Throughout the world, Indigenous Tribes have had the challenge of maintaining their critically important oral history, language, and spiritual beliefs that comprise the cultural essence of their traditions that, if lost, may completely erode the quality of life of the tribe.
As time has gone on, these concerns have been coupled with a feeling of rootlessness that is generated by the obvious loss of many of the various components of tribal culture. Young tribal members need tribal traditional anchors that bring forth their pride and that encourage them to feel proud of who they are. Without them, they are rootless.
Alcohol, for too many decades, has been the mood altering chemical that has led to tribal members drinking to erase the abuse, racism, poverty, unemployment, illness, and disrespect of traditional tribal spirituality by non Indigenous groups and governmental agencies. The US policy of assimilation from 1890 through most of the Twentieth Century robbed tribes of their very identities. The Indian Schools on and off the reservations traumatized at least five generations of Indigenous people--enough to give many tribal members the equivalent of wartime post traumatic stress disorder.
As reservations for various tribes were established, many tribal members were penalized for keeping their languages, oral histories, and lifestyles with corresponding ridicule and punishment becoming a daily experience. The disappearance of several tribes was accomplished by the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture. Despair, impoverishment, and suicides on Indigenous reservations became tragically regular. The traditional tribal members often had to battle "progressive" factions of tribes, as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, missionaries, and conniving entities like corporations just to simply live as their ancestors had.
The various USA and Canadian tribes were introduced to alcohol very early in the history of interaction between Europeans and Indigenous tribes. Unethical traders and reservation overseers, such as federal tribal agents, had instilled the goal of assimilation of various tribes' traditional cultures, robbing members of the very qualities that they believed were sacred and traditional. In turn, this led to loss of the meaning of life, with the result that many reservations were sold as parcels of land to dubious buyers.
Assimilation...ethnic cleansing...It was as if someone you didn't know came along and told you you could no longer speak your native language, express your traditions of spirituality, and lead the daily life activities you had always known.Then they told you to forget everything you ever knew to be true and told you that you had to try to be like them. You would have to worship their god/s, learn their language, and try to learn how to farm on a tiny, unsuitable plot of land when your tribe had always either farmed using your own traditional methods or you roamed and hunted by the seasons, following the prey you had hunted for thousands of generations. Finally, these people put you in these invisibly "fenced" lands that were far from the traditionally sacred places that your tribe had lived on for centuries. Every promise or treaty made to your tribe through or with governmental agencies was eventually broken....the result being that those negotiating with you and your tribe weren't reliable...as an Indigenous person, you knew that when a European/American's lips moved, he or she was lying.
Acculturation, the unspoken goal of these tactics, had always worked with the various immigrants from Europe. Why were they not working with Indigenous peoples? The answer, at least partially, is that Indigenous tribes considered this land, called "America" by the Europeans/Americans, was a land that had already been named by various tribes. They were humans who had their own creation stories, ate foods they caught or raised themselves, and honored the agreements they kept. The United States used the model forged by the Iriqouois Confederated Tribes to help structure the union of the 13 original states. To consider that the various tribes were simply humans who lived their lives differently than the Europeans did was unthinkable to these so called "civilized, Christian kingdoms."
The idea that women sometimes controlled land, decision-making, and spiritual rites was unthinkable to Europeans/Americans. The idea that group decisions, made only after everyone's ideas had been spoken, scared them. The concept of property, that is, land set aside and paid for by a person or a family was not a part of Indigenous culture. Wealth in Indigenous tribes was measured by how each member treated other members and their families, or how many horses they had. In certain Northwestern tribes, the giving of a bounty of anything to the whole tribe was not only good manners, but a measure of esteem held by the tribe for a member or family within the tribe.
During the European Colonial Period in North America:
Reservation boundaries were set by the various European/American nations, only to be ignored when a tribe had gold, silver, or some other valuable commodity that was unknown to Europeans when reservation boundaries were established. In the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, corrupt American state governments, men, and corporations often stole from food and supplies intended for the tribal members. Various denominations of Christianity simultaneously and consciously eradicated Indigenous culture, including oral traditions, language, and spirituality. Some tribes hid their traditional rites from missionaries, others were systematically "reprogrammed" with the intention of making whole tribes "Imitation Caucasians." Indigenous people were not allowed to vote nationally in U.S. elections until 1924. Meanwhile, these people, once identified by the U.S. Constitution as 50% human in U.S. Censuses, were drafted for service as 100% human in the never ending cycles or war the United States undertook, beginning with the Spanish-American War.
