Lonny and Teyon Fritzler stand outside their childhood home on the Crow Indian Reservation in Lodge Grass, Montana. The house has sat empty for years since both men left town to recover from their meth addictions. (Katheryn Houghton/KFF Health News)
LODGE GRASS, Mont. — Brothers Lonny and Teyon Fritzler walked amid the tall grass and cottonwood trees surrounding their boarded-up childhood home near the Little Bighorn River and daydreamed about ways to rebuild.
The rolling prairie outside the single-story clapboard home is where Lonny learned from their grandfather how to break horses. It’s where Teyon learned from their grandmother how to harvest buffalo berries. It’s also where they watched their father get addicted to meth.
Teyon, now 34, began using the drug at 15 with their dad. Lonny, 41, started after college, which he said was partly due to the stress of caring for their grandfather with dementia. Their own addictions to meth persisted for years, outlasting the lives of both their father and grandfather.
It took leaving their home in Lodge Grass, a town of about 500 people on the Crow Indian Reservation, to recover. Here, methamphetamine use is widespread.
The brothers stayed with an aunt in Oklahoma as they learned to live without meth. Their family property has sat empty for years — the horse corral’s beams are broken and its roof caved in, the garage tilts, and the house needs extensive repairs. Such crumbling structures are common in this Native American community, hammered by the effects of meth addiction. Lonny said some homes in disrepair would cost too much to fix. It’s typical for multiple generations to crowd under one roof, sometimes for cultural reasons but also due to the area’s housing shortage.
“We have broken-down houses, a burnt one over here, a lot of houses that are not livable,” Lonny said as he described the few neighboring homes.
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In Lodge Grass, an estimated 60% of the residents age 14 and older struggle with drug or alcohol addictions, according to a local survey contracted by the Mountain Shadow Association, a local, Native-led nonprofit. For many in the community, the buildings in disrepair are symbols of that struggle. But signs of renewal are emerging. In recent years, the town has torn down more than two dozen abandoned buildings. Now, for the first time in decades, new businesses are going up and have become new symbols — those of the town’s effort to recover from the effects of meth.
One of those new buildings, a day care center, arrived in October 2024. A parade of people followed the small, wooden building through town as it was delivered on the back of a truck. It replaced a formerly abandoned home that had tested positive for traces of meth.
“People were crying,” said Megkian Doyle, who heads the Mountain Shadow Association, which opened the center. “It was the first time that you could see new and tangible things that pulled into town.”
The recently opened drop-in and child care centers in Lodge Grass reflect signs of improvement in this community on the Crow Indian Reservation, which has been hammered by addiction. (Katheryn Houghton/KFF Health News)
A nearby basketball hoop is marked with names and what addiction recovery means to those people. (Katheryn Houghton/KFF Health News)
The nonprofit is also behind the town’s latest construction project: a place where families together can heal from addiction. The plan is to build an entire campus in town that provides mental health resources, housing for kids whose parents need treatment elsewhere, and housing for families working to live without drugs and alcohol.
Though the project is years away from completion, locals often stop by to watch the progress.
“There is a ground-level swell of hope that’s starting to come up around your ankles,” Doyle said.
Two of the builders on that project are Lonny and Teyon Fritzler. They see the work as a chance to help rebuild their community within the Apsáalooke Nation, also k …