**Exploiting Indian addiction**

*By MICHAEL RILEY\
The Denver Post* (11/08/2005)

WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION \-- Natasha Washakie has lived in the
depths of addiction to methamphetamine and come back up.

She\'s seen friends trade sex for meth. She\'s seen one get her own
children hooked on the drug, which among its side effects suppresses the
appetite.

\"We used to joke that she kept her whole family high so she wouldn\'t
have to feed them,\" said the 28-year-old Northern Arapaho woman, who
has been clean for 15 months after a three-year addiction.

Washakie knows the drug, almost unheard of here before 2000, is slowly
destroying this central Wyoming reservation.

She also knows where it comes from: a Mexican drug gang that arrived
here more than four years ago hoping to shift the alcohol addiction of
many tribal members to meth.

\"Honestly, I think that was the best business decision they ever
made,\" Washakie said sadly.

Authorities could hardly argue.

According to information gathered during an investigation that has so
far led to more than 17 arrests, that gang is the Sinaloan Cowboys, an
organization with a sophisticated structure and a Fortune 500 business
plan \-- when you\'re a drug cartel looking to expand, go where the
addicts are.

Over a period of more than four years, the gang funneled nearly 100
pounds of meth with a value of more than \$6.5 million into and around
the reservation.

At least three gang members were dispatched from a Utah-based cell to
reservation towns. They rented houses and met girlfriends. Using
American Indian women, they gained entree to the reservation and
established a network of more than a dozen dealers, many of them
American Indian.

\"They identified the reservation as an addict-rich environment, a
population that for years had been addicted to alcohol,\" said Robert
Murray, an assistant U.S. attorney in Cheyenne. He said information on
the gang\'s plan to infiltrate the reservation had been garnered from
multiple sources.

A plan born of deep cynicism, it was also a phenomenal success. In a
matter of five years, tribal leaders say, meth went from a marginal drug
to a virtual torrent on this 2.2 million-acre reservation.

\"It\'s an epidemic, and I don\'t think we\'ve reached the peak,\" said
Mark Russler, executive director of Fremont Counseling Services, which
treats addicts.

Russler said the number of meth addicts at two facilities in Lander and
Riverton \-- the region\'s largest \-- jumped from 5 percent or 6
percent of clients in 1999 to more than 25 percent.

From 2003 to 2004 \-- a year tribal police saw the worst increase in
meth use \-- criminal charges for drug possession on the Wind River
Reservation increased 353 percent. During that period, assaults tripled,
theft nearly doubled and child abuse increased by 85 percent.

Arrests and several convictions, including the sentencing of one of the
cell leaders to life in prison in July, have slowed the advance of the
drug here, authorities say, but many tribe members say they\'ve seen
little effect.

\"There are so many people using, you can see them just walking around
the store\" here, said Georgia C\'Hair, a reservation treatment
counselor and former meth addict.

\"Their skin is ashen. Those repetitive movements and jerks. It\'s what
addicts call tweaking,\" she said.

Alcohol to meth

Investigators say the Sinaloan Cowboys\' success here offers a
frightening picture of meth\'s rapid rise in Indian Country, providing a
snapshot into how the stimulant has grown to rival alcohol as the drug
of choice on reservations throughout the West.

Experts say that about half of addictions on reservations still are to
alcohol.

But meth has moved so quickly that it has left tribal governments across
the region reeling. Struggling to catch up, some leaders even have ceded
fiercely protected tribal sovereignty in exchange for help.

Two major busts on Wind River in the past two years were the result of
an unprecedented law enforcement coalition that included the Drug
Enforcement Administration, the Wyoming Division of Criminal
Investigation, local tribal police and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Sprawling across a rolling prairie at the foot of the Wind River
Mountains, the reservation appears the last place that would attract
Mexican drug gangs that flourish in the immigrant barrios of America\'s
major cities.

Rural and remote, the reservation is home to 6,400 American Indians
split mostly between two tribes, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern
Arapaho. Apart from Riverton, which is largely white, the reservation\'s
few small towns are destitute collections of mostly sagging homes and
run-down trailers.

A 1998 tribal study found that 38 percent of American Indian adults on
Wind River were unemployed and that 57 percent lived in poverty.

But from the perspective of gang members, the reservation had an
important plus: Jurisdictional barriers normally prevent state and local
police from operating on tribal lands. And despite the apparent poverty
of Indian country, many tribal members receive monthly checks from
mineral royalties or other tribal income.

