By R.M. Arrieta

TUCKED AWAY ON a nondescript street in San Francisco's Mission District, the Friendship House Healing Center is a jewel of a building and a source of strength for the Native Americans who rely on it for residential drug and alcohol treatment.

"The Friendship House opened its arms to me – a person who had come to her end. It gave me ... most of all, patience to help me learn how to live. No matter how we get there, somewhere that seed is planted, and that seed sprouts," former client Myra Smith from the Muskoke-Creek tribe told the Bay Guardian. Sober for 11 years, Smith now directs a Friendship House program for women and children.

The story of the Friendship House is one of hope during times that seem hopeless, a happy ending to a period that has been particularly difficult for Native Americans.

On April 22, the community will be introduced to the new and improved Friendship House Healing Center at a grand-opening celebration. The $12 million, four-story building – painted a warm ocher, like the hills of the Southwest in late summer – represents 10 years of planning and fundraising. It replaces the rundown, smaller building just a few doors away. The new center has increased the number of beds for clients from 30 to 80 and expanded the treatment length from three to six months, with an additional six months of supportive housing and job training.

According to figures in a comprehensive 2003 report titled "A Quiet Crisis" issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the state of programs and services to Native Americans, this population is 670 percent more likely to die from alcoholism, 650 percent more likely to die from tuberculosis, 318 percent more likely to die from diabetes, and 204 percent more likely to suffer accidental death (much of it alcohol related) when compared with other groups.

The report goes on to state, "These disparities exist because of disproportionate poverty, poor education, cultural differences, and the absence of adequate health service delivery in most Native communities. One of the largest barriers to adequate health care for Native Americans is access."

More Bay Area Native Americans will now have access to programs they need, programs that use culturally appropriate treatments.

"I don't think Western medicine would have gotten me so far so fast," one client told us.

Friendship House's former executive director and current CEO, Helen Waukazoo, told us, "We help our people reconnect with their native traditions and cultures. We walk and talk the red road to recovery."

The wheels for the new center started turning in 1999 when the organization received a commitment of financing from San Francisco to buy the site. Since then, it has steadfastly worked to build funding to complete this project. Friendship House development director Raho Ortiz says the facility was built using less than a quarter of federal money. Its $12 million cost includes $8 million from private lenders and donors and foundation and corporate support, and $4 million from federal, state, and city funding.

The fact that the center was ever built is amazing given that federal funding for Native American health services have been cut to the bone. Last year the feds budgeted about $2 billion for Indian Health Services. Of that amount, only 1 percent targets urban programs, says Ashly Phillips, development director at the Native American Health Center in Oakland.

The Friendship House is the only residential program for American Indians in California that serves both men and women and the only fully certified, fully licensed American Indian adult recovery program in the state.

The Friendship House seed began to grow in 1963 as part of a Christian organization that wanted to create a multiservice drop-in site for the growing urban American Indian community that was swelling due to the federal Relocation Program. The Relocation Program of the 1950s brought thousands of American Indians from the reservations and rural areas to urban areas like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City.

Uprooted from the earth under their feet, this population had to deal with the grittiness of city life, creating a new breed, a new tribe: the urban Indian. By 1973 the American Indian community assumed control of the organization, gained nonprofit status, and the Friendship House was born. Today, there are some 80,000 American Indians living in the Bay Area.

Says Phillips, "The construction of the new Friendship House Healing Center is the first new building in the Native American community here in the Bay Area. It is a remarkable achievement. It provides for the community a real sense of permanence that says, 'We're here. And we are here to stay.' "

The Friendship House Healing Center grand-opening ceremony, featuring American Indian dancers and drummers and special guests Mayor Gavin Newsom and former mayor Willie Brown, takes place Fri/22, 11 a.m.-noon, 56 Julian, S.F. (415) 865-0964, www.friendshiphousesf.org. Tours of the facility will be provided following the ceremony.