Marla Ollinger lives on a 300-acre ranch close to Browning, Montana. Her son, Justin Lee Littledog, moved in together with her in 2020. He died of a fentanyl overdose in March.
Tony Bynum for KHN
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Tony Bynum for KHN
Marla Ollinger lives on a 300-acre ranch close to Browning, Montana. Her son, Justin Lee Littledog, moved in together with her in 2020. He died of a fentanyl overdose in March.
Tony Bynum for KHN
BROWNING, Mont. — In summer time 2020, because the pandemic was setting in, Justin Lee Littledog known as his mother to inform her he was transferring from Texas again residence to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. And he was taking his girlfriend, stepson and son.
They moved in together with his mother, Marla Ollinger, who lived on a 300-acre ranch on the rolling prairie exterior Browning — and had what Ollinger says was one of the best summer time of her life. “That was the primary time I’ve gotten to satisfy Arlin, my first grandson,” Ollinger says. One other grandson was born within the spring of 2021 — and Littledog, 33, discovered upkeep work on the on line casino in Browning to assist his rising household.
However issues started to unravel over the subsequent yr and a half. Associates and relations noticed Littledog’s 6-year-old stepson strolling round city alone. Then final fall, Ollinger obtained a name from one other considered one of her grownup sons. He was frightened as a result of he was briefly unable to wake Littledog’s girlfriend. Ollinger says she may hear considered one of Littledog’s youngsters crying within the background.
After that incident, Ollinger requested Littledog whether or not he and his girlfriend had been utilizing medicine. She says Littledog denied it. He defined to his mother that folks on the reservation had been utilizing a drug she had by no means heard about: fentanyl, an artificial opioid that’s as much as 100 instances as potent as morphine. He stated he would by no means use one thing so harmful and reassured his mother all the pieces was advantageous. Ollinger backed off, fearing that any extra confrontation would push her son away.
Then in March, Ollinger woke as much as screams. She left her grandchildren, who had been sleeping in her mattress, and went into the subsequent room. “My son was mendacity on the ground,” she says. Littledog wasn’t respiratory.
After calling 911, she drove behind the ambulance into Browning. He was pronounced useless shortly after the ambulance arrived on the native hospital.
Littledog was considered one of 4 individuals who died from a fentanyl overdose on the reservation on the second week of March, in accordance with Blackfeet well being officers. A further 13 folks on the reservation survived overdoses that week, making a startling complete for an Indigenous inhabitants of about 10,000 folks.
Falling prey to fentanyl
A cemetery in Browning. Littledog was amongst 4 folks to die from fentanyl overdoses on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in a single week in March, in accordance with Blackfeet officers.
Tony Bynum for KHN
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Tony Bynum for KHN
Throughout the pandemic, fentanyl took root in Montana and communities throughout the Mountain West area, says Keith Humphreys of the Stanford-Lancet Fee on the North American Opioid Disaster. Beforehand, the drug was prevalent east of the Mississippi River.
Montana legislation enforcement officers have intercepted report numbers of pale blue drugs made to appear like prescription opioids reminiscent of OxyContin. Within the first three months of 2022, the Montana Freeway Patrol seized over 12,000 fentanyl drugs, more than three times the quantity from 2021.
Nationwide, at least 103,000 people have died from drug overdoses in 2021, a forty five% improve from 2019, in accordance with knowledge from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. About 7 of every 10 of these deaths had been from artificial opioids, primarily fentanyl.
Overdose deaths disproportionately have an effect on Native Individuals. The overdose demise charge amongst Indigenous folks was the very best of all racial teams within the first yr of the pandemic — and was about 30% larger than the speed amongst white folks, according to a March study revealed in JAMA Psychiatry, co-authored by Joe Friedman, a researcher on the College of California, Los Angeles.
In Montana, the opioid overdose demise charge for Indigenous folks was twice that of white folks from 2019 to 2021, in accordance with the state’s Division of Public Well being and Human Companies.
A part of the explanation why that is occurring is that Native Individuals have comparatively much less entry to well being care assets, Friedman says. “With the drug provide turning into so harmful and poisonous, it requires assets and data and abilities and funds [for people] to remain secure,” he says. “It requires entry to hurt discount, well being care, drugs.”
