Robert Brown and Kevin Fineday are citizens of the White Earth Nation who are featured in The Seventh Fire documentary. Photo: Seventh Fire LLC
After watching The Seventh Fire, a documentary about drugs on the White Earth Nation, André Cramblit, a citizen of the Karuk Tribe, offers some suggestions for helping Native youth avoid gangs and drugs:
I recently watched a documentary about gangs, drugs, hopelessness and the resulting social problems on the White Earth Rez called the Seventh Fire. It is streamable on NetFlix and Amazon and available on iTunes as well. The short film could be about most reservations across the country. It focuses on the generations of gangs and the resulting impacts on the Indian community. To say it is darkly haunting and more than a bit depressing is an understatement. Doesn’t sound like much of a thumbs up review, but I did like it. I liked that it made me look at an issue that is confronting many Native communities around the country without a filter of “everything will work out in the end.” It succeeds as a challenge to smashing the crap outta the drugs and their distributors that are deviling our people. The documentary is about an “OG” who is on his last weekend of freedom before reporting to prison for the fifth time. It is interlaced with a story about how this gang leader is “mentoring” a protégé into becoming a better drug dealer than he is. He wants him to be more successful than he was by selling drugs but not getting sent to prison as often. It is a tough no holds barred look into the mirror that many reservations would rather look away from.Read More on the Story:
André Cramblit: The Seventh Fire and Surviving Drugs and Gangs On Native Reservations (Indian Country Media Network 3/18)
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