Oneida Nation General Manager Mark Powless. | Photo by Andrew Kennard

Oneida community members shared wrenching stories about loss and addiction during a community meeting last Thursday evening at the Oneida Nation’s Norbert Hill Center, near Green Bay, Wisconsin.

During the tribe’s community meal and discussion, one man said he was 16 when his brother died of an opioid overdose, and he has five nieces and nephews who don’t have a father. 

The Oneida Nation estimates it will receive about $6.5 million in opioid settlement payments between 2020 and 2037, according to an informational packet provided at the meeting. The money is the result of lawsuits against companies involved in manufacturing and selling opioids in the United States. People who attended the meeting spoke passionately about how the tribe should use the funds. 

Data from 2021 shows that Native Americans and Black people in Wisconsin were hit particularly hard by the opioid epidemic. Native Americans died of opioid overdoses at close to three times the rate of white people, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Historical trauma, high levels of unemployment and poverty contribute to the vulnerability of Native Americans to addiction.. A total of 1,427 people died of opioid overdoses in Wisconsin in 2021.

“We did a little analysis of individuals that had overdosed in our community, and I want to say that more than 90% of the individuals that overdosed left children behind,” Oneida Nation General Manager Mark Powless told the Examiner.

Oneida data in a packet provided at the meeting showed 20 overdose deaths between October 2022 and September 2023. For each quarter of that year, between 380 and 516 active patients  received substance abuse services. 

Nationally, in 2022, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native people died from drug overdoses at the highest rate of any racial or ethnic group.

Powless wasn’t surprised by the comments people made at the meeting, he said, but their testimony will contribute toward what the tribe is trying to do. He said he never gets used to hearing stories of losing a child, a parent or another family member to an overdose. 

“There was a few times tonight where I had to quickly regain my composure because it’s just so difficult to hear some of the things that people say and share,” he said. 

‘We want to prevent addiction, not simply treat addiction’ 

Powless told the Examiner about a concerning trend among children 5 years old and younger who are affected by drug abuse. He mentioned Head Start and Early Head Start programs, where staff are encountering families affected by substance abuse.

“Those areas are starting to encounter kids who are coming from homes where there’s either rampant substance use or a loss of a parent due to an overdose,” Powless said. “Or you have kids that were born addicted. So those kids are now entering into our programs and services, and that’s like a growing issue… We’re seeing more and more kids, and it’s more and more difficult to find spaces for them to get the services that they need.”

When you have conversations with the community about children who lost one or both parents to an overdose, you hear about those childrene experiencing challenges, including bullying, Powless said. 

There’s an understanding that only focusing on treatment means never overcoming the addiction problem, Powless told the crowd at the meeting. For the opioid settlement funds, the tribe is proposing an emphasis on prevention. Prevention is often underfunded, he said. 

Family-friendly events, programming in the school system and training about trauma and stigma are among ideas that could be funded by the settlement money. “We want to prevent addiction, not simply treat addiction,” Powless said. 

At the meeting, the man whose brother died from an overdose was disappointed to see the tribe not proposing spending more settlement funds on harm reduction. The only harm reduction proposal outlined would spend $5,000 on harm reduction kits in tribal vehicles. 

He expressed support for having Narcan, a medicine that can treat an opioid overdose, available in more areas in the community to prevent deaths. 

The Oneida Nation’s proposals for the settlement funds aren’t its only plans to prevent overdoses. Narcan is distributed through the Tribal Action Plan and behavioral health services, Powless said.    

“Yes, there is a need for vending machines, other ways to get even more [Narcan] out into the community,” Powless said. “But we haven’t talked about all of the work that is happening, and so some of that is missed in this conversation.”

How might the tribe use the funding?

The tribe has more ideas than it can pay for with the settlement funds and is continuing to add tothe list, Powless said at the meeting.  

There is not yet a final plan for how most of the money will be used, but there is agreement on a few items, he said. These include funding for future community meetings and  buying equipment for Oneida Nation High School students to develop anti-opioid multimedia content. 

“The youth voice and youth participation in this conversation has been really low, so we do want to get our youth engaged in this topic,” Powless said. 

One person at the meeting said that to her, providing transitional housing to people with nowhere to go should be a top priority. There are different models of transitional living the tribe might use to help people overcome substance abuse. 

One model is called “Housing First,” and it welcomes people still struggling with substance abuse and can be tricky to manage, Powless said. The idea is to satisfy a person’s basic needs, then help with recovery, he said.  

Powless isn’t sure if the tribe will go in that direction, but he said it will at the very least provide a safe and sober place to live for people coming out of treatment. This would aim to avoid scenarios where someone goes to treatment and then returns to an environment that may lead to relapse. 

“It’s really those early days of recovery [when] people need a lot of support,” Powless said. 

Some proposals are specific to Oneida culture. One idea Powless described involves people in recovery receiving training in the trades and then helping build a longhouse. Another idea involves hiring apprentices to learn the Great Law of Peace. One person does the majority if not all of the speaking for Oneida at Great Law recitals, Powless said, and the tribe doesn’t currently have people learning to replace him.

“The Great Law is one of the foundations for our culture,” Powless said, “one of the foundations for our community… We do need to pass on that information to other generations.”

State settlement money will help fight addiction 

The Oneida Nation may receive more opioid settlement funding from the state of Wisconsin. This would provide additional funding for a tribe that has more ideas about how to address addiction in the community than it can fund with its settlement money. 

Wisconsin is due to receive over $750 million through 2038 due to national litigation against the pharmaceutical industry, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ website. 

The state received about $31 million in opioid settlement payments in the state fiscal year 2023. (Wisconsin’s fiscal years run from July 1 to June 30 of each calendar year). Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribes received $6 million for prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services for tribal members. The Oneida Nation received over half a million dollars. 

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee passed a plan for using the state fiscal year 2025 payments. The state again allocated $6 million to the tribes. 

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