOR THESE ASSHOLES - THEY HAVE COME TO STEAL YOUR LAND.'

Peking, Bejjing, who cares........?

China did a colorful job.

Unfortunately, the pollution will continue unabated. Our Earth Mother is under attack.

Congratulations to all of the athletes, sponsors and organizing committee.

May London do so good.

Ignorant politicians.........

The Minnesota Legislature this year passed a measure allowing youths age 10 and 11 to hunt big game before attending firearms safety classes.

An American debacle.........

The quagmire of Freddie and Fannie continues.

What it says about America, the SEC, enforcement, investment banks and greed makes Enron look good.

At least Enron sent a couple of thieves off to jail. It won't happen here.

Native Americans fleecing........

Native American money has been getting fleeced for decades. Most tribes don't have a clue. Whether it is tribes doing bond underwritings without competive bidding, gross negligence by tribal officials in failing to negotiate lower fees in bond deals and retirement plans, lack of exposure to the equity markets or the lack of assets being managed on an absolute versus a relative basis, it goes on and on and on. I founded Native American Advisors simply because of all the carnage I saw with Native money by the federal government.

Some days I firmly believe nothing has changed.

Today was one of those days.