Native Americans in Chicago have high opioid death rates. So why won't they get tribal settlement money?
What could happen in Chicago is part of a larger problem that keeps urban Natives from receiving support for issues just as pervasive in cities as on reservations.
- Chicago is home to the third-largest urban Native American population in the country.
- About 70% of American Indians and Alaska Natives now reside in urban or suburban areas.
- American Indians and Alaska Natives had the highest drug overdose death rates of any racial or ethnic group in 2020.
CHICAGO – Sarina DiMaso, a citizen of the Chiricahua Apache and Taino Nations, stumbled into her Chicago home seven years ago after a drug and alcohol binge to find her 24-year-old daughter, Nicole, dead by suicide in DiMaso’s bedroom.
Riddled with guilt and trapped in a decades-long battle with an opioid addiction, DiMaso carried her daughter’s ashes in the passenger seat of her truck for two years, until a near-fatal crash into a tree convinced her to seek treatment.
“I woke with bruises, bumps and my daughter’s ashes all over me,” DiMaso said. “I really felt like, wow, my daughter saved my life. That’s when I crawled out onto the ground, still inebriated at the time, and I asked my Creator to please help me with my drinking and drugging, my opioid addiction.”