A NEW MENACE ON THE REZ

As If Alcoholism And Unemployment Were Not Enough, Crystal Meth Is The
Latest Scourge Bedeviling Native Americans

Sept. 27 issue - It didn't take Navajo policewoman Fayetta Dale long
to realize there was something drastically wrong with Mervyn Nelson
when Dale responded to a domestic-disturbance call on the reservation
last fall. Highly agitated, Nelson, a 20-year-old gang member, ran
away at first, then started punching her when she caught him and tried
to throw on the handcuffs.

After Dale doused him with pepper spray, Nelson slammed down on her
left arm until he broke it. She tried to subdue him with her baton,
but "it didn't have any effect," she recalls.

Then Nelson started choking her. Fearing for her life, the officer
drew her pistol and shot him in the chest.

The autopsy gave a clue to his violent behavior: the dead man,
according to Navajo investigators, had methamphetamine in his
bloodstream.

advertisement America's Indian reservations have a meth problem. "Meth
is becoming the drug of choice in Indian Country," says Duwayne
Honahni, chief of special investigations for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, noting that crystal methamphetamine now ranks second only to
marijuana among illegal drugs on reservations. A pure form of it
called "glass," or "G," has flooded the United States' largest
reservation, the Navajo Nation, where 180,000 people live in an area
the size of West Virginia straddling the Four Corners region of the
Southwest. Powerful and cheap, glass is diabolically seductive for a
place short on economic opportunity. For as little as $20, three or
four users can get an all-day high, snorting the drug, injecting it
or, in most cases, smoking it, often with makeshift pipes fashioned
from hollowed-out light bulbs. The highly addictive intruder led to a
dozen deaths near Tuba City, Ariz., alone last year, and it's now a
factor in half the serious crimes on the reservation, estimates FBI
Agent Nick Manns.

Meth has found its way to much of rural America in recent years, so
it's little surprise that Indian Country is feeling the pain, too. The
number of people treated for amphetamine use at Indian Health Service
sites has doubled--from 2,167 in all of 2000 to 4,077 through early
September; officials warn that owing to reporting problems, those
numbers likely understate the case. No reservation, it seems, is too
remote. In South Dakota, a five-year-old task force of FBI, tribal,
state and local investigators that used to work mainly pot cases is
now "vastly overwhelmed by methamphetamine trafficking," says FBI
Agent Andy de la Rocha, investigating some 80 to 90 meth cases over
six reservations and the land in between.

Many cases involve meth brought in by non-Indians. Drug networks "have
targeted Indian reservations because they believe there is a lack of
law-enforcement presence," says the BIA's top cop in Washington, Walt
Lamar. "The thin blue line is even thinner there."

Already hit hard by intransigent poverty, alcoholism and a 43 percent
unemployment rate, the Navajo were slow to realize the depth of their
meth problem.

But they are now beginning to mobilize.

Tribal lawmakers plan to criminalize the drug to make prosecutions
easier: at present, meth is not illegal under tribal law, and even
misdemeanor cases have to be tried in federal court in Flagstaff, 100
miles away. Health officials including Tuba City Hospital surgeon
Thomas Drouhard began barnstorming schools and meetinghouses last
spring with prevention talks--warning of the delusions and psychosis
meth addiction can bring. His hospital commissioned a tough
documentary film on meth that will open to Navajo audiences in
October. Navajo Behavioral Health staffers are fighting addiction by
combining Western medicine with sweat lodges and other traditional
Navajo practices.

But the fight will be a long and hard one. Not far from the treatment
center in Chinle, Kari Y., 20, told a NEWSWEEK photographer she's
smoked G since she was 17, but recently decided to quit. She and a
friend tried going to self-help meetings at the local hospital, but
found them "stupid," and stopped going after a few weeks.

She still wants to quit, and is trying to smoke less
often.

When did she last use glass? "Yesterday," she says. Meth won't go away
easily.