To quote again from endgenocide.org regarding the USA's interactions with Indigenous tribes after American Independence:
Liquor made it's debut in Indigenous Culture shortly after Europeans set foot on what became the United States and Canada. Combined with the numerous outbreaks of smallpox and other European diseases that tribes had no natural resistance to fight off, human genocide occurred on an unprecedented scale. Historian Howard Zinn estimated the number of Indigenous persons who died in war fighting European/Americans after 1492, and due to deliberate and accidental exposure to smallpox and other European diseases as 100 million people from 1492 to 1900 in North and South America and the Carribean. It is no wonder that Adolf Hitler patterned the Holocaust after the manner in which European-Americans handled "their Indian Problem." The population of Indigenous people fell below 250,000 people in the 1900 United States Census. This is down from an estimated 12 million in 1491.
Liquor, in many forms such as whiskey, rum, and other types of mood altering drink became a tool to manipulate Indigenous peoples to achieve the subjugation of tribes by the various governments as needed. The reasons for the tremendous explosion of intoxication in various tribes were varied, but there were some common threads. The patterns of crushing a tribe's unity were classically Machiavellian. When a goal arose in respect to some level of USA hegemony, the Whites would approach some "chief" of the tribe, as perceived by White trappers, hunters, soldiers, and other politicians or businessmen. The approach would be to at first offer friendship, to provide certain desired goods, then gradually encroach on tribal lands looking for whatever of value that was found. This could be precious metals (e.g gold, silver, etc.), land for traveling, fertile farmland, water, grazing land, and so forth. The US government negotiators would get together with "chiefs" and offer promises of provision of food, blankets, weapons, and metal tools.
What made the exchange so one sided was that token efforts would be made to keep out US citizens, until Americans chasing gold and silver found whatever would or could be exploited. Before the Americans, there came British, Dutch, French, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese determined to establish empires. Indigenous people were given many forms of alcohol. While some tribes had developed mild "beer" types of intoxicants before Europeans, the potency of European liquor brought a new way for tribal members to mood alter. Along with blankets exposed to smallpox, being overcome by guns, alcohol, and seizing tribal lands became prime methods in "watering" the cultural disintegration of entire tribes trying to hold on to their spiritual beliefs. As the Europeans ceded what they thought were their lands to the USA and Canada, Indigenous tribes were driven out by former colonists with the United States government's tacit approval.
The gradual confinement of Indigenous tribes to lands the Americans thought were "useless"-led to an a patronizing approach to communication, which the tribes found ill-mannered and disrespectful. The Indigenous tribes were labelled as primitive (noble) savages, and several stereotypes emerged. One was "The Drunken Indian." The idea was that as a race, Indigenous People were genetically susceptible to alcohol. The simple truth is that while Indigenous People as a population do have the highest rate of alcohol consumption, there are as many people from other races who carry the genetic trait to alcohol dependence proportionately as Indigenous people.
