It’s Wellbriety/Recovery Month Time Once Again!
In this issue—how your community can participate

	Grand Entry of the Wellbriety Hoop at the Fifth Annual Wellbriety Conference in Denver in April, 2005.  The Hoop will be present at three White Bison sponsored Wellbriety/Recovery Month events in September, 2005.

It’s Wellbriety/Recovery Month Time Once Again!

It’s time once again to become visible as an individual, family or community walking the recovery road. Why? Because when we do that, those who are still using alcohol and other drugs might hear or see just what they need to make a difference in their lives. Why else? Because coming forward in visibility is a way to combat the stigma that is still out there towards those who have become clean and sober. Participating in a Recovery Month, September 2005 event is a way of saying, we are in recovery or have successfully recovered from a condition that threatened our lives. We are making the journey and you can too. Participating in the Native American version of recovery month—Wellbriety Month, Setember, 2005––is also a way to show Native pride. The American Indian/Alaska Native community is doing this too, and we do it in a culture-specific way that works even better for us!

White Bison has been working in partnership with SAMSHA (the substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) and CSAT (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, a part of SAMHSA) for five years now hosting a few Wellbriety Month events in Native communities around the nation each September. This year White Bison and CSAT will co-host celebrations in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Mayetta, Kansas and Omaha, Nebraska. But the idea of Wellbriety/Recovery month is for small or large groups in communities other than the White Bison three to plan and carry out their own events, no matter how small or large.

If you live near one of the three White Bison supported locations, contact the coordinators listed in this issue of Wellbriety! Magazine to volunteer your help. If you want to host your own September Event, read what CSAT’s Ivette Torres, and Recovery advocate and White Bison Board member Henry Lozano have to say about getting started. White Bison welcomes contact from individuals who might need some extra information to get started.

Contact us at toll-free 1-877-871-1495 or on e-mail at info@whitebison.org. Keep watching the White Bison website, www.whitebison.org as the summer goes on for updates on Wellbriety month news and progress. Helping out on a community event will give back to you in your own personal recovery program.

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Join the Voices for Recovery
Healing Lives, Families & Communities
Henry Lozano and Ivette Torres dialog about National Native American Wellbriety Month & Recovery Month, September, 2005

Henry Lozano
Ivette Torres is a wonderful, wonderful sister. We’ve worked together for years. Don and I and Ivette find ourselves back in DC, talking about where we have to go to get our traditional viewpoint included in things. Ivette is a key person in Recovery Month. Recovery Month planning is already under way, communities are being contacted, movements are happening, and Firestarters information is getting out across the nation. But on another level there are thousands upon thousands of folks getting together in their homes and having dinner together, things taking place in churches, and other events in support of recovery. So how would people get to the Recovery Month website, and if they wanted to post an event, whatever size it was, in remembrance and in conjunction with National Recovery Month, how would they go about doing that?

Ivette Torres
Thank you Henry. Well, it’s quite simple. All you have to do is to go to www.recoverymonth.gov It’s as simple as that. On the very first page of the website you will see an icon that says if you want to post an event or an activity, click on events and activities and a form will pop out. All you have to do is fill in the blanks and press send. We will get your information from you. It is simple. We are not necessarily asking for you to go out and gather thousands and thousands of people for an event, although it would be wonderful. State-wide events are the most visible to the media. The media is the group that takes the message about recovery to the average person in society. But what you do can be as small as a dinner, it can be as small as an open house, and we welcome any type of activity that you can generate for September in observance of Recovery Month.

Ivette Torres and Henry Lozano do an impromptu co-presentation about Wellbriety/Recovery Month at the Conference.

Henry
Here is an opportunity. The national Recovery Month database that exists in CSAT (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment), which is part of SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration), houses all this information. What would it be like if all of a sudden, if Indian country wanted to make a voice this year, that all of you started to post your data: we’re getting together, and we are sitting down, and I’m going to a school to make a presentation, and I’m going to be sitting down with my friends and talking about this or that aspect of addictions recovery? What would happen? Sometimes we think that these Recovery Month events have to be huge, but Ivette just told you they can be of any size. There is something interesting that goes on back in DC. Many of us have the impression that there is no way in the world that we are going to break through the bubble of Washington. We think you’re never going to get information to them as the Indian community. We’re lucky that they know we are alive, and the only thing that is going to come out of there is new taxes. But there are ways to break through that bubble. One of them is the event calendar on the Recovery Month website. If Indian country across this grand nation started recording every event that communities do for healing—your youth councils, the Unity councils, all your local activities––if all of those groups just put in an event in that calendar and we had hundreds of Indian country events popping up on this online database what would happen?

Ivette
The federal system is incredible. I will have been a Fed for about eight years in August. It only functions on the premise that that which can be counted gets the attention. That’s what I’ve learned. Henry knows that I’m the constant drum-beater about getting more evidence, more facts to back-up what we say. We are paying attention to you right now. This is my third year at the White Bison Conference and I love being here with you. But your announcements on the website will tell the world about Indian country. It will also tell the federal system that this activity, and the activities generated by this observance, is meritorious of their attention. In the over-all picture of what they are doing in terms of creating programs to educate the public about alcohol and drug addiction, they can look at this as a model that is really making a difference, not only in Indian country, but throughout the United States. I hope that what Henry and Don are calling for from you to try and generate and put up on the web will be something that you’ll do.

Ivette Torres • SAMHSA/CSAT Ivette.Torres@samhsa.hhs.gov

A fascinating thing is starting to happen now. People are putting up their recovery events and activities taking place all year long even if they are not really Recovery Month events. But people are calling them Recovery Month events and they don’t have to happen in September. It’s becoming a year-round process. Don’t be shy. If you want people to know that you’ve done an event, go ahead and post it. If you want other people to know what’s going on, feel free to put it on. The more information people get the better it is for all of us.

You can order your recovery month kits from the website www.recoverymonth.gov Go take a look at it online. We include as much information as possible in the kits. We are very inclusive of ethnicity and race issues. You’ll find data on the website that you can use for writing proposals. That’s what it’s there for. This year the kit is about Healing Lives, Families and Communities. Each year we make a different emphasis on the overall problem of alcohol and drug addiction and who is affected by it. So we target different people and we always use the new numbers for the national surveys we compile in the course of a year. If you want Dr. Clark’s slides from his talk at this Conference with all those numbers for use in your own proposals you can contact us at CSAT and I’ll be happy to send those to you. You can use that information to educate people in the community, to educate others, such as civic and policy leaders, who have a bearing on your program and on your funds. You can order a paper copy of these reports online and we will send it to you.

Order the Recovery Month kit from SAMHSA at www.recoverymonth.gov/2005

Each year’s kit is different but we always use purple because purple is the color of healing. Purple is the color of sobriety and recovery. We also have rubber recovery month bracelets that you can request for your communities and events. So get in touch with me so we can help!

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