Message of Hope — November 6, 2005

Greetings my sisters and brothers, as the death rates climb so do anger, hatred and judgments against each other in our communities.  'Thus bring on the destruction of thought forms from the parents, elderly and youth.  With in these groups breeds the darkness to spread into the areas of our all of our peoples in our areas; called using thought forms that keeps the problem moving forward.  This is a wide spread disastrous epidemic.  This is done through thought forms in the chemicals that eat the brain and then the dark force then begins to control the mind, thus addiction, controlling families.  Many do not understand this, because of the lack of understanding spirituality, and how these kinds of situations are birthed into existence.  This problem can be dealt with by using our thoughts in prayers and ceremonies to stop this.  The mind manifests what we want. 

This message is of the truth that is spoken within our leaders of spirituality, those that understand this and how it is birthed into existence.  There are many leaders around our homelands of all cultures many people are speaking out; unfortunately they have no hope in sight to remedy the dark situations.  Most think that talking to those on methamphetamine can stop them from the addiction, detoxification centers etc.; when indeed it will not even make an impact on the thinking processes.  This healing will come from our wisdom of the Warriors of Old in our Ancestry, called traditions in using our minds.  Sending thoughts out to get rid of the darkness of meth and other problems in the communities. 

This darkness is allowed into communities that have destroyed the harmony by forgetting our sacred sites and the prayers and energy held there.  The sacred sites radiate a vibration out to any darkness that arrives in the area not allowing it to survive within our people’s homelands.  These sacred sites have been taken out by development changing the prayers of our ancestors that hold Mother Earth and us together in harmony.  Due to the over development in our homelands through mining, housing developments, pipelines, gravel pits, electrical lines, etc.  Due to these kinds of development in the name of jobs has destroyed the energy lines that hold the electrical energy called spirit on our reservation lands.  These spirit lines are called ley lines, known as the spiritual communication holding powerful electrical light upon the surface.  When development occurs these lines disconnect.  When this happens this electrical blanket that lays upon the carpets of Mother Earth disappears.  This means that the electrical energy holds white light on the surface of Mother Earth.  When these lines are disconnected the light disappears and allows the darkness to enter into our homelands everywhere.

The sacred sites hold the secret to keeping the darkness out of our communities.  Many of these sacred sites have been destroyed.  They need to be repaired by our ceremonies out in nature where our ancestors left their prayers within the Earth, Wind, Fire and Water Elements.  There are many ways to restore the health back to our homelands.  All Nations within the Indigenous peoples of all tribes have the same similar ways of doing this.  Working together on the Wind River Reservation and other areas in this country will help our peoples, while healing Mother Earth environments and repairing the destruction of the sacred sites. 

As the prophecies come more understood, we become familiar of how the tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and tidal waves are made.  By the bad sounds that have taken Mother Earth out of balance, we can restore harmony with our traditional ways.  By using sound in a sacred manner, our songs, thoughts in prayers healing the Earth, Wind, Fire and Water that has been imaged with negativity.  We can heal anything once we put our minds and thoughts together.  This is powerful medicine working with one heart, one spirit, working together with our minds' actions in positive ways.   

In the prophecies it mentions the Indigenous Nations will awaken and remember what to do in healing Mother Earths Sacred sites.  Due to greed, materialism that breeds anger, jealousy, hatred, egos and other emotions that do not serve a purpose in caring for one another.  This is the main reason for our separation of our families.  Due to this social programming that we have receive from education, stemming back to the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, restructuring us in education.  Earth Wisdom has died. Many of our Indigenous Nations have forgotten our ceremonial ways, called traditions.  The old tactic of societies methods of destroying those that work in our traditional ways in dreams and visions stopped by education.  Gambling, greed, anger, hatred, egos has separation us from Mother Earth and Father Sky. This is the message from the Creator and the Warriors of Old, our ancestors.   

I ask for our peoples to open to the work needed in the Dolphin Nations Activation/Crescent Moon Ceremony of the Shoshone Speaking Nations.  Known as the Uto-Aztecan speaking people once a huge nation of wisdom and knowledge working together in peace and harmony, as one.  This ceremony will take place at the same time in: Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington.  Asking for all Nations to work together to heal what is wrong, this is so apparent now; consider looking at this methamphetamine problem and healing it and the other problems with our ancestral knowledge’s and wisdom.  This is what this ceremony is all about, learning the Spoken Truth many problems can be healed with understanding how things work in Universal Laws, called Spiritual Laws.  We need to stop and work together caring for one another in peace, healing our emotions that are out of control.

