The My name's Koba. I'm a long-time listener, and I figured that I should finally just sit down and write out my story.

I live with my family on the Yakama Indian Reservation here in Washington.

I've lived here all my life, and the reality is a lot different than what you might read about or see on TV.

There's a lot of natural beauty here and that's definitely true.

Even having grown up with the cascades in the background anytime you're outside,

you think I might be used to it by now.

But every time your eyes wander while you're driving and you're out hunting or fishing,

there's almost one of those wow moments, or the mountains catch the light in just the right way,

or you come across a scene straight from a Hobbit movie. I love those, by the way. But beneath all

that natural splendor, there's a lot of hardship and a lot of violence here on the res, especially when it comes to drugs and alcohol addiction.

Drugs, particularly meth, have been a dark cloud hanging over this reservation for literally decades at this point.

It's everywhere, seeping into every corner of people's lives.

I've known good people, people with families, jobs, everything a person could want, have their entire lives swallowed up by it.

It's not just a drug here. It's more like a disease that's put down roots throughout the community,

leaving almost no one untouched. You see it in the empty

tired eyes of the young kids whose parents have been affected by it, and you see it in the

empty boarded-up houses that were once home to generations of the same family, and you see it in the

same crime rates that just keep on climbing without fail, year in and year out.

As one old friend of mine put it, it takes normal, regular life, and it turns into some

kind of survival situation. And in survival situations, you got your predators, and where

there's predators, there's prey. All the robberies, break-ins, and burglaries are bad enough, but the violence is by far the

worst.

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