Dr. Susan Bomalaski, in an essay called "The Drunk Indian Stereotype” notes:
It is true that Native Americans have the highest rate of alcohol abuse among any “race-ethnicity”; alcohol dependence is higher than national averages and alcoholism deaths are the highest in the nation among both make and female Native Americans. (Welty) However, it is important to realize that when we see differences in a medical outcomes that appears to be based on race and ethnicity, we should not assume that the differences are genetic. As stated by Morrissey, "In any given study, the answers you get may depend on which people you are studying. Are these new immigrants or people who are deeply acculturated to mainstream U.S. lifestyles? Are these white people in the United States or in France, or Chinese people in China or the United States? The answer may also depend on whether you are studying people who are a majority or a minority. And whether you are studying people who are wealthy or poor. All of these features can make a difference in medical outcome, including drug metabolism. The problem is that these environmental features often co-vary with race, making it difficult to determine the exact explanation for observed differences between racial groups.Studies from the 1990's have led to the common idea among both non-Native American and Native American people still prevalent today that Native Americans have both a genetic metabolism and cultural heritage, which pre-disposes them to substance-use-disorders (Levy). Subsequent research has proven that Native Americans react to alcohol much like other people. The ethnic differences between people are not as significant as the differences of individual metabolism, diet, body weight, drinking history, state of health, speed of consumption, intention, context, and history of head trauma. In the case of alcohol use and Native Americans; the concept of alcoholism serves to dehumanize individuals; if they are biologically different and suffering from a disease, Native Americans are not seen as rational struggling individuals but as victim of their own inferiority (Oswald). Healthy use of alcohol is something that many individuals struggle with; developing the racist concept that alcoholism in an inherent feature of being Native American dismisses this group of people from that struggle. This stereotype founded on historically culturally constructed concepts of race led to the misuse of research through scientific racism of heritable alcoholism. Research relying on these “not human" stereotypes, act to dehumanize Native American peoples in today’s society even by people who motivation is to empathize with the “Drunk Indian.” (Italics are mine, not Dr. Bomalaski's)
The simplest hypothesis about Indigenous Tribes and alcohol is fairly complicated. The co-variance of other factors influencing alcohol consumption could include unemployment, isolation, economic devastation, rates of illness accompanying alcohol consumption (e,g, diabetes) and many more. The reservations which are "dry" by tribal or Bureau of Indian Affairs decree seem to have developed what could be called a "look the other way" approach to tribal members' drinking. In some tribes, although a "dry" reservation is tribal law, tribal members end up going off the reservation into communities near the borders of the reservation to get alcohol.
One way Indigenous people who are alcohol dependent develop such dependence is to leave their dry reservations to either live in or travel back and forth between their reservations to what Alysa Landry calls "Drunk Towns." Her article, entitled "Drunk Towns U.S.A. - Fighting Native Intoxication with the Ditch Patrol" discusses the migration of tribal members back and forth between their reservations and towns which abut such reservations just outside of reservation boundaries. The town discussed as an example in Ms. Landry's article, which appeared in the excellent weekly digital newspaper This Week From Indian Country.
Ms. Landry uses Gallup, New Mexico as the example of a city near a reservation which has a large problem with public intoxication. As with numerous towns near Indigenous reservations, Gallup has a large Indigenous population, 44 percent, according to Ms. Landry. Due to a high rate of unemployment, alcoholism is rampant.
As alcohol use has been an issue in Gallup for decades, the proximity of many tribes' reservations to Gallup has led to aggressive panhandling by homeless Indigenous and other people who have turned Gallup into "the most dangerous town in New Mexico" according to the FBI as quoted by Ms. Landry. The problem of vagrants who are intoxicated has led to Gallup having a detoxification facility with 180 beds, a huge facility for a town of 15,000 people. Detoxification is simply the equivalent of a timeout room for intoxicated adults. As with numerous towns and cities in the West, winter temperatures go below freezing, causing potentially lethal conditions for anyone who is intoxicated and out overnight. What makes this situation more desperate is that the detoxification center is nearly broke, and will not survive this calendar year if a significant infusion of cash is not found. Figures from 2015 indicate 18 people nearly all Indigenous Tribal members, froze to death in or near Gallup (Landry, 2016).
Here in Montana, rural towns and cities which are near reservations encounter the same problems as Gallup. In Billings, Montana, the community which abuts one reservation and has several tribes' members who mirror Gallup's problem with potentially freezing to death in Montana's bitterly cold winters, Indigenous people struggle with mood altering chemicals as well as alcohol.
Ms. Landry closes her essay by making the point that cities near reservations need funding which is substantial enough to not just place a bandaid on a gaping wound, but to have the needed funding in services which treat the border towns as partners in addressing this problem as the multi-headed hydra that it is. Until such an approach is taken, communities that are now suffering from rampant alcohol dependence will face more decades of being labeled "drunk towns."
I would like to acknowledge the sources that I found helpful in putting together this article: endgenocide.org, This Week in Indian Country and Alysa Landry, and Dr. Susan Bomalaski.
Copyright 2016 by Peter Reum - All Rights Reserved
Assimilation...ethnic cleansing...It was as if someone you didn't know came along and told you you could no longer speak your native language, express your traditions of spirituality, and lead the daily life activities you had always known.Then they told you to forget everything you ever knew to be true and told you that you had to try to be like them. You would have to worship their god/s, learn their language, and try to learn how to farm on a tiny, unsuitable plot of land when your tribe had always either farmed using your own traditional methods or you roamed and hunted by the seasons, following the prey you had hunted for thousands of generations. Finally, these people put you in these invisibly "fenced" lands that were far from the traditionally sacred places that your tribe had lived on for centuries. Every promise or treaty made to your tribe through or with governmental agencies was eventually broken....the result being that those negotiating with you and your tribe weren't reliable...as an Indigenous person, you knew that when a European/American's lips moved, he or she was lying.