May the Great Spirit carry on to guide those leaders of our peoples in spirituality the Wisdom and Knowledge that will be needed to heal the burdens we all carry that has hurt us.  New visions and new dreams birthed into action.  Blessings for the great wisdom we need now.  Many Blessings be to our families in love, peace and harmony, giving thanks for all that we are related to.  Mother Nature and Father Sky are watching and waiting for their children to awaken to listening to Spoken Truth, the Creator is waiting and watching. What are we waiting for?  “We are the people we have been waiting for”.  The time is now listening to the children and each other in what’s wrong and how to fix it.  These and many messages have come to help lead our Nations out of the Darkness that has shrouded our thinking processes, called Spoken Truth.  May we all help each and everyone in forgiveness and understanding the passageway to peace.  Many thank you’s go out to those that make the decision to move forward in peace, love, honor and respect for all that we are related too. A brother for peace and harmony;

Please keep praying for our Native People, for all people to understand. This thing is worse than any of us realize!

My Name: "Is Meth"

I destroy homes, I tear family’s apart, take your children, and that's just the start. I'm more costly than diamonds, more precious than gold, the sorrow I bring is a sight to behold.

If you need me, remember I'm easily found, I live all around you - in schools and in town, I live with the rich, I live with the poor, I live down the street, and maybe next door.

I'm made in a lab, but not like you think, I can be made under the kitchen sink. In your child's closet, and even in the woods, if this scares you to death, well it certainly should. I have many names, but there's one you know best, I'm sure you've heard of me, my name is crystal meth.

My power is awesome, try me you'll see, But if you do, you may never break free. Just try me once and I might let you go, But try me twice, and I'll own your soul.

When I possess you, you’ll steal and you'll lie, you do what you have to—just to get high. The crimes you'll commit for my narcotic charms will be worth the pleasure you'll feel in your arms.

You'll lie to your mother, you'll steal from your dad, when you see their tears, you should feel sad. But you'll forget your morals and how you were raised, I'll be your conscience, I'll teach you my ways.

I take kids from parents, and parents from kids, I turn people from God, and separate friends. I'll take everything from you, your looks and your pride; I'll be with you always—right by your side.

You'll give up everything—your family, your home, Your friends, your money, then you'll be alone. I'll take and take, till you have nothing more to give, when I'm finished with you, you'll be lucky to live.

If you try me be warned—this is no game, If given the chance, I'll drive you insane. I'll ravish your body, I'll control your mind, I'll own you completely, your soul will be mine. The nightmares I'll give you while lying in bed, the voices you'll hear, from inside your head. The sweats, the shakes, the visions you'll see, I want you to know, these are all gifts from me.

But then it's too late, and you'll know in your heart, that you are mine, and we shall not part. You'll regret that you tried me, they always do, but you came to me, not I to you.

You knew this would happen, many times you were told, But you challenged my power, and chose to be bold. You could have said no, and just walked away, If you could live that day over, now what would you say?

I'll be your master, you will be my slave, I'll even go with you, when you go to your grave.  Now that you have met me, what will you do? Will you try me or not? It's all up to you. I can bring you more misery than words can tell, Come take my hand, let me lead you to hell.

Washakie knows the drug, almost unheard of here before 2000, is slowly destroying this central Wyoming reservation.

She also knows where it comes from: a Mexican drug gang that arrived here more than four years ago hoping to shift the alcohol addiction of many tribal members to meth.

"Honestly, I think that was the best business decision they ever made," Washakie said sadly.

Authorities could hardly argue.

According to information gathered during an investigation that has so far led to more than 17 arrests, that gang is the Sinaloan Cowboys, an organization with a sophisticated structure and a Fortune 500 business plan — when you're a drug cartel looking to expand, go where the addicts are.

Continuing epidemic

Over a period of more than four years, the gang funneled nearly 100 pounds of meth with a value of more than $6.5 million into and around the reservation.

At least three gang members were dispatched from a Utah-based cell to reservation towns. They rented houses and met girlfriends. Using American Indian women, they gained entree to the reservation and established a network of more than a dozen dealers, many of them Native American.

"They identified the reservation as an addict-rich environment, a population that for years had been addicted to alcohol," said Robert Murray, an assistant U.S. attorney in Cheyenne, Wyo. He said information on the gang's plan to infiltrate the reservation had been garnered from multiple sources.

In a matter of five years, tribal leaders say, meth went from a marginal drug to a virtual torrent on this 2.2 million-acre reservation.

"It's an epidemic, and I don't think we've reached the peak," said Mark Russler, executive director of Fremont Counseling Services, which treats addicts.

Russler said the number of meth addicts at two facilities in Lander and Riverton — the region's largest — jumped from 5 percent or 6 percent of clients in 1999 to more than 25 percent.

