Judith Surber is a mother, grandmother, and tribal member of the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in Humboldt County, Northern California. Surber has worked for the Hoopa Valley Tribe for the past 30 years in many different capacities, including most recently as the manager for the Medication Assisted Treatment program at K’ima:w Medical Center, the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s health program. Surber is the author of Reservation High, a fiction book about Native life on the reservation, substance use, and recovery. Her second book, The Broken Ones, is a fiction work that explores Native life and trauma.
In this Pulitzer Center-supported photo story, Judith Surber gives a firsthand account of how the opioid epidemic has devastated her family and community on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, photographed by Justin Maxon.
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