Community members unite in prayer for those battling addiction
By Marlon WhiteEagle
On Monday, May 22, Ho-Chunk community members united in prayer for those battling addiction. The community has suffered many deaths and overdoses due to a heroin epidemic.
Ho-Chunk community members, Tena Quackenbush and Lori Pettibone, organized a prayer circle for others to come share an evening of food, a fire and prayer.
Fire is considered sacred to the Ho-Chunk people. It cooks our food, keeps us warm in the winter, and was a gift from the Creator. Prayer is said around a fireplace.
“We’re here tonight to pray for our people. As a community, we have been coming at this heroin epidemic from every angle,” Quackenbush said.
A grassroots community group has also organized patrols of the Ho-Chunk communities around Black River Falls, where nearly 1,300 tribal members reside, to deter heroin use from occurring openly.
“We’ve been doing patrolling, we have been doing awareness, and doing outreach. We’ve been doing the website. We’ve been trying to do everything that we can,” Quackenbush said.
“So, now, we are going to collectively pray as a community to bring our people back to us.”
Lori Pettibone is an elected official on the Ho-Chunk Nation Legislature, representing District 1, which includes Black River Falls. She remembers when the first signs of crisis were detected by the Nation.
“When I knew it a for sure issue, they said in one of our Social Services meetings, they said they had five or six babies, I want to say born within a month, who were addicted,” Pettibone said.
“Not long after that, the other District 1 representative put together and went for a State of Emergency. At that time, President Greendeer was in office. From my understanding, they started having meetings about what we are going to do.”
The Ho-Chunk Nation Legislature passed the Tribal Action Plan resolution in July 2016. The plan brought together tribal government departments and programs that offer assistance to those who suffer from addiction.
Pettibone was compelled to do what she could to help the community.
“Just seeing what’s going on in the community and hearing what’s going on. I’m trying to figure out a way that I can help, especially in my position,” Pettibone said.
Since getting organized and starting patrols, the group has seen some success. While on patrol they discovered an abandoned mobile home with syringes scattered throughout. It was clearly a location where many would go to shoot up.
“It started last month. We decided that we were going to start taking back our community by getting together and actively patrolling, letting people know that we are here and that we want our community back. Then, slowly, people would climb on board with that,” Quackenbush said.
“We’ve actually been patrolling quite often. We don’t go alone. We go in groups. It’s always - we’re either paired up or tripled up. We drive around, we park, we observe. We go around and meet people. We let people know that we’re here and that this is our neighborhood.”
There’s a couple areas that have been heavily talked about, but we don’t want to make this about what we hear. We want to make it about what we see, Quackenbush said.
This was the first prayer circle the group organized to address the heroin epidemic being felt by the community. Quackenbush has been a part of the movement to help end the crisis, but Pettibone just recently joined.
“Growing up and knowing how I was brought up, I believe that prayer is one of the main things that we needed to help our community. I believe we all live on prayers. My grandma always said that. So I’m trying to teach my children to do that,” Pettibone said.
“So I’m trying to teach me and my children to do that. I’m just trying to make it our community so our children are safe. That’s why I got involved.”
Pettibone is in a unique position to see both sides of the effort to address the problem. She can introduce resolutions, laws, and ordinances to protect the community, as well as provide needed funding for existing and new programs.
“We made the resolution now I felt like it was the executive side was doing whatever they could, because they had all the resources, the programs, the staff,” Pettibone said.
The Tribal Coordinating Committee is the group charged with creating a comprehensive plan to address alcohol and drug problems within the Nation. They have been meeting for more than a year to establish an action plan.
“This group was trying to help the issues going on and to come up with a plan. And this is what we are going to follow. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. If you are trying to help somebody going through this, you want to point them in the right direction,” Pettibone said.
Pettibone remembers more of a community mindset and togetherness during her youth that she feels isn’t here today. She said her family would go to church, go to traditional doings, and NAC doings.
“Growing up, we used to come here in the Mission, I remembering going over to the ‘Snake pit’ and those little houses would be full. We’d be sitting and we could barely move around in there. My mom would make me stay in there until we were excused,” Pettibone said.
“I didn’t like that when I was younger, but now I appreciate it because there were elders speaking. I never understood what they were saying, but now that I’m older I understand some of the things they were saying. But now when I going to some of the doings here, I don’t see it how it used to be.
“So I don’t know if we’re losing them on that path. We’re kind of losing things like that. That’s part of the reason why I suggested we have prayer said. I believe that the more people that pray, the more those prayers are going to be answered.”
The group plans to organize more prayer circle events in the future, but haven’t set any dates.
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