Acculturation, the unspoken goal of these tactics, had always worked with the various immigrants from Europe. Why were they not working with Indigenous peoples? The answer, at least partially, is that Indigenous tribes considered this land, called "America" by the Europeans/Americans, was a land that had already been named by various tribes. They were humans who had their own creation stories, ate foods they caught or raised themselves, and honored the agreements they kept. The United States used the model forged by the Iriqouois Confederated Tribes to help structure the union of the 13 original states. To consider that the various tribes were simply humans who lived their lives differently than the Europeans did was unthinkable to these so called "civilized, Christian kingdoms."
The idea that women sometimes controlled land, decision-making, and spiritual rites was unthinkable to Europeans/Americans. The idea that group decisions, made only after everyone's ideas had been spoken, scared them. The concept of property, that is, land set aside and paid for by a person or a family was not a part of Indigenous culture. Wealth in Indigenous tribes was measured by how each member treated other members and their families, or how many horses they had. In certain Northwestern tribes, the giving of a bounty of anything to the whole tribe was not only good manners, but a measure of esteem held by the tribe for a member or family within the tribe.
During the European Colonial Period in North America:
"Cultural clashes between European settlers and Natives lasted for over four hundred years – small battles, large scale wars and forced labor systems on large estates, also known as encomiendas – took a large toll on the Native population.
Throughout the Northeast, proclamations to create ‘redskins’, or scalps of Native Americans, were common during war and peace times. According to the 1775 Phipps Proclamation in Massachusetts, King George II of Britain called for “subjects to embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians.”
Colonists were paid for each Penobscot Native they killed – fifty pounds for adult male scalps, twenty-five for adult female scalps, and twenty for scalps of boys and girls under age twelve. These proclamations explicitly display the settlers’ “intent to kill”, a major indicator of genocidal acts."
(From United to End Genocide: Atrocities Committed Against Native Americans-endgenocide.org)
Reservation boundaries were set by the various European/American nations, only to be ignored when a tribe had gold, silver, or some other valuable commodity that was unknown to Europeans when reservation boundaries were established. In the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, corrupt American state governments, men, and corporations often stole from food and supplies intended for the tribal members. Various denominations of Christianity simultaneously and consciously eradicated Indigenous culture, including oral traditions, language, and spirituality. Some tribes hid their traditional rites from missionaries, others were systematically "reprogrammed" with the intention of making whole tribes "Imitation Caucasians." Indigenous people were not allowed to vote nationally in U.S. elections until 1924. Meanwhile, these people, once identified by the U.S. Constitution as 50% human in U.S. Censuses, were drafted for service as 100% human in the never ending cycles or war the United States undertook, beginning with the Spanish-American War.
To quote again from endgenocide.org regarding the USA's interactions with Indigenous tribes after American Independence:
"After the American Revolution, many Native American lives were already lost to disease and displacement. In 1830, the federal Indian Removal Act called for the removal of the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ – the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. Between 1830 and 1838, federal officials working on behalf of white cotton growers forced nearly 100,000 Indians out of their homeland. The dangerous journey from the southern states to “Indian Territory” in current Oklahoma is referred to as the Trail of Tears in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease.
As the United States expanded westward, violent conflicts over territory multiplied. In 1784, one British traveler noted:
“White Americans have the most rancorous antipathy to the whole race of Indians; and nothing is more common than to hear them talk of extirpating them totally from the face of the earth, men, women, and children.”
In particular, the 1848 California gold rush caused 300,000 people to migrate to San Francisco from the East Coast and South America. Historians believe that California was once the most densely and diversely populated area for Native Americans in U.S. territory; however, the gold rush had massive implications for Native American livelihoods. Toxic chemicals and gravel ruined traditional Native hunting and agricultural practices, resulting in starvation for many Natives.
Further, in 1850, the California state government passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that addressed the punishment and protection of Native Americans, and helped to facilitate the removal of their culture and land. It also legalized slavery and was referenced for the buying and selling of Native children.