From 2003 to 2004 — a year tribal police saw the worst increase in meth use — criminal charges for drug possession on the Wind River Reservation increased 353 percent. During that period, assaults tripled, theft nearly doubled and child abuse increased by 85 percent.

Arrests and several convictions, including the sentencing of one of the cell leaders to life in prison in July, have slowed the advance of the drug here, authorities say, but many tribe members say they've seen little effect.

"There are so many people using, you can see them just walking around the store" here, said Georgia O'Hair, a reservation treatment counselor and former meth addict.

"Their skin is ashen. Those repetitive movements and jerks. It's what addicts call tweaking," she said.

The new alcohol

Investigators say the Sinaloan Cowboys' success here offers a frightening picture of meth's rapid rise in Indian Country, providing a snapshot into how the stimulant has grown to rival alcohol as the drug of choice on reservations throughout the West.

Experts say that about half of addictions on reservations still are to alcohol.

But meth has moved so quickly that it has left tribal governments across the region reeling. Struggling to catch up, some leaders even have ceded fiercely protected tribal sovereignty in exchange for help.

Two major busts on the Wind River in the past two years were the result of an unprecedented law enforcement coalition that included the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, local tribal police and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Sprawling across a rolling prairie at the foot of the Wind River Mountains, the reservation appears the last place that would attract Mexican drug gangs that flourish in the immigrant barrios of America's major cities.

Rural and remote, the reservation is home to 6,400 American Indians split mostly between two tribes, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho. Apart from Riverton, which is largely white, the reservation's few small towns are destitute collections of mostly sagging homes and rundown trailers.

A 1998 tribal study found that 38 percent of American Indian adults on the Wind River were unemployed and that 57 percent lived in poverty.

But from the perspective of gang members, the reservation had an important plus: jurisdictional barriers normally prevent state and local police from operating on tribal lands. And despite the apparent poverty of Indian country, many tribal members receive monthly checks from mineral royalties or other tribal income.

Members of the Mexican gang discovered that alcohol sales on other reservations spiked after members received their checks, sources told investigators, and they believed they could tap into that cash.

"It was natural to try to transfer that addiction from alcohol to meth," Murray said.

Exceptional efficiency


The gang's tentacles reach across a vast swath of territory from California and the Northwest through much of the Rocky Mountains, investigators say. Authorities describe the Sinaloan Cowboys as a street gang that distributes drugs for the Sinaloan cartel, one of Mexico's most brutal drug-trafficking organizations.

While the gang is active in several cities, investigators say reservations seem to hold a special attraction. As early as the mid-'90s, members of the same Ogden-based cell were dealing on reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska, Murray said.

The gang arrived in central Wyoming in the 1990s, first distributing meth to mostly white customers in Lander and Riverton. But sometime in 2001, investigators say they set their sights on the Wind River, with cell members moving onto the reservation permanently, either with girlfriends or in a rented trailer, investigators said.

It was a tried-and-true tactic for the gang: One of the cell members — Marcelino Roha — already had several children with an Indian woman near a Nebraska reservation, where the gang distributed meth in the late 1990s.

Overseen by the cell's leaders, brothers Julio and Martin Sagaste-Cruz, the gang smuggled a pure form of meth —manufactured in "superlabs" on the Mexican border — in the drive shafts of sport utility vehicles to Utah and finally onto the reservation.

The organization was exceptionally efficient, authorities say. Including the cell leaders, five to six gang members managed a network of more than a dozen dealers, who in turn distributed enough meth for 45,000 doses.

High social costs

Fafa Hereford, who is Eastern Shoshone, saw those drugs only through the devastation they wreaked upon her family.

A sister and brother both became hooked. They would turn suddenly violent and experience hallucinations, she said. Ultimately, her sister lost her children, who now live with Hereford's parents.

Jason Brown, an Arapaho who is in treatment for meth addiction, said the drug is easier to get on the reservation than marijuana. It's much cheaper than cocaine, and the high lasts longer.

When he was using, he'd go on month long binges, barely sleeping, when he did sleep, Brown said he would wake up and put a gram of meth in his coffee. Sometimes, he wouldn't return home for days.

"I wouldn't eat. All I wanted is more meth. They have these multivitamin packs. I'd take one of those and I was good to go," said Brown, 30.

Tribal officials say the cost to the community is enormous.

Women are having miscarriages because of the drug. Addicts steal from family members to support their habits. Abuse of the elderly is on the rise.

The reservation has the third-largest caseload for Child Protective Services in the state, behind only Casper and Cheyenne, the state's two largest cities.

And with no in-patient treatment programs for meth anywhere in Wyoming, the two tribes are forced to consider building one of their own, a project that will likely cost millions of dollars, said Willie Noseep, a member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, the tribe's governing body.

"It has an all-encompassing effect on all our programs," Noseep said.