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SPEAKER 1: All this week we're hearing from Minnesotans affected by the nationwide drug overdose epidemic. As drug overdoses rose across the state, American Indian communities both on reservations and in the Twin Cities were some of the hardest hit. Reporter Jon Collins has the story now of a former drug dealer who's trying to help heroin users and redeem himself.
JON COLLINS: From the time they were teens, James Cross and his twin brother would steal drugs from dealers in the Twin Cities. They'd drive the drugs up to reservations in Northern Minnesota, where they would sell them.
JAMES CROSS: They liked us because we used with them. We'd have 9 ounces and go up to the Res and sell maybe for. The rest we'd use. And it was just a party time.
But at the end of the day, it's just you're still at square one. You're trying to make money, but you still ain't. It's a dream on the triple beam, you know?
JON COLLINS: James and his brother are American Indian, but were adopted by a white family in South Minneapolis. James spent much of his adult life behind bars. He has a feather tattoo on his face as well as other inked reminders of the two decades he spent incarcerated or selling drugs for gangs. I talked to him on the front lawn of his home in Saint Paul.
JAMES CROSS: You sell to take care of your habit. In the meantime, you ain't thinking that you're destroying your-- you're destroying your community or your reservation.
JON COLLINS: As James neared the end of his most recent prison term, he started to think about how he spent his life and the sort of a that he was leaving for his sons.
JAMES CROSS: Man, they came to visit me that day and they all were crying. And that was the first time in my whole life, I think, I cried. And it just hit me hard that I'm doing this all for the gangs, I'm doing this for street rep, and at the end, no one's there for me, except for these four people.
JON COLLINS: James walked out of jail that final time in 2005 committed to breaking what he calls the convict code, which he'd lived under from his early teens to his late 30s.
JAMES CROSS: In the community, it's hard. It's hard to be Native American in your community and show these people that you changed because you ruined the community and hurt the community so many times with your actions of drugs.
JON COLLINS: Heroin abuse in Minnesota has skyrocketed since James left jail, especially in American Indian communities. James lost a son to a heroin overdose in 2013. Other family members have struggled as well.
His twin brother Gerald Cross has had a hard time since leaving jail a couple of years back. He went from using pain pills to using heroin. James worked with his brother trying to keep him clean, but it didn't stick.
JAMES CROSS: It's like waiting for that call, waiting for that call that he take that overdose or he's locked back up because like, I told him if you get locked up, I feel locked up. You're half of me.
JON COLLINS: Last year, James helped to start a group called Natives Against Heroin. He runs weekly talking circles in South Minneapolis.
JAMES CROSS: Dealing with Natives and the trauma and the historical trauma that we've been through, I think, we need to have our own program specific for Natives and that's it. We use our culture, use our own theories from our forefathers and our elders that we were taught, and bring them back to our ceremonies.
JON COLLINS: As part of his outreach efforts, James makes regular rounds at an American-Indian-focused housing development in South Minneapolis. He makes a point of taking extra time to talk with pregnant women who are using heroin. His granddaughter Sierra was born addicted to heroin three years ago. She's lived most of her life with James and his wife Teresa. Sierra's father is in jail, and her mother gave up all parental rights.
JAMES CROSS: She's on the path to heroin, and she doesn't want to quit. And you know, she's caught up in that street life that fast, whatever you want to call it.
JON COLLINS: Sierra likes playing on tablet computers or the family's Kindle. She's more shy than their other grandkids, but James and Teresa say she's coming out of her shell. They're in the process of formally adopting her. James says adopting Sierra is his way of making amends for the damage he caused in his younger years.
JAMES CROSS: Breaking the cycle, that's breaking the cycle. And it is very important.
JON COLLINS: Covering health, John Collins, Minnesota Public Radio News.