The First Annual Wellbriety Roast
Recovery advocate and artist Sam English receives a dose of Indian humor at the 2003 Conference in Albuquerque

Don Coyhis
Hello everyone! My name is Don Coyhis, I’m a member of the Mohican nation and also the turtle clan. We would like to welcome everyone here tonight. I think we get so busy in our own communities that we don’t take the time to purposefully thank one another. How often during the day do we catch someone in the act of being excellent, and tell them? How often do we catch someone in the act of messing up and let them know? Each of these gives a different result. Tonight we have a friend to many of us in recovery. Tonight we’re asking a few of us to come and tell Sam English a story.

I met Sam many, many years ago when his art shop was still in Old Town here in Albuquerque. Over the years we have supported one another. When one of us would have bad times, we would call the other. I think that the talent that the Creator gave to Sam is the ability to create with paper—to paint. Sam painted the Hoop Man standing for the Wellbriety Movement. You can go to almost any Native Treatment center from Alaska to the east coast—anywhere—and you will run into paintings that he contributed over the years. Sam makes a living from painting, but I know that if you needed something from him he’s been known in the past to help accommodate that. When you see his style of painting you know it’s about the Wellbriety Movement or a healing or helping organization. It’s a style that no one else in the whole world has, I believe. He has been strongly, strongly influential in the recovery movement. There was a time when there wasn’t much recovery for Native people, but Sam was there to help get certain things going.