The Indian Well being Service, which is chargeable for offering well being care to many Indigenous folks, has been chronically underfunded. In line with a 2018 report from the U.S. Fee on Civil Rights, IHS per affected person expenditures are considerably lower than these of different federal well being applications.
“What we’re seeing now could be deep-seated disparities and social determinants of well being type of bearing out,” Friedman says, referring to the disproportionate overdose deaths amongst Native Individuals.
Blackfeet Tribal Enterprise Council member Stacey Keller says she has skilled the dearth of assets firsthand whereas attempting to get a member of the family into therapy. She says simply discovering a facility for detoxing was troublesome, not to mention discovering one for therapy.
“Our therapy facility right here, they are not geared up to take care of opioid dependancy, so [people] are normally referred” to services exterior of the reservation, she says. “A few of the struggles we have seen all through the state and even the western a part of the US is that a variety of the therapy facilities are at capability.”
Fentanyl took root in Montana and in communities throughout the Mountain West area in the course of the pandemic, and total drug overdose deaths are disproportionately affecting Native Individuals.
Tony Bynum for KHN
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Tony Bynum for KHN
Fentanyl took root in Montana and in communities throughout the Mountain West area in the course of the pandemic, and total drug overdose deaths are disproportionately affecting Native Individuals.
Tony Bynum for KHN
The native therapy heart would not have the medical experience to oversee somebody going by opioid withdrawal. Solely two detox beds can be found on the native IHS hospital, Keller says, and they’re typically occupied. The well being care system on the reservation additionally would not provide medicine used to deal with opioid addictions. The closest areas to get buprenorphine or methadone, for instance, are 30 to 100 miles away. That may be a burden to sufferers who are required by federal rules to take these meds to handle their therapy on a day by day or weekly foundation.
Discovering therapy for Indigenous communities
Keller says tribal leaders have requested help from IHS to construct therapy facilities and procure different substance use assets, like detox beds and drugs, locally — with no outcomes.
IHS Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program guide JB Kinlacheeny says the company has largely shifted to appropriating funds on to tribes to run their very own well being care applications.
The Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, a consortium of Montana and Wyoming tribes, is working with the Montana Healthcare Basis on a feasibility examine for a residential therapy heart operated by tribes, particularly for tribal members. Tribes throughout each states, together with the Blackfeet, have handed resolutions supporting the trouble.
On March 14, Blackfeet political leaders declared a state of emergency after the fentanyl overdoses. Two weeks later, among the youngsters of Timothy Davis, the tribal council chairman, had been arrested on suspicion of promoting fentanyl out of Davis’ residence. The council removed Davis from his place in early April.
Browning is situated on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.
Tony Bynum for KHN
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The tribe has created a activity pressure to determine each the short- and long-term wants to answer the opioid disaster. Blackfeet tribal police investigator Misty LaPlant helps to steer that effort.
Driving round Browning, LaPlant says she plans to coach extra folks on the reservation to manage naloxone, a medicine that reverses opioid overdoses. She additionally needs the tribe to host extra needle exchanges. There’s additionally hope, she says, {that a} reorganization of the tribal well being division will lead to a one-stop store for Blackfeet Nation residents to search out drug dependancy assets on and off the reservation.
Nevertheless, she says, it is essential to resolve among the underlying points — reminiscent of poverty, housing and meals insecurity — that make communities just like the Blackfeet Nation susceptible to the continued fentanyl disaster. These issues can spur folks to make use of medicine — and under-resourced communities are usually simpler targets for drug traffickers, she says. Fixing that drawback is a large endeavor that will not be accomplished anytime quickly, she says.
Marla Ollinger, pictured, says her son Justin Lee Littledog died of a fentanyl overdose in March at her ranch on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
Tony Bynum for KHN
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Tony Bynum for KHN
In the meantime, Ollinger is feeling optimistic that momentum is constructing to battle opioid and fentanyl dependancy within the wake of her son’s demise and others. She hopes sharing her story will assist advocate for extra assets so nobody else has to reside by her expertise.
“It is heartbreaking to look at your youngsters die unnecessarily,” she says.
This story is a part of a partnership that features Montana Public Radio, NPR and KHN.
KHN (Kaiser Well being Information) is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points. Along with Coverage Evaluation and Polling, KHN is likely one of the three main working applications at KFF (Kaiser Household Basis). KFF is an endowed nonprofit group offering info on well being points to the nation.
