How Meth Took Hold on Indian Reservation

Della Aragon stands in front of one of numerous anti-meth posters inside the Arapahoe School Culture Building as she listens to community leaders speak at a meeting of Partners Against Meth on April 4, 2007 at the Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyo. (AP Photo/Wayne Nichols) (Wayne Nicholls - AP)

WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Wyo. -- Just off the deserted highways, the silver pickup truck eases down quiet streets, its driver offering a numbing tour of a remote reservation framed by the beauty of snowcapped mountains.

There, Leon Tillman says, over there _ the house on the right, a white, two-story building set off by itself. It used to be a big drug house. Now it's shuttered, its owners in prison.

A man dressed in an army green shirt and pants appears on the side of the road, his thumb up, looking for a ride. "That's a meth head," Tillman says. "He's bumming right now."

A few more drug houses and Tillman's tour of the despair of methamphetamine ends.

Not long ago, most people here had never even heard of meth. But today, most know someone on meth or in prison because of it. Tillman, 39, knows too many to count.

"It's everywhere," he said.

Indeed, American Indians have been especially hard hit by meth. Drug cartels have targeted Indian Country because the people are vulnerable, and law enforcement struggles to keep up.

But the story of how meth came to this remote reservation is really quite remarkable.

Like a cancer, a Mexican drug gang permeated the reservation and its families. It left behind a landscape strewn with broken lives.

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Some 12,000 Indians _ members of the Northern Arapaho and the Eastern Shoshone tribes _ live on 2.2 million acres, an area so vast many homes are separated by miles of barren land.

Poverty and unemployment are high, alcoholism is rampant and the police department is so understaffed _ patrolling such a large area _ that the average response time is 15 to 20 minutes.