Rocky Boy meeting seeks solutions to drug problems

A community meeting to be held Tuesday will look for solutions to the drug, alcohol and cultural problems on Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation and the surrounding communities.

Bruce Meyers, the organizer of the event, said that the main objective of the meeting is to come up with a way to strike down these problems in the community.

“The community up here has been grappling with this issue for some time,” Meyers said.

Meyers said that there are many excellent programs and initiatives to fight against the problems at Rocky Boy, but what they lack the most is solidarity.

“We have a lot of resources here and a lot of excellent people,” Meyers said. “But, people operate within their own sphere of influence.”

The purpose of the meeting, which will be held from noon to 3 p.m. Tuesday at Stone Child College’s Vocational Tech Center, is to bring together these resources and people trying to stave off drug problems and come up with a collective solution.

Meyers said that one of the problems with the community is the chain of blaming.

“The police might say, ‘well, we could do a better job if the community just did a better job at the community watch … ,” Meyers said. “The people might say ‘we don’t want to report because nothing gets done anyway.’”

The chain goes far, Meyers said. Some people would blame the police for not using their authority to crack down on the drug dealers, other may say it is the elders not using their authority to help the people. Still, other people may say the youth do not respect the cultural values anymore, or it is the parents’ or schools’ fault and so on.

“The purpose of this meeting is to stop all that,” Meyers said. “It’s a community problem that requires a community solution. The bottom line is what this meeting is attempting to accomplish is not to put the blame game on anybody and to identify the behavior that needs to be changed.”

There will be no experts at the meeting, Meyers said. The people attending will be broken up into small groups with individuals from each sector of the community. The groups will come up with identifiable behavior in the community and then a representative from each group will explain to everyone what they think is the top behavior that needs to be changed in the community.

The meeting will be designed to give everyone a chance to present their opinion to the community and do their part to come up with a way to fight these issues.

“Our own solution must come from within if we’re going to survive,” Meyers said. “We have to bring out what’s the best of us to become a joint voice.”

Meyers said he challenged everyone to show up.

“That’s my last message — my last plea. I’m asking everyone to show up for the welfare and well-being of our community … . We all need to get together in a kind, passionate way and look for a solution.”