In this op-ed, Ruth Hopkins, a Native woman who has worked as a judge for the Oceti Sakowin tribes, explains why Native Americans are suing opioid manufacturers.

Opioid dependency is a national epidemic. In 2018, you would be hard pressed to find a community in the United States that has not been affected by it. Some 200,000 Americans died from prescription opioid overdoses between 2000 to 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, this nationwide crisis has hit American Indian reservations even harder. Between 1999 and 2015, overdose deaths among American Indians and native Alaskans reportedly increased fivefold. According to the CDC one in 10 native teens age 12 and up had used prescription opioids for nonmedical purposes in 2012. The rate for white youth is half that.

Now, tribes are fighting back. In April 2017, the Cherokee Nation brought a lawsuit against wholesale drug distributors and pharmacy operators McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc, AmerisourceBergen, CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., saying that from 2003 to 2014, their tribe suffered more than 350 opioid-related deaths. While a federal judge ruled that the Cherokee cannot bring their opioid lawsuit in tribal court, the tribe is moving forward with litigation through state court. This month, the Navajo Nation filed its own lawsuit accusing various opioid manufacturers and distributors of negligence and other misconduct that has resulted in "substantial injury to the Navajo Nation and its citizens."

Then in January of this year, three South Dakota tribes — the Rosebud Sioux, the Flandreau Sioux, and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate (where I am a tribal citizen) — sued 24 manufacturers and distributors, including Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Allergan PLC, McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, alleging that the opioid industry violated federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws, engaged in deceptive trade practices, and practiced fraudulent and negligent conduct and they allegedly failed to comply with federal prescription-drug laws intended to help prevent opioid misuse. The suit also accuses the defendants of being deceptive with tribes, allegedly making light of the risk of opioid dependency.

The attorneys representing the three South Dakota tribes, Brendan Johnson (former U.S. attorney for South Dakota) and Tim Purdon (former U.S. attorney for North Dakota), are further asserting that the opioid epidemic has ravaged all of South Dakota’s nine Oceti Sakowin tribes, according to The Washington Post.

The data is illuminating.

Enough doses of opiates were prescribed in South Dakota in 2015 to medicate every single South Dakotan adult 24 hours a day for 19 days straight according to the South Dakota Opioid Strategic Abuse Plan. In South Dakota, a disproportionate number of those treated for opioid dependency are native, the lawsuit says. In fact, data shows that 28% of patients treated for opioid use disorder in South Dakota were native in 2015-2016. This is a far greater percentage per capita than any other demographic group. Already impoverished tribes have little resources to fight such a terminal, widespread drug epidemic. Every aspect of the native communities is being negatively impacted, including healthcare, law enforcement, child care services for parents with substance use disorder, and opioid use disorder counseling services.

As a Native woman who was born and raised on the reservation and who has also worked as a judge for Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) tribes throughout North and South Dakota, I’ve witnessed the full extent of the opioid epidemic in Indian Country first hand. Tribes lack jurisdiction over felonious non-native dealers who traffic opioids like prescription pills, heroin and fentanyl on reservations and are stuck with a maximum penalty of 1 year behind bars for natives they do have jurisdiction over. As a result, some tribes have revived the customary, precolonial practice of banishment and exclusion to forbid convicted drug dealers from entering and inhabiting their lands. Whether the implementation of banishment to combat drug dealing on reservations will accomplish the intended results, remains to be seen.