Tayas Yawks Brings Good Medicine to the Klamath Community
“Tayas Yawks in the Klamath language translates to ‘medicine bag,’ and good medicine is exactly what we bring to the community.” - Paul Monteith, Tayas Yawks Co-Director
In April 2021, Co-Directors Paul Monteith and Tammy Anderson started Tayas Yawks to offer peer support, job resources and culturally specific services to people struggling with addiction and people returning from incarceration or addiction treatment. Since then, Tayas Yawks has grown to include two companies and eleven employees. Most of Tayas Yawks’ employees and board members are tribal members and/or have lived experience of addiction or incarceration.
According to Paul, Native Americans in Klamath County are eight times more likely to die of a drug overdose and six times more likely to go to prison than non-Natives. While Tayas Yawks serves non-Natives as well, their focus is on providing culturally specific services to Native community members.
Paul says: “Tammy and I based our program on the belief that the only way we can truly heal as a people is to gain our culture back.”
Tayas Yawks hosts an annual powwow, twice monthly sweat lodge ceremonies, regular wellbriety meetings, elder meals, and learning opportunities like language classes, basket weaving classes and more. They’re also building a greenhouse for Indigenous plants.
Alongside their cultural services, Tayas Yawks guides clients through the court system, recovery, jail, incarceration and treatment. The two biggest barriers for their clients are housing and employment. So, Paul and Tammy started Tayas Yawks Construction LLC to provide living wage jobs to their clients. Paul is also working with Klamath Community College to set up a welding certification program for their clients.
One highlight of participating in the Justice Reinvestment Equity Program: Tayas Yawks has built a relationship with another grantee, Red Lodge Transition Services. Together, they plan to get in touch with the heads of prisons and jails in Oregon to set up programming partnerships.
We can say a lot of good things about Tayas Yawks, but honestly, Paul says it best. He wrote this in Tayas Yawks’ JREP application: “Growing up on the Klamath reservation post-termination, I have witnessed my people go from a rich and traditional tribe to a culture of addiction and violence. For males in our tribe, it has become a right of passage to go to the department of corrections. Early death is expected and the lifespan is well below the norm. Tayas Yawks and a group of other tribal members are working everyday to change the culture back to our traditions and focus on community and family values. The revolving door of the jails and prisons are what is keeping our people sick and something different needs to happen. Trauma is a major factor that plays to the choices my people make and the path of addiction they take. Once the trauma has been addressed, then the person begins to heal. With Native people, culture is a huge part of what has been missing in our lives and what we are always searching for. Sadly, working on ourselves and culture does not pay the bills. What I am proposing and what I am doing in my community is to give people the opportunity to gain the skills and the mindset, learned in an environment where they are understood and mentored while overcoming the barriers to make them truly successful.”
Thank you Tayas Yawks for the incredible work you all are doing! We appreciate you, and we’re glad to have you as part of the Justice Reinvestment Equity Program cohort.
The Justice Reinvestment Equity Program (JREP) supports culturally specific organizations and culturally responsive services in communities most harmed and least helped by Oregon’s criminal legal system. JREP seeks to elevate organizations that have been overlooked by traditional funding streams with the goals of reducing incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system, promoting healing and advancing community safety in Oregon. Learn more about JREP.