By: Jonas Greene
130 Organizations, including the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, came together on March 13, 2024, in Portland’s historic Central Eastside. The half-day summit included a presentation on Fentanyl-related overdose trends in Multnomah County as well as information on the county’s overdose prevention response plan.
The most compelling moments of the summit came when NPAIHB Chief of Staff, Candice Jiminez (Warm Springs), took the podium to present a summary of the NPAIHB’s 2023 National Tribal Opioid Summit on behalf of Dr. Danica Love Brown (Choctaw), Behavioral Health Programs Director and Chairman Nickolaus Lewis (Lummi) who organized the National Tribal Opioid Summit. Jimenez encouraged interconnection, working with the state and national legislatures, centering community voices, and described the beneficial experience of bringing together tribes from across the nation. Speaking to the importance of weaving stories of lived experiences into our work, Jimenez who lives in Portland with her family, shared a poem by her teenage son:
The Magic Stick
This Magic Stick is brown
In the forest, it charges in the sun
Ding, it’s ready to go
It flies around the forest searching for sadness
It sees a fox on the ground and pulls the thorn out of its foot
It sees trash on the land and puts it away in the can
It sees a dying tree and uses its life to connect it
And a new magic stick is born
The Redd on Salmon, a two-block chambered building developed by Ecotrust to support the region’s flourishing food economy was the perfect environment to encourage an open dialogue and a large group brainstorming session. The summit opened in a good way with a prayer and a song by Donald Quenelle (Klamath/Modoc and Umpqua/Chinook) and Irvin Wilson (Klamath and Paiute) from Painted Horse Recovery, a recovery center in Portland providing Native Americans with culturally specific services.
