Drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, child welfare, and gangs dominated discussion Wednesday at Sky Ute Casino at a conference for law enforcement, prosecutors, victim advocates and others who deal with those issues in Indian Country and elsewhere.

The conference was hosted by the U.S. Department of Justice and featured Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates and Acting Associate Attorney General Stuart Delery, the number two and number three officials in DoJ; and John Walsh, U.S. Attorney for Colorado. U.S. attorneys from other states also attended.

They were there to hear from the frontline people who deal with these issues, Delery said. He commended audience members for the work they do "to bring healing and justice, to save lives. You are intervening in some of the worst moments in peoples's lives. Some of you may have been victims yourselves."

Yates said she first learned about these issues in Indian Country when she visited the Pine Ridge Reservation with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. "Fair administration of justice is our mission and sole responsibility," in Indian Country as well as everywhere else, she said.

Southern Ute Tribal Services Deptartment Director Lawrence Sekayumptewa objected that the conference agenda did not include "cultural considerations and the use of cultural resources to address trauma and violence in our communities. Money can help, but you have to look at the holistic manner of how we treat individuals when they get violated." This is not just current generations, he said. It carries over from previous generations.

He said with 40 years of tribal work in Hopi, Navajo and Southern Utes cultures, "I see substance and drug abuse is proliferating, threatening our communities and cultures. Leaders are pleading for these to be addressed in a more direct manner. We all know Indian Country is under-funded in terms of public safety. The Navajo Nation is constantly under siege. Alcohol and drugs are the root of this... I see our people being ravaged by violence - youth, adults, grandparents. We are lacking funding and adequate manpower."

But Sekayumptewa continued, "Look at all your resources. Money doesn't solve everything. Our children are lacking rights of passage, education to understand and respect who they are, to understand their roles and responsibilities, to be more respectful of their obligations to their people, the land, and their children."

Walsh agreed and said, "This is the discussion we wanted to have."

Two audience members from the Navajo Nation cited lack of victim advocates (only five total) and lack of tribal prosecutors for their sprawling reservation.

Audience member Patrick Woods, a tribal prosecutor in Utah, cited a statistic that three-quarters of young Native women will be sexually assaulted before their 25th birthday. "We're addressing it after the fact. There have to be some efforts on the front end to try and prevent those," he said, "to avoid the need for victim services." He also noted an increasing gang problem on reservations.

Yates asked for his ideas on how to prevent sexual assaults.

He said public awareness campaigns to get past victims' reluctance to talk about it. "I've had cases where Daughter gets assaulted and Auntie says 'Shake it off, it happens to all of us, don't be a baby.' It's from years of neglect where it's gone unaddressed. It's created a monster that perpetuates itself generation after generation."

Yates said, "We aren't interested in Band Aids. We have to understand the root cause, why that statistic is so high, so we can develop something that isn't just window dressing."

A Navajo Police sergeant based near a tribal casino asked about DoJ prosecution for medical marijuana on tribal land, for people just driving through or stopping at the casino.

Walsh took that question, since he works in Colorado. It varies state by state and by the tribe's views on marijuana, he said.

Stacee Read and Eric Nation from Drug Endangered Children (DEC) described the sometimes horrific impacts on children in homes where the adults are addicts or dealers, are cooking meth, and impacts from marijuana cultivation or infused products. Like other speakers, they stressed the multi-generational aspect of this.

Nation said that joining the DEC organization after 13 years in law enforcement focusing on drug arrests and seizures, he realized that focus was all wrong. "As a cop, I had to understand it's not about a successful arrest or prosecution every time," he said. "It's the child. We can't arrest our way out of this problem."

Read's background is in child welfare. "We aren't trained enough in substance abuse," she said.

Nation said meth lab homes are full of dangerous materials, and everything in the house is contaminated with toxic residue, including kids' toys.

Read said 2.1 million children in the U.S. live in homes where parents use illicit drugs. Add in that there are often other adults in those homes and the number of affected children rises to 9.2 million.

Nation said parents who abuse alcohol or drugs are more likely to be physically, verbally, or sexually abusive. He lamented, "As a cop, I didn't look at this as my problem." Children in those homes also are four times as likely to be neglected, and children in these homes are more likely to be drug abusers themselves, because they imitate what they see.

"It's up to us (who work in these fields) to break the cycle of use and neglect," he said.

Read showed pictures of a four-year-old girl who was removed from her mother because of drug use and was staying with her aunt. But the aunt and uncle were meth addicts too. "Their apartment was disgusting, the worst I've ever seen. They tortured and mutilated this girl. The last day of her life, they immersed her in boiling water and burned her skin off, then took another hit of meth and left her to die."

"We need to identify these children earlier," Read said. The environment in these homes is often chaotic, with noise, people coming in and out, loud all night parties, and the drugs are so powerful that the parent's whole focus is on those, not their kids, she said. The homes often lack necessities like food or diapers, but they have a giant TV.

"When do we take action?" Read asked. "Do we consider drug activity alone as justification to intervene? We now have to say yes. We have to understand the long-term needs of these children, the emotional and behavioral consequences they suffer. Is the intervention when they are one, or when they are 10?"

Read and Nation stressed the need for real collaboration, sharing of information and resources, among all the local, state, and federal agencies that deal with these situations to really make a difference. "When you start collaborating, you will start solving a lot of other issues," Nation said.