Joe Hobot has one word for it: devastating.

Clyde Bellecourt has another: epidemic.

They are both describing the impact heroin trafficking and abuse has had on the American Indian community in the Twin Cities and in reservations across the state.

Hobot, a University of St. Thomas graduate, is president and CEO of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Opportunity Industrial Center. A Lakota descendant of the Hunk Papa Band of the Standing Rock Nation, he also leads the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors.

Bellecourt, 79, is a community spiritual elder and co-founder of the influential American Indian Movement. Both generations of leaders, among others, raised alarms this week over the latest demon to afflict their community.

Call it what you want -- smack, horse, brown sugar, Mexican mud, whatever. Call it the Grim Reaper in another disguise. It's another poison claiming lives and wrecking families across the state and nation.

Bellecourt, who as a spiritual elder is on call to perform traditional drumming as well as sage- and sweetgrass-burning prayer ceremonies at area hospitals at the request of American Indian patients, shared details about a recent heroin-related death.

The victim, who lived in south Minneapolis, was a 34-year-old mother of three. The oldest, 12, found her dead when he returned from school. Bellecourt presided over the burial, as he has done on numerous occasions in the past year.

"I don't know what happened to the kids," he told me.