“A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
– California Governor Peter H. Burnett, 1851
In 1890, Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota, government officials believed chief Sitting Bull was a Ghost Dancer, someone who rejects “the ways of the white man” and believes that the gods will create a new world without non-believers. In the process of arresting Sitting Bull, federal officials actually ended up killing him, causing a massive rebellion that led to the deaths of over 150 Natives in Pine Ridge." (From United to End Genocide: Atrocities Committed Against Native Americans-endgenocide.org)
The Original Codetalkers-Choctaw Nation World War 1-Despite Their Distinguished Service, They Could Not Vote After They Came Home
Liquor made it's debut in Indigenous Culture shortly after Europeans set foot on what became the United States and Canada. Combined with the numerous outbreaks of smallpox and other European diseases that tribes had no natural resistance to fight off, human genocide occurred on an unprecedented scale. Historian Howard Zinn estimated the number of Indigenous persons who died in war fighting European/Americans after 1492, and due to deliberate and accidental exposure to smallpox and other European diseases as 100 million people from 1492 to 1900 in North and South America and the Carribean. It is no wonder that Adolf Hitler patterned the Holocaust after the manner in which European-Americans handled "their Indian Problem." The population of Indigenous people fell below 250,000 people in the 1900 United States Census. This is down from an estimated 12 million in 1491.
Liquor, in many forms such as whiskey, rum, and other types of mood altering drink became a tool to manipulate Indigenous peoples to achieve the subjugation of tribes by the various governments as needed. The reasons for the tremendous explosion of intoxication in various tribes were varied, but there were some common threads. The patterns of crushing a tribe's unity were classically Machiavellian. When a goal arose in respect to some level of USA hegemony, the Whites would approach some "chief" of the tribe, as perceived by White trappers, hunters, soldiers, and other politicians or businessmen. The approach would be to at first offer friendship, to provide certain desired goods, then gradually encroach on tribal lands looking for whatever of value that was found. This could be precious metals (e.g gold, silver, etc.), land for traveling, fertile farmland, water, grazing land, and so forth. The US government negotiators would get together with "chiefs" and offer promises of provision of food, blankets, weapons, and metal tools.
What made the exchange so one sided was that token efforts would be made to keep out US citizens, until Americans chasing gold and silver found whatever would or could be exploited. Before the Americans, there came British, Dutch, French, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese determined to establish empires. Indigenous people were given many forms of alcohol. While some tribes had developed mild "beer" types of intoxicants before Europeans, the potency of European liquor brought a new way for tribal members to mood alter. Along with blankets exposed to smallpox, being overcome by guns, alcohol, and seizing tribal lands became prime methods in "watering" the cultural disintegration of entire tribes trying to hold on to their spiritual beliefs. As the Europeans ceded what they thought were their lands to the USA and Canada, Indigenous tribes were driven out by former colonists with the United States government's tacit approval.
The gradual confinement of Indigenous tribes to lands the Americans thought were "useless"-led to an a patronizing approach to communication, which the tribes found ill-mannered and disrespectful. The Indigenous tribes were labelled as primitive (noble) savages, and several stereotypes emerged. One was "The Drunken Indian." The idea was that as a race, Indigenous People were genetically susceptible to alcohol. The simple truth is that while Indigenous People as a population do have the highest rate of alcohol consumption, there are as many people from other races who carry the genetic trait to alcohol dependence proportionately as Indigenous people.
