LUMMI NATION TAKING A STAND AGAINST DRUG DEALERS

LUMMI NATION, WHATCOM COUNTY - In the old days, Lummi Indians considered a
danger to the tribe were told to point their canoe toward Vancouver Island
and start paddling.

Now, the Lummi Nation is thinking about turning more often to banishment,
this time as a way to deal with the rampant drug use that is destroying the
tribe's culture and killing its members.

In the past 18 months, this tribe of 4,026 people has had six drug deaths,
one involving a toddler. There have been five drive-by shootings.

Thirteen babies were born addicted to drugs. And 33 tribal members have
been arrested, many for attempting to smuggle drugs from Canada. More than
1,800 Lummi are in need of treatment, including 500 addicted to
prescription drugs and 200 addicted to heroin.

Some leaders say banishment - used by the Lummi only five times in the past
70 years - could help.

"Until we realize the dealers are an enemy of the people, we are not going
to change this situation," Jewell Praying Wolf James, a tribal council
member, told The Seattle Times. "We are going to use the old laws and drive
them from the community."

The tribe's members, acting as the general council, will have final say on
whether to expand the use of banishment.

"Some are saying that it is too harsh. But what they did to our children
and to our families, that's pretty harsh, too," says tribal chairman
Darrell Hillaire.

He sees it as taking a stand and saying, "Enough is enough. We are losing
too many people."

The drug of choice is OxyContin, a prescription painkiller and cousin of
morphine. Dealers smuggle an estimated 500 to 600 pills to the reservation
each week.

The reasons are complex, but some consider collapse of the salmon fishery
the key.

The Lummi had Puget Sound's biggest tribal salmon fleet, with about 600
gill-netters and 40 seiners bringing in nets bursting with Fraser River
sockeye worth more than $6.4 million at the peak of the harvest in the
mid-1980s.

Today, the tribe has three or four seiners, 150 to 200 gill-netters and a
flourishing drug trade.

OxyContin sells at $1 a milligram on the reservation. That trade alone is
estimated at more than $1.5 million a year - more than double the value of
last year's sockeye fishery.

Surveillance cameras roll 24 hours a day at the tribal housing project and
outside the tribal store.

Tribal employees face random drug tests. Applicants for tribal housing,
financial assistance or tribal government jobs also are tested.

"Most of my friends are gone," says tribal vice chairman Perry Adams. "We
have been robbed of a great wealth, our people. The mothers, the
grandmothers, the fathers, that are not with us."

Tribal courts, by federal law, can impose only a one-year maximum sentence
or $5,000 fine. County jails in the area are so full that tribal members
facing incarceration often must make appointments to serve their time.

"They laugh at the consequences," Hillaire says.

Tribal leaders praise stepped-up enforcement by the FBI, which worked with
tribal police to win 10 convictions over the past year.

The U.S. Attorney's Office is also assisting.

The new banishment ordinance being debated by the council would eliminate
language in the old code that excluded those whose crimes were committed
off the reservation.

Under the new policy, any dealer could be banished.

The issue would be whether the person is a danger to the community.

If the council agrees he or she is, an expulsion hearing would be held
before a tribal judge.

James Jackson served home detention after doing prison time for drug
dealing. If the Lummi Nation adopts a policy of banishment, it could affect
him even though his crime took place off the reservation and he has served
his sentence.

"It's hard for me to understand how they can do this to their own people,"
said Jackson, whose family also is opposed.

Jackson's case - he was convicted of helping smuggle more than 100 kilos of
marijuana from Canada to Oregon and California - is raising uncomfortable
questions, some tribal members say.

Should the Lummi banish an offender who has served his time, is working,
drug- and alcohol-free and under the supervision of federal probation officers?

"I say no matter what, if a person is trying to help himself and being good
and working, they should have a chance," says Jim Wilson, 78, Jackson's
grandfather and a member of the tribal council.

But something must be done.

Just seven months sober, Ken Hillaire - the tribal chairman's brother, a
former fisherman and recovering drug addict - volunteers to hand-dig graves
at the tribal cemetery, partly to remember just how close he came to dying.

He's dug six graves already, each one tied to drugs or alcohol.

One is tiny, and Hillaire knows it well.

He dug it for little Tanisha Roselee Noland, whom he used to cuddle every
time he went to her father's house to buy drugs.

Last March, she picked an OxyContin off the ground and popped it into her
mouth, federal prosecutors say.

At 15 months, Tanisha died of an overdose.

"We are killing ourselves," Hillaire says.

"Most of my friends are gone. We have been robbed of a great wealth, our
people. The mothers, the grandmothers, the fathers, that are not with us."