Members of the Mexican gang discovered that alcohol sales on other
reservations spiked after members received their checks, sources told
investigators, and they believed they could tap into that cash.

\"It was natural to try to transfer that addiction from alcohol to
meth,\" Murray said.

The gang\'s tentacles reach across a vast swath of territory from
California and the Northwest through much of the Rocky Mountains,
investigators say. Authorities describe the Sinaloan Cowboys as a street
gang that distributes drugs for the Sinaloan cartel, one of Mexico\'s
most brutal drug-trafficking organizations.

While the gang is active in several cities, investigators say
reservations seem to hold a special attraction. As early as the
mid-\'90s, members of the same Ogden, Utah-based cell were dealing on
reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska, Murray said.

The gang arrived in central Wyoming in the 1990s, first distributing
meth to mostly white customers in Lander and Riverton. But sometime in
2001, investigators say they set their sights on the Wind River, with
cell members moving onto the reservation permanently, either with
girlfriends or in a rented trailer, investigators said.

It was a tried-and-true tactic for the gang: One of the cell members \--
Marcelino Rocha \-- already had several children with an Indian woman
near a Nebraska reservation, where the gang distributed meth in the late
1990s.

Overseen by the cell\'s leaders, brothers Julio and Martin Sagaste-Cruz,
the gang smuggled a pure form of meth \-- manufactured in \"superlabs\"
on the Mexican border \-- in the drive shafts of sport utility vehicles
to Utah and finally onto the reservation.

The organization was exceptionally efficient, authorities say. Including
the cell leaders, five to six gang members managed a network of more
than a dozen dealers, who in turned distributed enough meth for 45,000
doses.

Community cost

Fafa Hereford, who is Eastern Shoshone, saw those drugs only through the
devastation they wreaked upon her family.

A sister and brother both became hooked. They would turn suddenly
violent and experience hallucinations, she said. Ultimately, her sister
lost her children, who now live with Hereford\'s parents.

Jason Brown, an Arapaho who is in treatment for meth addiction, said the
drug is easier to get on the reservation than marijuana. It\'s much
cheaper than cocaine, and the high lasts longer.

When he was using, he\'d go on monthlong binges, barely sleeping. When
he did sleep, Brown said he would wake up and put a gram of meth in his
coffee. Sometimes, he wouldn\'t return home for days.

\"I wouldn\'t eat. All I wanted is more meth. They have these
multivitamin packs. I\'d take one of those and I was good to go,\" said
Brown, 30.

Tribal officials say the cost to the community is enormous.

Women are having miscarriages because of the drug. Addicts steal from
family members to support their habits. Abuse of the elderly is on the
rise.

The reservation has the third-largest caseload for Child Protective
Services in the state, behind only Casper and Cheyenne, the state\'s two
largest cities.

And with no inpatient treatment programs for meth anywhere in Wyoming,
the two tribes are forced to consider building one of their own, a
project that will likely cost millions of dollars, said Willie Noseep, a
member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, the tribe\'s governing
body.

\"It has an all-encompassing effect on all our programs,\" Noseep said.

And the reservation\'s close-knit community, a source of pride here,
only helped speed the drug\'s spread, tribal members say.

\"If you introduced it to someone else, you\'d get it for free for a
little while. That was a way to pay for your habit for a couple more
months,\" said Washakie, the recovering addict.

Through an ex-boyfriend, Washakie\'s life became wrapped up with the
Mexican gang and its dealers.

Her partner belonged to the family of one of the gang member\'s
girlfriends, Geraldine Blackburn. After a year of being together, he
began to beat her. She lost her four children for neglecting them.

Washakie said that gang members used Blackburn\'s house on the
reservation as a base, though a heavily guarded one. As Spanish-speaking
men came and went, it was impossible for tribal members to approach the
house unless they had been vouched for by the gang\'s inner circle.

Sometimes gang members would purchase houses for local dealers, tribe
members say.

It\'s those kinds of resources that make the Sinaloan Cowboys and other
Mexican gangs such a potent threat here.

Brian Eggleston, a special agent for the Wyoming Division of Criminal
Investigation, said that although the organization has been dealt a
blow, it\'s likely to quickly send in new members and start again.

\"This organization is making too much money to just quit,\" Eggleston
said.

\"They\'ve got a retail business there, and they aren\'t going to close
their doors because they\'ve had a bump in the road.\"