How the Bad River Tribe flipped the script on the Native American opioid crisis
BAD RIVER RESERVATION, Wis. — Sunlight is streaming through holes in the walls of a disused, corrugated metal shack, revealing its modest insides: Dirt floors, stacks of two-by-fours, and a pile of Little Caesars pizza boxes under attack by a work crew on lunch break.
This building is clearly not ready to be a home. But in the next 24 hours, it must become one. At this time of year, sleeping outdoors is deadly. And barely 100 yards away, on the historic pow-wow grounds of the Bad River Tribe, stands a small tent city still thawing out from yesterday’s first snow. Its inhabitants, left homeless by addiction to fentanyl and methamphetamine, have nowhere else to go.
