Prevention Through Empowerment in a Native American Community

SUMMARY This article describes a work in progress. It reports on a prevention demonstration grant program which combined several complementary strategies: a school-based cultural curriculum, training of teachers, development of a leadership core group, and a community curriculum, in an effort to address the self-perception of personal and communal powerlessness of Native Americans, which places them at risk for drug and alcohol abuse. A student survey was used to examine substance use, school bonding and the relationship between cultural affiliation and substance use for the youth population. Two sets of outcome results, quantitative and qualitative, are reported and discussed in relation to the Freirian model of community empowerment.