Rhode Island Indian Council Elder’s Statement on Tobacco Control

• Our traditional culture plays a significant role in ensuring health and healing in the Native community; and our disconnect to Native culture contributes to our unhealthiness. Therefore, there are some generic things we have to address in order to have a successful smoking cessation program.  Namely, the people need to reconnect with their culture, traditions, and community.
  
  
• It is important that when we pass on these messages on tobacco control, that it comes from the actual doing of the traditional practices.  We want to align the messages we give about tobacco with our everyday life cycle and traditions; with the stories, drumming, and dancing, as vehicles for passing down information and knowledge in the Native community.
  
  
• We must counter the misperception that the close association of sacred tobacco with significant events and ceremonies in Native culture, undermines tobacco prevention and control efforts in our community. We aim to restore the integrity of sacred tobacco as a spiritual and healing element in our culture.  And we celebrate and promote the natural connection between sacred tobacco, the Circle, dancing and healing.
  
  
• The information alone will not change behaviors, nor stop the smoking habit, or counter peer pressure.  For change happens from the inside out.  Change comes from knowing who you are, and knowing your connection to your ancestors and culture.  It comes from inside the circle and the community.  Then the learning will stay with our youth and they will share that knowledge with their parents and elders.