Dr. Susan Bomalaski, in an essay called "The Drunk Indian Stereotype” notes:
It is true that Native Americans have the highest rate of alcohol abuse among any “race-ethnicity”; alcohol dependence is higher than national averages and alcoholism deaths are the highest in the nation among both make and female Native Americans. (Welty) However, it is important to realize that when we see differences in a medical outcomes that appears to be based on race and ethnicity, we should not assume that the differences are genetic. As stated by Morrissey, "In any given study, the answers you get may depend on which people you are studying. Are these new immigrants or people who are deeply acculturated to mainstream U.S. lifestyles? Are these white people in the United States or in France, or Chinese people in China or the United States? The answer may also depend on whether you are studying people who are a majority or a minority. And whether you are studying people who are wealthy or poor. All of these features can make a difference in medical outcome, including drug metabolism. The problem is that these environmental features often co-vary with race, making it difficult to determine the exact explanation for observed differences between racial groups.Studies from the 1990's have led to the common idea among both non-Native American and Native American people still prevalent today that Native Americans have both a genetic metabolism and cultural heritage, which pre-disposes them to substance-use-disorders (Levy). Subsequent research has proven that Native Americans react to alcohol much like other people. The ethnic differences between people are not as significant as the differences of individual metabolism, diet, body weight, drinking history, state of health, speed of consumption, intention, context, and history of head trauma. In the case of alcohol use and Native Americans; the concept of alcoholism serves to dehumanize individuals; if they are biologically different and suffering from a disease, Native Americans are not seen as rational struggling individuals but as victim of their own inferiority (Oswald). Healthy use of alcohol is something that many individuals struggle with; developing the racist concept that alcoholism in an inherent feature of being Native American dismisses this group of people from that struggle. This stereotype founded on historically culturally constructed concepts of race led to the misuse of research through scientific racism of heritable alcoholism. Research relying on these “not human" stereotypes, act to dehumanize Native American peoples in today’s society even by people who motivation is to empathize with the “Drunk Indian.” (Italics are mine, not Dr. Bomalaski's)
The simplest hypothesis about Indigenous Tribes and alcohol is fairly complicated. The co-variance of other factors influencing alcohol consumption could include unemployment, isolation, economic devastation, rates of illness accompanying alcohol consumption (e,g, diabetes) and many more. The reservations which are "dry" by tribal or Bureau of Indian Affairs decree seem to have developed what could be called a "look the other way" approach to tribal members' drinking. In some tribes, although a "dry" reservation is tribal law, tribal members end up going off the reservation into communities near the borders of the reservation to get alcohol.
One way Indigenous people who are alcohol dependent develop such dependence is to leave their dry reservations to either live in or travel back and forth between their reservations to what Alysa Landry calls "Drunk Towns." Her article, entitled "Drunk Towns U.S.A. - Fighting Native Intoxication with the Ditch Patrol" discusses the migration of tribal members back and forth between their reservations and towns which abut such reservations just outside of reservation boundaries. The town discussed as an example in Ms. Landry's article, which appeared in the excellent weekly digital newspaper This Week From Indian Country.
Ms. Landry uses Gallup, New Mexico as the example of a city near a reservation which has a large problem with public intoxication. As with numerous towns near Indigenous reservations, Gallup has a large Indigenous population, 44 percent, according to Ms. Landry. Due to a high rate of unemployment, alcoholism is rampant.
As alcohol use has been an issue in Gallup for decades, the proximity of many tribes' reservations to Gallup has led to aggressive panhandling by homeless Indigenous and other people who have turned Gallup into "the most dangerous town in New Mexico" according to the FBI as quoted by Ms. Landry. The problem of vagrants who are intoxicated has led to Gallup having a detoxification facility with 180 beds, a huge facility for a town of 15,000 people. Detoxification is simply the equivalent of a timeout room for intoxicated adults. As with numerous towns and cities in the West, winter temperatures go below freezing, causing potentially lethal conditions for anyone who is intoxicated and out overnight. What makes this situation more desperate is that the detoxification center is nearly broke, and will not survive this calendar year if a significant infusion of cash is not found. Figures from 2015 indicate 18 people nearly all Indigenous Tribal members, froze to death in or near Gallup (Landry, 2016).
Here in Montana, rural towns and cities which are near reservations encounter the same problems as Gallup. In Billings, Montana, the community which abuts one reservation and has several tribes' members who mirror Gallup's problem with potentially freezing to death in Montana's bitterly cold winters, Indigenous people struggle with mood altering chemicals as well as alcohol.
Ms. Landry closes her essay by making the point that cities near reservations need funding which is substantial enough to not just place a bandaid on a gaping wound, but to have the needed funding in services which treat the border towns as partners in addressing this problem as the multi-headed hydra that it is. Until such an approach is taken, communities that are now suffering from rampant alcohol dependence will face more decades of being labeled "drunk towns."
I would like to acknowledge the sources that I found helpful in putting together this article: endgenocide.org, This Week in Indian Country and Alysa Landry, and Dr. Susan Bomalaski.
Copyright 2016 by Peter Reum - All Rights Reserved
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