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Native American Heritage Panel Tackles Substance Abuse

Audrey Armitage
FAU's Native American Heritage Panel (from left): moderator Lulrick Balzora, John Lowe, Melessa Kelley, and Rose Cirilo.

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, Broward College hosted a panel with speakers from Florida Atlantic University to discuss issues facing the Native American community.

The panelists --John Lowe, a professor of nursing at FAU, and PhD students Rose Cirilo and Melessa Kelley -- are all Native American. They identified substance abuse and obesity as two of the biggest challenges.

To help address widespread substance abuse, Lowe has developed a prevention method for Native American youth. His method, called the Sacred Talking Circle, aims to curb substance abuse using culturally specific tactics.

Still struggling with the remnants of forced relocation, Lowe says,  Native Americans lack resources that reflect their culture. “They would go to school, they would  go to maybe seek health care and many times were misidentified,” explained Lowe, “So nobody addressed their needs from a true cultural perspective. Many were misclassified as something else.”

Lowe said tackling substance abuse is crucial because the average lifespan for Native Americans is 52 years, but in many tribes it  is only 48.  “To me, it’s very unacceptable to be the original indigenous people in this country and have this situation before us,” he added.

Rose Cirilo is working to apply Lowe’s method to Native American communities in South Florida. She said culturally based substance abuse prevention is more effective than traditional methods. “History tells a story of people here within South Florida --  Native American and indigenous people,”  Cirlo said. “And I think it’s about establishing trust and working in collaborative effort versus being paternalistic and going in and controlling.”

Lowe’s substance abuse prevention strategies have been used in Native American communities nationwide. Panelist Melessa Kelley is also working on adapting this method to reduce obesity among Native Americans.

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