Cultural reconnection reduces addiction
Community health program guide lists program used successfully to address drug use on reservation
Brian Jackson believes that one major key to addressing substance abuse in Indian Country is reconnecting people with their roots.
That’s what worked for him to turn his life around. For the past eight years, Jackson and others have been working to reduce addiction on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in northern Wisconsin by reintroducing forgotten traditional Indigenous practices of many generations ago.
Now, his work is included in a behavioral health strategy guide released by the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment.
The guide includes work from 10 community coalitions across Wisconsin, the result of a $20 million investment to study and create solutions to address mental and behavioral health issues in the state.
Among the other programs in the guide are a community-based early autism evaluation clinic in Milwaukee, an enhanced social-emotional learning curriculum for the Racine Unified School District and mental health first aid training in Brown County.
Organizers of these programs hope they can be replicated in other communities — and the online strategy guide is a tool to help them get started.
Jackson said the Lac du Flambeau Family Circles program can be successful on other reservations in Wisconsin, too.
“This can definitely be taken to any tribal community,” he said. “They can Potawatomize or Menominize it.”
The program involves mentoring and assisting families in practicing traditional culture, which Jackson and others believe offer healthy alternatives to unhealthy behavior developed from a loss of culture.
“Historic and generational trauma experienced by American Indian and Alaska Native communities further produces symptoms of loss, grief, lowered identity formation and role confusion, increasing vulnerability to alcohol abuse,” reads a statement from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Native Americans are 28.5% more likely to have reported recent drug abuse than any other ethnic group nationally, according to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Jackson was a troubled youth who grew up in Milwaukee before moving to the Lac du Flambeau Reservation to learn his culture from his grandfather, Joseph Jackson Sr., who lived there and speaks fluent Ojibwe.
Jackson credits his grandfather and the culture on the reservation for turning his life around and believes it can do the same for others.
He said that’s especially true for many Indigenous communities who were forced from their homes and forcefully assimilated through boarding schools.
The program has had some success in preventing drug addiction and increasing self-awareness and self-esteem through cultural awareness. Jackson said it has targeted 150 families over the first five years and reduced substance abuse by more than 10% in the tribal community.
“All folks need to reconnect with who they are,” Jackson said. “Many don’t know who they are.”